How to Formulate an Ultimate Onboarding Strategy to Get Happy Customers

There are certain myths about customer onboarding that lead you to commit mistakes to prolong your relationship with the customers. One of them is to think that onboarding starts after the customer acquisition. No, customer onboarding starts even at the point when you start developing the marketing strategies to attract your leads. You need to opt for fair digital marketing strategies to attract people who can become your potential customers. Do not mislead or lie with them. It will not help you develop long-term customer relationship.

We are here to share with you some important factors that will surely help you get your customers on board and turn them into your league of happy customers.

Also Read: What is Customer Success and why do You Need it for Your Subscription Business Model to Succeed?

Key Points to Plan Your Onboarding Strategy

Onboarding means the process of making the customers well-acquainted with the system—your subscription billing software.

Following are some important factors that will help you come up with a better customer onboarding strategy:

Learn More about Customer Behaviour

Customer behaviour is a key to unlock the door to success for every business. Subscription-based businesses also need an in-depth knowledge of their customer purchasing patterns. The subscription management platforms are using AI algorithms and they can provide you with customer data analysis. The data analysis reports that AI-based systems generate are accurate. They will improve your data literacy.

The visual report that the automated systems generate sums up the data of many years. You can easily identify patterns of purchase and the time when SaaS buyers purchase more. Use data insights for they are the most important factor in formulating the customer onboarding strategy.

Follow a Customer-Centric Approach

Though all businesses ensure that the customer gets the best experience, the customer experience is the cornerstone of the subscription business. If the customer is not happy, he will not wait till the end of his subscription plan. He has the convenient option to cancel the subscriptions and not pay for the services that do not satisfy him. The market is already competitive. He can easily find another SaaS retailer.

You can plan and manage involuntary churn quite effectively, but voluntary churn is not easy to handle. The best way to address this challenge is to acquire more happy customers to compensate for the ones who left. So, not just onboarding but all recurring billing business strategies should focus on the customer.

Also Read: The Role of Customer Success in the Subscription Business and How to Embrace It to Excel?

Offer Demos & Tutorials

One of the best things that you can make part of your onboarding strategy is to offer thorough demos and tutorials to your customers. Statistics show that most of the customers who cancel subscriptions for  SaaS products, in the beginning, is just because they fail to understand the complexities of the software.

If you offer your customer helpful demos and tutorials that can resolve their initial queries and question regarding your product, then it can significantly improve your customer retention rate. Even it is inconvenient for the customers to switch from one recurring billing software to another.

Provide Knowledge Base

Do not confuse the knowledge base with the tutorials and demos. The knowledge base is a self-service that most SaaS companies offer. The document contains all information about the product that they are offering. It might include tutorials but it is more explanatory than mere tutorials.

Tech entrepreneurs should also offer their clients a knowledge base. It will help them get happy and loyal customers. Such clients will later become your referrals for new customers.

Communicate Well

Both B2B and B2C business communities are aware of the importance of communication with the customers. Customer acquisition, marketing, and support services demand effective communication with the customer. However, communication can also help you with onboarding.

Do not leave the newly acquired customer on his own rather communicate with him. Use effective communication platforms for this purpose. It will make the customers feel that they matter. It also leaves a positive psychological impact on the customers that the company that offers services owns them.

Offer Personalised Experience

When you are planning onboarding for your SaaS subscription business, it is important to understand the concept of personalized experience. You should use the customer name and polite tone when you communicate with them. The recurring billing software is effective for providing your customer with a personalized experience.

The scope of the personalized experience is vast, and it varies with the nature of the SaaS product or service that you offer. However, it is highly beneficial for SaaS retailers.

Also Read: How SaaS Companies Can Enrich Customer Loyalty and Long-Lasting Relationships with Recurring Billing During COVID-19

Offer Effective Customer Support & Training

When SaaS customers start using a new product, they feel difficulty in getting along with the new system. Many SaaS companies focus on their customer support to swiftly resolve issues that customers face initially. Some SaaS platforms are huge and offer so many functionalities that they have to offer training for the customers.

You can use customer support and training as a strategy to bring customers on board. Let customers know that your team is available to answer their questions and train them to use your powerful subscription management platform.

Till now, we have shared all the important points that you need to formulate an onboarding strategy that will generate the desired result for you. Now, you need to read the following benefits of spending time and resources to formulate your own customer onboarding strategy to get motivated.

Advantages of Planning Customer Onboarding

There are some concrete reasons behind the fact that all SaaS enterprises spend their time and resources to onboard their new customers. Following are the advantages of formulating a workable onboarding strategy:

Customer Experience

Better customer experience is one of the reasons for the popularity of the subscription billing business model. If you have properly planned an onboarding strategy and start catering to the customer needs from the very beginning, then you set the foundation for a long-term relationship with your customer. How? There was a time when customer acquisition and customer support used to be considered the points of interaction with the customer. Now that we are all living in the digitalised ecosystem, customers interact with the business at various points. This process of interacting with the customer offers an experience to the customers.

Your onboarding strategy helps you provide customers with the best experience and enjoy customer loyalty.

Also Read: 7 Secret Ingredients to Take Over the Market and Chase Stellar SaaS Customer Experience the Right Way

Customer Retention

Customer acquisition is not the sole target of a company rather businesses aim at customer retention. Some SaaS companies opt for poor customer acquisition tactics. They mislead their customers about the products or the services that they offer. Initially, they succeed in bringing many customers. Today, customers are equipped with knowledge. They know where they are investing and how much they are investing. Moreover, recurring billing is a customer-centric business model. The customer has the choice to immediately cancel the subscription when he feels that he has been misguided.

Customer onboarding strategies help the recurring business community avoid such practices and increase customer retention rate.

Referral Resources

When it comes to marketing, no marketer can deny the importance of referrals. Customers believe the third person more than what the company claims. Customers are smart enough to know that businesses use puffery to attract customers. Your onboarding strategy can help you bring happy customers. You can provide these referrals of existing happy customers to the new customers and grow your customer base.

Churn Reduction

As mentioned earlier, if the customer is misguided about the SaaS product that the company offers, he can cancel the subscription—voluntary churn. However, your strategy to bring the customer onboard can play role in reducing the voluntary churn rate.

Increase in Revenue

There are various metrics relevant to customer onboarding. Customer churn, Retention Rate, and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) are some of the important ones. Well-planned onboarding strategies improve the performance of the subscription billing business. When business performance improves, the KPIs or metrics also improves. An increase in the retention rate is directly proportional to the LTV which means a fair chance of earning more revenue.

SaaS Business experts are now targeting to onboard happy customers rather than spending resources to make customers happy. To achieve this target, they start working even at the phase of targeting leads. They target potential leads, plan onboarding strategies, and get loyal and happy customers who stay with them for a long time.