Building a Strong Client Onboarding Process

🧠 The Psychology Behind Successful Customer Onboarding A hard truth I've learned as a CS leader is that perfect features mean nothing if your onboarding fails. Another hard truth: Psychology matters more than process. You must focus on human behavior rather than just feature adoption. Here are my three principles to live by in onboarding: The Momentum Principle: We discovered that customers who achieve value in the first 48 hours are 3x more likely to become long-term advocates. So we redesigned our onboarding to focus on quick wins before complex features. By breaking down the journey into smaller, achievable milestones, we create a pattern of success that builds confidence and momentum. The Ownership Effect: When customers invest time in customizing their setup, they're significantly more likely to stick around. We now encourage early personalization through guided setup sessions. Rather than doing it for them, we coach customers through the process. This has increased product stickiness by 47% and reduced early-stage churn by 34%. The Contextual Learning Framework: We stopped treating onboarding as a linear checklist. Instead, we now adapt the journey based on user behavior and role. Our data shows that contextual learning – delivering guidance at the moment of need – increases feature adoption by 68% compared to traditional training methods. The results speak volumes: Time-to-value was reduced from 45 days to 15 and adoption rates increased by 56%. Successful onboarding is about building confidence and creating habits. Every friction point isn't just a technical issue; it's a psychological barrier waiting to be understood and removed. Are you designing your onboarding for features or humans? #CustomerSuccess #SaaS #Onboarding #CustomerExperience

When we first started thinking about what the most important features were to build for advisors at Savvy, we were thinking big—portfolio management, CRM, financial planning, marketing automation, etc. We were wrong. Here’s the story of the very first feature we built at Savvy and why it’s still one of our top-used features today. Before a single line of code was written, we asked advisors, “Which tasks slow you down the most? Which repetitive processes drive you crazy?” Over a hundred conversations and two hundred logged pain points later—we started mapping out the existing landscape of good, bad, and non-existing solutions to every pain point we heard of. And although our team had our own set of original hypotheses as to which tools should be prioritized, we relied on advisors to validate our hypotheses and be the key driver to which products we prioritized building. Our first big move? A fully digital onboarding process for both new clients and existing clients moving over with advisors that slashed paperwork from 22 days to just minutes. (Yes, six advisors quoted exactly 22 days for account opening… we couldn’t believe it either.). It sounded so simple—yet nobody had built it effectively. While our eyes were set on big, audacious features, the truth was that client onboarding was a workflow that every advisor and client experienced. It was clunky to do it with pen, paper, and fax machines. And far too time-consuming than it needed to be (for both the client and the advisor!)  This dramatically improved the way that clients first engaged with their new financial advisor, setting the tone for the client experience from the beginning of the relationship. Ultimately, what enabled us to build the first feature that advisors really needed was using advisor feedback to challenge our own assumptions and prioritize the most common pain points, regardless of how small they initially seemed to us. If you are an advisor and would like to see our onboarding flow among tons of other exciting features we have built since then, check out the link in the comments 👇

🛑 Solving the CS foundation gap - The customer onboarding lifecycle Customer onboarding is a crucial CS foundation we aim to be gap-free. In previous posts, I addressed the Sales-CS handshake as a preliminary step for onboarding. First, I want to tear apart a belief I see in many places by CSMs, and executives: "The onboarding is the process to make the customer use the product." ❌ WRONG ❌ The truth is that onboarding demonstrates the business value our service can bring them, connects the value to the reasons for buying and business pains, and builds confidence in the users, buyers, and champions that we are the right solution for them. The onboarding is the dating period between the customer, the CSM, and the service. But this dating is challenging. We, the service provider, know we want to continue to date, but for the customer, this dating is blind. They saw a picture of us (the POV or trial) and were still afraid and unsure if we were the chosen one or maybe they should date others. So, like dating, the goals of the onboarding process are: 1️⃣ Build rapport with the executive buyer, champion, and early users. 2️⃣ Demonstrate the business values, connect them to the reasons for buying, and validate the ROI as an outcome of time and money savings. 3️⃣ Build the trust of the buyers that they chose the right solution. 4️⃣ Show the end users that our service improves their lives. The results of a good onboarding life cycle and process are: 💰 Shorter time to value 💰 Increase upsell and cross-sell opportunities 💰 Reduce churn risk 💰 Reduce customer frustration Onboarding can vary and depends on the touch level, the product, the complexity, and the customer segment (SMB, mid-market, enterprise). Here is a simple suggestion for an onboarding life cycle template: 🛫 Onboarding Kickoff - with the executive buyer and champion to remind the reasons for buying, understand which teams will be involved, and plan the onboarding project plan. 🛫 Integration - set up all the needed integrations and settings. 🛫 Admins setup & training - setting up the needed admins and training them. 🛫 End users setup & training - setting up and training the needed end users. 🛫 Value perceived - Customer sees the value and understands its ROI and how it resolves its business issues. 🛫 Onboarding retrospective - Reminding the reasons for buying, providing proof of the business value, sharing the ROI, and planning the next six months together (until the QBR). The meeting must include the executive buyer and not just the champion. During the onboarding period, we want to meet with the champion at least once a week, ensure we address their business and technical questions, hold both sides accountable for the next steps, and continue building rapport. Onboarding is the foundation for the rest of the year. Investing in closing the gap will increase the probability of long relationships. #clg #customerledgrowth #sales #customersuccess

Of course your onboarding program failed. You built it to serve you — not your customer. I see it all the time. Companies over-engineer onboarding to hit internal milestones, check off boxes, and declare victory when they say it’s “done.” But here’s the truth: Just because you wrapped onboarding doesn’t mean your customer is ready. They’re still dealing with: Misalignment Confusion Internal resistance A tool they don’t fully understand how to use, let alone adopt. Here’s what’s actually going wrong: 1️⃣ You treat onboarding like a training event, not a change process 2️⃣ You deliver the same training to every user, regardless of role 3️⃣ You never define what success actually looks like 4️⃣ You don’t empower internal champions 5️⃣ You abandon them the second onboarding is “over” 6️⃣ You think “Go-Live” means “Mission Accomplished” 7️⃣ You ignore resistance to change 8️⃣ You don’t communicate enough (or clearly) 9️⃣ You overload them with info 🔟 You never got executive buy-in Want to fix it? Here’s where to start — tomorrow: ✅ Build a post-onboarding success plan Pre-populate it with the customer’s goals and share it before onboarding ends. ✅ Identify and empower champions early Find them at kickoff. Equip them to lead. Keep them close. ✅ Reinforce the WHY Stop talking about features. Start connecting usage to business impact. ✅ Monitor early signals and take action Don’t just measure adoption. Share it. Explain it. Adjust as needed. ✅ Keep the learning going Enablement isn’t one-and-done. Build ongoing learning paths and resources that scale. Let’s stop designing onboarding for our own convenience. And start designing it for customer success. Put them back in the driver’s seat. ____________________ 📣 If you liked my post, you’ll love my newsletter. Every week I share learnings, advice and strategies from my experience going from CSM to CCO. Join 12k+ subscribers of The Journey and turn insights into action. Sign up on my profile.