4 Hacks To Faster Customer Onboarding
By Rick Costanzo, president and general manager, Kodak Alaris Information Management
Customer onboarding is a crucial first stage in the customer experience. After all, first impressions make lasting impacts. Evidence suggests we form first impressions in about 1/10 of a second and those impressions are pretty hard to shake. Furthermore, research shows 94 percent of customers who have a “low-effort experience” will buy from that same company again. For these reasons, effective and speedy customer onboarding is absolutely critical. It’s an important moment of truth for any organization, and if done poorly, customer onboarding is where the seed of churn is planted.
A great customer onboarding experience starts by reducing complexity. Routine processes like customer onboarding frequently become bogged down by the sheer volume of data and documents. This leads to a process that takes too many steps and zig-zags between paper and digital touchpoints.
The good news is improving the customer onboarding process doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking. Making small improvements can have a sizable impact and substantial pay-offs, and don’t take a great deal of time or resources.
Businesses can move the needle — today — by streamlining customer onboarding with these four steps.
1. Standardize where you can. Connect where you can’t.
Repeatability is key to increasing efficiency. If your customer onboarding looks different every time, it’s important to establish standards for interaction with new customers, including everything from the order of email and phone communication to required documentation at different stages. Also, tools like modern web-capture solutions can connect to backend systems, reducing manual effort on the company’s part to input customer information.
2. Use paper as an input, not an endpoint.
Across many industries, customer onboarding still relies heavily on paper forms and manual data entry which slows down the process and is more prone to errors. Rather than relying on paper — which can only be in one place at once time — as a final record, modern customer onboarding uses web-capture to quickly scan, categorize, and distribute customer information across systems and applications. In doing so, businesses avoid rework and duplication and ensure the customer data they have is accurate.
3. Automate needs assessment where possible.
Onboarding, whether it’s done in person, over the phone or online, requires a lot of upfront time asking questions that are fairly routine and gathering background documents and information. So when and where possible, automate. Create an online survey for onboarding questions, or allow web submission for needed signup forms so customers are able to complete their parts at their convenience.
Digitizing and processing the information needed in the onboarding process rapidly and accurately will save massive amounts of time on upfront and jump start the customer relationship even faster.
4. Reach out early with helpful, welcome resources.
Greeting customers with helpful documentation and tutorials not only indicates thoughtfulness, it also improves the speed of onboarding. Welcome packets and online libraries do this by serving as customer support that works for everyone and customers can get their questions answered on-demand. It’s a win-win.
The key is to always create less work for the customer. If they have to spend too much time hunting for information when they need it, the experience will suffer. Proactively reach out with helpful tips and information, so customers feel comfortable using the products and know they have support available a click away.
A great way to do this is with a welcome series of emails. After they sign up, use marketing automation tools to serve them up a collection of emails with tips on getting started and getting the most out of the services and products available to them.
Businesses can also bring new levels of engagement with automated physical mailer delivery. There are a number of services that enable organizations to systematically and efficiently send physical mail at scale. The value to the organization is in significantly reduced costs and increased speed.
Time is an important factor for both customers and businesses. Speeding up the onboarding processes by removing time-consuming barriers delights customers and enables businesses to focus on acquiring and onboarding even more customers. When customers are informed of the steps upfront and guided effortlessly through the process, a positive first impression is the result, which pays major dividends.
For more information, please visit www.kodakalaris.com/go/IM