Customer Onboarding Automation: How-to Guide
You’ve just downloaded the hottest new app everyone’s talking about. The sleek interface appears and you’re ready to dive in… but wait. Where do you start? Why isn’t anything working like you expected?
Confusion turns to frustration, and your excitement fizzles out. Defeated, you close the app, unsure if you’ll ever open it again. This is every product manager’s nightmare – an onboarding failure that cripples customer retention.
But your product doesn’t have to be that way! In this article, we explore the art and science of onboarding automation, and how it can turn that initial spark of interest into a roaring flame of engagement.
What is customer onboarding?
Customer onboarding is the process of welcoming new customers to your product or service and helping them utilize the product and maximize the value of their purchase.
It involves a series of steps, resources, interactions, etc., designed with one goal in mind: to make customers feel valued and supported. As a result, it is an essential part of the customer journey.
What is customer onboarding automation?
Onboarding automation uses technology (such as conditional flows and sequences) to guide users through their initial experience with your product.
But what exactly can be automated in onboarding flows?
The answer is a lot! Tools like Userpilot, for example, can help you automate data collection processes, welcome messages, account setup, in-app guidance, and more. You can even automate your onboarding emails with certain other tools.
How can an automated customer onboarding process help with growth?
As noted by Ragini Vaid, Product Manager at Collegedunia, automated onboarding maps “customer responses in real-time to decide the next best action towards nurturing your user.” This form of nurturing yields certain advantages:
- Consistent customer experience: Automation allows for tailored experiences based on individual customer data. It also ensures that the process is standardized for all customers.
- Increased customer satisfaction: A streamlined onboarding process reduces frustration and improves customer satisfaction. Automating your follow-ups and support can also help customers get the most out of the product.
- Increased efficiency: Businesses can focus on higher-value interactions while automation tools handle repetitive tasks like data entry, account creation, and more.
- Improved accuracy and scalability: An automated onboarding process is typically faster and less likely to have human errors. As a result, it can be easily scaled to accommodate a growing customer base without any drop in quality.
Indeed, an automated onboarding process creates a more efficient, personalized, and satisfying experience for your customers, leading to stronger relationships and long-term success.
How to automate customer onboarding
If this feels like a lot so far, it’s probably because you have no idea where to begin. So, we’ve broken down the customer onboarding automation process into 7 key steps. Let’s get into them.
Step 1: Define your customer onboarding automation goals
Goal-setting is always a great first step in any endeavor, so let’s start there. What do you hope to achieve with your onboarding process?
For example, you may consider any of these to be your ideal onboarding goals:
- Help customers set up their accounts.
- Assist them in understanding your platform’s core features.
- Reduce user’s time to value.
Whatever it is, you need to determine what onboarding success means for your customers and how you can measure this success. Only then can you organize and automate your onboarding process to help customers achieve these goals.
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Step 2: Map the existing customer journey and key touchpoints
Okay, you know what you want to achieve. Now, look at the current process and how it is set up to achieve these goals.
Trace the customer’s onboarding journey from when they sign up to when they begin engaging with your product. Then, create a detailed flowchart or diagram outlining all the steps involved in onboarding a new customer.
Also noteworthy is that onboarding may differ for different customer segments. If that’s true for your product, create different flowcharts to map the ideal onboarding journey for each segment.
While at it, you may even identify weaknesses in the current journey. If you do, iron them out and create your ideal map before you proceed.
Step 3: Identify areas where you can automate the client onboarding process
Now that you understand your onboarding process, it’s time to determine what automation will look like for your process. To do this, ask yourself:
- Are there any manual or repetitive tasks that can be automated?
- What part of the process can be made more intuitive?
- How can I reduce the workload for my team?
For example, customers may currently have to fill out a form and wait for a customer success/support agent to reach out to them and demo the product.
Instead, you can automatically segment users based on their responses to a welcome survey (demographics, job to be done, etc.) and deliver a tailored onboarding process.
