Word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions.
That simple fact underscores the importance of customer onboarding. If done well, you’ll create loyal brand ambassadors ready to evangelize your message. Done poorly, you’ll have disgruntled customers running as fast as they can to your competitors.
So, how can savvy companies elevate their customer onboarding process? Effective onboarding programs provide ongoing training, personalize solutions, track milestones and perpetually evolve.
“We decided to make the onboarding process one of our differentiators and one of the most important value propositions of the product,” said Machinio Head of Operations Laura Pereira. “The relationships built between our onboarding coordinators and clients have proven to be critical in the scaling of our product.
“We receive incredible feedback from clients about the difference it makes,” she added.
Pereira sat down with Built In Chicago to share her thoughts on customer onboarding — and how her team has navigated industry pitfalls.
Machinio connects buyers and sellers on one of the world’s largest platforms for machinery and equipment transactions.
Describe your customer onboarding program.
We’ve designed it to ensure that clients have a smooth transition into managing a new website and operating new software on a daily basis. The main components are designing their new website, migrating their data into the CRM, enabling integrations applicable to their businesses, training them to efficiently operate their new software and ensuring a smooth handoff to our client experience lead.
By having an in-house onboarding team to which our sales team can transfer the relationships, we are carrying on the mission of bringing technology to an old-school industry while elevating and sustaining the experience in a way that only human interactions can do.
In your experience, what are the most important aspects of creating a seamless customer onboarding experience?
Onboarding coordinators find themselves at the intersection of customer service, operations, product, tech and creative design in our company. It's a complex role that requires a diverse set of skills. With that, keeping the clients' experience at the forefront is one of the most important aspects, and it can be difficult when you are in the position to have to manage expectations and say no at times. We learn together every day.
A second aspect we find important is constantly brainstorming about how to balance keeping our clients happy and satisfied and meeting their requests and needs — while staying on track with our performance and revenue goals.
Third, paying attention to how clients best receive information allows us to determine the best tools to get the job done.
Lastly, cross-functional collaboration is key. I do a lot of work in transferring knowledge from sales, renewals, product and leadership to our team, so they are empowered and informed.
What are the biggest hurdles you face in customer onboarding?
In general, fear of change, consistency in communication and availability will always be the factors we can't control. We will always try our best to overcome them. Our team is relentless with keeping clients on track and moving the onboarding process along, which allows them to reap the benefits of our high-performing product as soon as possible.
Striking a balance between giving clients what they want while advising them on what they need and exercising our expertise is a journey we are on. We must build trust with clients so we can be honest, and collaborative with all stakeholders.
We strike a balance between giving clients what they want and advising them on what they need.”
Those parties include sales on one side and client experience and retention on the other. Ultimately, all the good done by our team is attributed to the fact that everyone has a seat at the table when creating processes. Constantly brainstorming ways of doing things better, having processes that include teammates' ideas and encouraging client feedback will always be our superpowers as we create, automate, improve and grow.
