Welcoming new clients into a business has traditionally been a complicated process.
Low budgets, evolving project scope, staff, and timeline overruns are common problems that decision-makers must contend with in the client onboarding departments. In the longer term, that can set off a chain of events that can negatively impact the business overall. When companies are unable to manage their resources properly, their teams suffer. That can lead to frustrations and turnover, ultimately driving poor client onboarding outcomes. When clients have a poor initial experience with a vendor, sales, revenue recognition, and client retention suffer.
Client onboarding software can eliminate these problems.
Why Use Client Onboarding Software?
For many software and service businesses, onboarding clients is a complex multi-step process that requires a cohesive strategy for converting the series of expectations made during the sales process into specific outcomes. Onboarding can include building new relationships with additional team members, helping the client with change management, and translating client requirements into clear, actionable steps to implement clients on the new solution. The final stages may include validating the updates made and training clients in the new solution or product before transitioning them to the support organization.
Here are a few reasons why onboarding software is critical for organizations to up their game and reduce their onboarding costs while keeping their onboarding teams operating at high capacity and satisfaction.
Eliminate the Busy Work
The first reason is that client onboarding software allows organizations to decrease operating costs and achieve more revenue. With digital tools and services, businesses can eliminate up to 90% of manual onboarding activities and streamline many outreach operations while leveraging tracking metrics to improve performance over time.
Deliver Better Client and Employee Experiences
The impression that businesses leave on clients during the first engagement goes a long way in affecting later purchasing decisions. Client onboarding software provides a framework for software vendors and implementation providers to follow to offer the best experience throughout the entire process. Onboarding software provides insight into the professional workings of a software vendor or implementation consultant, driving better awareness and appreciation of the effort to support the relationship while adding further validation for the buying decision.
With client onboarding software, clients can access a real-time project management portal to track implementation status, answer questions, get training, and supply any necessary information to help move the project along at their convenience. Proactive client engagement and self-service save the onboarding team valuable time and allow them to stay focused on the tasks on hand and complete more work faster to drive faster throughput, client satisfaction, and monetization.
What Gets Measured Gets Managed
Whoever came up with this phrase almost certainly meant client onboarding 😊 Onboarding software can provide transparent granular insight into the expected project timeline zeroing in on any bottlenecks, expected staff and team downtimes, KPIs, and keeping track of potential scope creep. AI-powered solutions can also track these valuable data trends and help drive more proactive decisions about the future need to expand or contract.
Client onboarding software provides a modern solution to help optimize client interactions, eliminate waste and decrease spending.
Improved Staff Satisfaction and Retention
Engaged onboarding teams are a critical element of the formula for success. With onboarding software eliminating many of the manual activities from their plate, they are already in a better place. Getting above the daily grind allows teams to engage with clients in more consultative and meaningful ways, making the career choice of an onboarding expert who thrives in helping others create new connections much more satisfying.
Onboarding teams often cite a lack of recognition and appreciation, high workload, and poor job satisfaction as the reasons for leaving their employers. Enabling onboarding staff to focus on more meaningful tasks, gaining insight into people who overwork routinely versus those needing training and other resources, and eliminating busy work results in more fulfilling experience and drives higher engagement and retention.
In addition, intelligent professional staff automation solutions built into the onboarding software help understand trends, pinpoint the bottlenecks, identify laggards, and appropriately recognize stars.
Conclusion
More efficient onboarding team utilization and lower onboarding staff churn mean a company can direct more resources back to the sales organizations, allowing businesses to stay competitive.