Step 4: Choose the right customer onboarding automation tools
Although there are several customer onboarding tools to choose from, not all of them are great for you.
Some, for example, may be richer than your budget, and others may not be a great fit for your use case. So, you need to consider certain factors before settling for any tool. Some of these include:
- Your budget.
- The platform’s features and ease of integration into your current tech stack.
- Data security and compliance.
- Scalability in case of future growth.
You may also need a combination of tools to address different needs. For example, you can use Mailchimp to automate your welcome emails and Userpilot for your in-app workflows.
Step 5: Create automated workflows
Armed with your preferred tool, it’s time to craft your workflows.
First, check the map(s) you created in Step 2 and identify how each step in the map is logically connected to the next. Next, set up the triggers to move customers between these processes smoothly.
For example, Ragini Vaid, mentioned earlier, describes a 3-step layered automation workflow for what he calls “Day 0 onboarding.”
Can you notice how each step uses a series of if/else (yes/no) conditions to determine what comes next? The same principle can be applied everywhere else.
For instance, a project management app can check welcome survey responses and trigger Flow 1 for project managers and Flow 2 for team members.
You can even build if/else conditions into the onboarding flow to make it more interactive and engaging.
Step 6: Test the automated customer onboarding flows
At this point, your automation should be ready. Before deploying it, though, be sure to test it extensively. Test it in-house with team members cosplaying as customers to see if it runs smoothly and accurately.
Then, launch a pilot test with a small group of customers to identify areas for improvement. Feedback from these users should be collected, and their concerns should be addressed before mass deployment.
Step 7: Measure the performance and improve
Finally, roll out your automated onboarding process to your entire customer base. Collect user feedback and closely monitor the onboarding flow after the launch to track its performance metrics.
Does it successfully achieve your pre-stated goals in customer satisfaction, time to value, user retention, etc.?
As you examine it, notice what’s working well and what isn’t, and optimize your processes accordingly. Keep tuning it as more information comes to light and your user base or product changes.
7 Ways for creating an automated onboarding process
Now, it’s worth noting that onboarding is a rather large and varied process and so is customer onboarding automation. So, let’s examine how automation can improve certain aspects of the onboarding process.
1. Use SSO to automate the signup process
Let’s start with the signup process.
Traditionally, signing up involved filling out a long form and waiting in your inbox for an email verification link. Unfortunately, any delay in setting up an account might cause users to give up or even try an alternative.
So, can you automate this process instead?
That’s exactly what Single Sign-On (SSO) helps you do! Rather than having users jump through hoops to sign up, you can have them sign on using their accounts with Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.
Your users will appreciate not having to create yet another account, and you will get the users into the product faster.
2. Welcome users in-app with an automated welcome message
Once the user has signed up, welcome messages help create a warm first impression of the product experience. So, avoid leaving your welcome page blank.
Consider some automation options to explore:
- Include a welcome message that uses the customer’s name and other data gathered from the signup.
- Automatically launch a microsurvey to understand the user’s needs and determine their customer segment.
- Create and launch a short video to show appreciation to the user, relay key product information, and set expectations.
3. Create automated welcome emails
Despite sending an in-app welcome message, you may also want to greet the user via email. This is good practice, as welcome emails increase early engagement by about 33% and are 86% more effective than standard newsletters.
And, herein lies another opportunity for automation.
Instead of manually emailing each new user, you can automate it using a product like Mailchimp. Mailchimp can personalize this email for each user, using their name and any other personal information they may provide.
You can even set up a series of automated emails as part of an onboarding campaign to introduce product features or re-engage users.
4. Automate the client onboarding process with a personalized checklist
Back in the product, once the user gets past the welcome screen, it’s time to guide them through the product so they know where to begin.
Thankfully, there are multiple automation options for this part.
One of these is personalized checklists – lists of tasks to help users set up their accounts and get started with achieving their goals.
