Success Thought Leadership Beyond a Client Onboarding Checklist: Simple and Seamless Customer Success Management Ashley Glovasky Mar 28, 2022 7 mins read Blog Beyond a Client Onboarding Checklist: Simple and Seamless Customer Success Management Client onboarding checklists are becoming increasingly popular for businesses worldwide. Providing clients with what they need to succeed is crucial and checklists are a good failsafe to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. Welcome email? Check. Data collection? Check. Software installation? Check. There’s no denying that these steps (among others) are important to follow. But beyond the client onboarding checklist, setting your clients up for success with exceptional customer success management is vital to reduce churn, increase retention, and ultimately foster business growth overall. Janie Vu, Manager of Learning & Development, and Kaitlyn Cvejic, a Client Success Agent at Wrk, share what a seamless client success strategy looks like beyond a simple checklist. Internal knowledge transfer First up is Kaitlyn Cvejic who articulates that ensuring a smooth and seamless client onboarding experience is paramount for any business in 2022. “It’s really a make or break event. If a client doesn’t have a good onboarding experience, they’re really likely to drop out within the next year or not renew. Treating it as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event is something that’s been stressed to me since I started at Wrk,” she says. But how do you start off strong? The first step of any customer onboarding process is perfecting the handoff from Sales to the Client Success team—which comes before you even send the welcome email to a new client. And this step is what’s often looked over when it comes to a typical client onboarding checklist. There are several key items that should be included in this process that will differ depending on your business. But typically, a successful knowledge transfer strategy will start with the client’s unique problem that needs to be solved, specific contact information for the client, as well as contact details for any other points of contact that may need to be consulted in the future. It’s also important to share initial client expectations in terms of timelines, exact pricing, and execution to ensure everyone is on the same page as soon as possible. This internal knowledge transfer could be carried out in a variety of ways, from a simple email to a meeting between the sales representative and the customer success agent. For example, at Wrk, when a client signs a contract, an automated process is triggered through which our sales representatives receive a detailed form with several fields to fill out, like which process our client is looking to automate today, whether or not we have system access to launch our client’s first Wrkflow, and how often we’ll need to run the Wrkflow once the first output is shared. Once the form is filled out, it’s sent to the first available customer success agent. This then triggers a welcome email that’s sent to the client with a link to their agent’s calendar to schedule an onboarding call at a date and time that works best for both parties. By automating this process, we’re able to get our clients up and running quickly and efficiently. Defining success and setting expectations During the actual client onboarding call, clients can define what success will look like and set specific expectations or goals. This also typically involves user-setup and gaining access to a client’s internal system if required. Prior to the onboarding call, Kaitlyn again provides some helpful advice to share with clients to make the most of that meeting: “Have clear expectations within your own organization before you try to convey them to someone else. If internal goals are misaligned, you may provide conflicting information. Being on the same page with yourself before you try and bring your problem or process to another company is crucial.” After all, what success looks like to you may not be the same for your client, and vice versa. It’s important therefore to adapt to your client’s definition of success while also sharing your own ideas for consideration and come to an agreement together. The best way to ensure there aren’t “too many cooks in the kitchen” is to work with your clients to set clear and measurable KPIs to demonstrate progress towards success. Define a starting point of where your client is now and set milestones they’d like to achieve by working with you. During the initial meeting as well, you can also discuss next steps and the frequency and format of check-ins. Highlighting key takeaways for all After the onboarding call, it’s important to follow up with a detailed list of key takeaways and action items for both your team and your clients to keep the process moving forward. For example, maybe your client needs to connect with their own internal IT department to provide you with access to their system or your team needs to work together to create a comprehensive strategy to move forward. Also consider sharing this list in a more engaging way or format beyond a lengthy email filled with text. “Having some sort of visual for clients to look at is crucial. Even a map with dates is helpful, as different people absorb information differently,” suggests Janie Vu. Maintaining momentum with proactive client support and management Of course, relationships with your clients should never end at onboarding. In order to provide customer satisfaction and minimize churn, you’ll need to prioritize customer support and ensure strong customer success management. This is something we stress when it comes to our own interactions with clients and we even in essence extend the customer onboarding process with an ongoing partnership in which we prioritize transparency and proven results. “When we deliver the results of their first Wrkflow isn’t necessarily when the onboarding is complete,” says Kaitlyn. “It’s when what we deliver to them has value and they can use it and they’re happy with it—and even then, we need to maintain it to nurture the relationship with our clients.” At Wrk, for the first month of our contracts with clients, we send weekly emails to our clients to keep them updated on the progress of their first automated Wrkflows with us. Beyond that, we hold a monthly process review video call to thoroughly go over progress and discuss ways to improve the Wrkflow further. Finally, we share results in a quarterly process review and work with our clients to identify other areas of their business that could be improved and optimized with automation. Moving beyond the client onboarding checklist to optimize customer success management All this to say that while lists may help individuals prioritize and organize tasks, successful customer success management needs to go beyond a mere client onboarding checklist. Automation is a tool that can help you streamline your customer success strategy. Like we’ve done at Wrk, you too can use our Wrkflows to help your Customer Success team thrive. To learn more about how automation can help, check out our Customer Onboarding solutions and our Client Onboarding Wrkflows today! Featured Image: NDABCREATIVITY Share This Article Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email