When a client has a poor SaaS onboarding experience, there’s a waterfall of negative effects for providers: decreased user adoption, client frustration and potential for churn, revenue loss, compliance exposures, and more.
But what issues do clients have with the process that gets them to this breaking point?
There’s not a single pitfall that’s to blame for a bad SaaS onboarding experience; it’s a blend of missteps. And the more you can understand where these client frustrations lie, the better equipped you are to create an onboarding experience that leaves your clients impressed, not distressed.
Here are some of the hot button topics we’ve heard about from clients in recent months.
Gripe #1: Poor Communication & Clarity
Not all SaaS providers have standardized onboarding processes, and that can become a source of confusion and misalignment. For example, inconsistent practices can lead to inconsistent communications from various members of the SaaS provider’s team, which ultimately creates frustration on the part of clients.
SaaS onboarding should be collaborative in nature to yield the best results, but SaaS providers don’t always have the tools in place to support these interactions. Clients can often feel restricted in their ability to reach out to SaaS providers with questions and get timely responses. At the same time, limited transparency can make it difficult for clients to stay abreast of the onboarding project’s progress, client feedback, and any client to-dos that may be unknowingly holding up the process.
Gripe #2: Complex or Confusing Setup
Some SaaS solutions are known to be complex, and the onboarding process of those solutions can feel the same way to clients. In many cases, the setup process can be time-consuming and labor-intensive for clients, which can leave them feeling burdened with little patience.
Consider data mapping as an example. Many clients have a large volume of historical data to map to a new SaaS solution, and the data, and often the underlying processes and activities used, is not easily compatible with the new system.
If a SaaS provider doesn’t have efficient mechanisms in place to import, validate, and transform data for deployment, clients can find themselves dedicating a lot of their time and effort to data mapping, potentially delaying the onboarding timeline.
Gripe #3: Lack of Training or Support
No client wants to feel stranded when they run into a question or obstacle in the SaaS onboarding process, but inevitably it happens. Bogged down by a large volume of client onboarding projects that tend to be complex in nature, reps can fail to provide each client with the adequate training resources and support that they need to be successful.
The only road that leaves clients to go down is one where they try to diagnose and resolve issues on their own. That scenario is problematic in two ways. Not only are clients dealing with prolonged downtime as they try to find a resolution, but they are also less likely to realize the intended value of the SaaS solution in which they’ve invested.
Gripe #4: Technical Issues
Technical issues can take on many forms in the SaaS onboarding process. It could be a case where the integration between the SaaS product and other essential software calls for additional customizations or workarounds. It’s possible the technology just doesn’t support the ability to customize onboarding altogether. Or it could be a case where clients are concerned about the security and privacy of their business-critical data as it’s imported.
When clients run into these obstacles in SaaS onboarding, there is a natural disruption to progress. But it also creates a paradigm shift where clients are suddenly questioning the confidence they have in a SaaS provider. Are they bound to face more issues with the product once they’re “live”?
Alleviate Client Onboarding Challenges with Setuply at Your Side
When you invest in Setuply, an automated client onboarding platform, you can create more of the SaaS onboarding experience clients want with less of the friction they don’t.
You’ll streamline every part of your onboarding process, while giving back your reps more time to focus on other value-added activities. You’ll have the right onboarding tools to effectively collaborate with clients, simplify secure data import and storage, handle data flows between third-parties and client tools, and more. Your clients will realize value faster, and so will you.
Ready to give your client onboarding a boost? Let’s talk. We want to know which onboarding challenges top your list — perhaps some that you’ve heard from your own clients — and showcase how our solution can help you optimize your onboarding for the future.