The beginning of a new customer relationship is filled with promise and excitement. You’re excited about getting another sale, and the client is looking forward to a well-managed IT environment.
But things can quickly go off the rails if the customer onboarding plan isn’t handled correctly. Customers can get frustrated if their team claims they can’t reach you (even if has been because they weren’t using your help desk request client).
A new client can also second-guess their decision to sign up at the first sign of trouble, such as a downtime incident or an unexpected IT interruption as you’re going through a string of older unapplied updates.
Thirty-three percent of US consumers say that they’d consider switching companies after just one bad customer experience.
There are a lot of areas of your business that customers need to be educated on when they start working with your company, including things like:
- Invoicing and billing
- How to request help
- Response time expectations
- How monthly maintenance is handled
- Who to contact for help
- How remote support works
- Office hours
- And more
So, wondering how to improve customer experience? If you want to increase customer retention instead of having that hard-won client jumping ship a few months into their agreement, it’s important to provide an excellent customer onboarding experience.
Acquiring a new customer costs as much as 5x more than retaining an existing customer.
How to Create a Client Onboarding Process that Retains More Business
Engage In-Person or Virtually
Just giving your client a link where they can read about your policies and access their service agreement, isn’t much of a user onboarding process.
It’s important to engage with clients face-to-face, either in person or through a video meeting. This increases their connection to your business, putting a helpful face to a name. It also shows the client that their business is important enough for you to take the time to personally walk them through the process and answer all their questions in real-time.
You can often gather more insight into a customer’s potential pain points by engaging with them verbally, rather than just via email. This can clue you into things like, “We have some new users who will need some TLC,” so you can reach out proactively and ensure they know how to reach your remote support team.
Don’t Do Just One Onboarding Session
Trying to put too much information into a single onboarding session, can leave the client forgetting much of what they heard. It can also be less convenient for them to do a 2-hour onboarding, instead of three 40-minute sessions focused on various topics.
There are a few reasons to divide your onboarding into multiple sessions:
- You further develop your client relationship over each session.
- Shorter sessions can be laser-focused on a specific area.
- It’s often easier for companies to schedule shorter meetings than one long meeting.
- You create a touchstone pattern, where you are connecting with them as they’re working with you, which helps you head off any bumps in the road.
- You can cover everything you need to and aren’t leaving things out due to time constraints.
Ask Customers How Things Are Going
Have you ever had a new client unexpectedly leave? What usually happens is that everyone looks at each other and says, “They never said anything about having problems!” and by the time they’re canceling, it’s often too late.
At the tail end of a successful customer onboarding process, you should include a follow-up about 4-6 weeks in to see how things are going and if the customer has any questions or concerns.
Many customers won’t speak out. In fact, only about 1 in 26 will complain about a service they’re unhappy with, while the others will stay quiet until they decide to leave without warning.
To avoid having a high customer churn rate, simply asking how things are going with a new client, provides an open opportunity for them to share any small issues so you can solve them before they become big ones.
Automate Your Onboarding Notifications & Follow-Up Emails
Maintaining a 4-session onboarding with emailed follow-up materials can be time-consuming. For this reason, many companies don’t have a well-structured and effective onboarding process and end up losing new customers as a result.
You can streamline the process by using a tool like Syncro. Our PSA allows you to create automated customer emails that can be triggered from various events that you set up in the CRM area of the tool.
With this type of automation capability, you can have your client onboarding process run like clockwork without taking up time with manual notifications. This also ensures consistency in communication content and frequency to ensure the best chance of customer success.
Get Help Setting Up a Great Onboarding Flow in Syncro
Syncro can help you improve your onboarding process, reducing lost business, and improving customer retention.
Contact us today to schedule a free demo and a 30-day free trial. Call 856-579-6276 or start your trial online.
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