Best Practices for Onboarding New Clients: Ten Ways to Drive Success

SaaS client onboarding lays the foundation for successful, long-lasting relationships. When you construct a solid framework to guide your client’s onboarding journey, you’ll make a good first impression, reduce misunderstandings and frustrations, and maximize client value.

Considering what’s on the line, it’s critical for solution providers to get client onboarding right the first time. Use this checklist for onboarding new clients as a guide to seeing successful results.

 

1. Develop a formal onboarding process

• Establish a standardized discovery process and forms that improve efficiency
• Create collaborative documents to support a smooth transition to implementation
• Provide clients with collaborative tools that empower and inform them throughout the process
• Prepare a well thought-out rollout plan that prioritizes comprehensive training
• Give clients resources and support to help them adapt to their new normal

See our full playbook on how to create a formal client onboarding process.

 

2. Track key process metrics

• Assess the close-to-onboarding start timespan to identify any potential backlogs
• Look at the number of projects per customer onboarding rep to track and improve capacity management
• Survey your onboarding team to measure satisfaction levels and address issues

Here are some key metrics that matter in creating a seamless onboarding journey.

 

3. Identify critical stakeholders on both sides

• Involve relevant stakeholders in the initial kick-off meeting to build rapport 
• Proactively manage and address all stakeholder expectations early on
• Foster collaboration among stakeholders to keep everyone on the same page

 

4. Be consistent with cross-team transitions

• Have different teams collaborate on documentation to ensure a smooth hand-off
• Simplify collaboration by having sales, implementation, and customer success use the same communication portal
• Maintain open and transparent communication so teams can realign to meet evolving client expectations

Learn how to smooth over the handoff between sales and implementation and between implementation and customer success.

 

5. Stay aligned and connected with clients

• Tailor client onboarding workflows to match familiar processes and interfaces
• Provide clients with personalized welcome messages and ongoing support communications
• Offer self-service features that let clients conveniently complete tasks on their own time

 

6. Be transparent about the onboarding process

• Be upfront about timelines, deliverables, and potential challenges at the start of the onboarding process
• Let clients track the real-time progress of their onboarding process and know if action is required on their part
• Notify clients of key milestones to help reassure them of their investment and streamline collaboration

Maintaining transparency is one way to accelerate client monetization. Find other opportunities here.

 

7. Support your clients  with change management

• Find and launch onboarding projects with an early adopter portion of the client team, who can then become brand champions
• Regularly check in with early adopters so you can make any changes that will benefit the larger organization
• Use client onboarding tools to minimize friction in the transition and help make the experience more rewarding and enjoyable

Explore more steps you can take to support effective change management.

 

8. Provide long-term support and follow-up

• Proactively collaborate with the client on the rollout process as well as the transition to the client success team
• Ensure ongoing training and resources are made available to clients both during and after the onboarding process
• Identify cross-selling and upsell opportunities to continue supporting client needs

 

9. Conduct post-onboarding surveys and de-briefs

• Send out surveys to the client after they complete onboarding to measure their satisfaction with the process
• Review the project with the onboarding team to gather their feedback and if there are any areas for improvement
• Check to make sure that onboarding projects stayed in line within established scopes and timelines

A large percentage of projects experience scope creep. Browse ideas for keeping onboarding on track.

 

10. Continue to improve, automate, and scale!

• Streamline and automate repetitive tasks to keep things running smoothly while allowing you to scale
• Continuously refine your processes to remove bottlenecks and improve resource use
• Make use of new innovations as they become available to further enhance the customer journey

 

We hope you find this resource useful in optimizing your SaaS client onboarding! Pairing these meaningful strategies with powerful solutions like Setuply positions you to power up every aspect of your onboarding and beyond. Request a Setuply demo today.