First, you’ll need to collect data with a welcome survey to determine the customer’s needs and goals. Then, you can identify their segment and trigger the appropriate checklist.
5. Automate the customer journey with different workflows
In addition to your checklists, you can automate other in-app workflows to guide users and make the customer experience enjoyable.
Some of these workflows can be part of the original customer onboarding process, while others can appear later in the customer journey.
For example, you can trigger an interactive walkthrough when a user clicks on a checklist item to explain what they need to do.
You can also trigger walkthroughs when a user clicks a feature for the first time. The walkthrough should explain how the feature works and help the user get started with it immediately.
But that’s not all. Other workflows you can automate include:
- Pre-filled forms with relevant information based on user data.
- Automated default settings based on user preferences or industry standards.
- Scheduled reminders for trial account expiry.
- Customer satisfaction surveys after certain user interactions, etc.
6. Automate customer support with self-service options
The whole purpose of customer onboarding is to create a frictionless customer experience. One way to do this is by providing a means to help users solve problems quickly.
There are many ways automation can help you achieve this.
For example, you can provide a searchable database of help articles and FAQs and deploy them as part of an in-app resource center. You can even automate this help center to show certain resources depending on a user’s segment.
Your goal is to ensure that users can find solutions to most of their problems quickly without waiting to contact a support agent.
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7. Use segmentation to create a personalized automated customer experience
If you think we’ve spoken a lot about segmentation, that’s because it can improve your automation process.
Customer segmentation is the division of a company’s customers into groups based on shared characteristics. You can create these segments based on information from…
- Product usage patterns.
- Personality traits and values.
- Age, occupation, and other demographic factors, etc.
Once you’ve segmented your users, you can develop tailored in-app strategies to drive desired behavior.
For example, if certain users have yet to achieve the adoption criteria, you can target them with secondary onboarding to aid in the discovery of relevant features.
3 Examples of customer onboarding automation
By this point, you may already have an idea of what automation in your product can look like. If you’re still unsure, though, the following examples should help.
1. Sked Social uses an onboarding checklist to automate client onboarding
A user’s journey on Sked Social begins with a welcome message. Here, the user is directed to connect their first social account since this is critical to the app’s use.
Once connected, Sked Social uses an automated checklist to power the onboarding process.
The checklist contains a progress bar and clicking each list item transports the user to the relevant action page with information to guide them.
Finally, upon completing all list items, Sked Social displays a congratulatory message to encourage and motivate the user.
To find out the results of this automation, read the full case study here.
2. Talana uses a combination of different automation workflows
Talana originally provided one-on-one training to users, but soon found that this was not scalable for a fast-growing customer base. So, they automated the customer onboarding process instead.
Some automation elements they included were:
- Checklists and dynamic walkthroughs to guide the onboarding experience.
- In-app communication tools like banners, modals, and tooltips for automated engagement.
- An in-app resource center to give users easy access to helpful resources.
How did these implementations help them? Click here to read more.
3. GrowthMentor achieved automation with personalized segmentation
Last, but not least, is GrowthMentor’s example. The product was designed to connect two sets of users: growth experts (mentors) and business owners (mentees).
Like Talana, they noticed they spent so much time answering onboarding-related questions. So, they switched their approach, taking advantage of automated personalization to improve the process.
First, this meant automatically separating mentors from mentees after signup.
Then, they created checklists to help mentors understand how the product worked and set up their accounts.
For mentees, they focused instead on introducing them to the product and guiding them to book their first session.
The result? Their support tickets decreased from 25-30/day to 1-2/day as mentors understood the platform better. Similarly, 50% more mentees booked a session with a mentor.
You can read more about it here.
How Userpilot can help you set up customer onboarding automation
A common theme for all three examples above was Userpilot, which they all used for their customer onboarding automation.
Userpilot is an easy-to-use no-code product growth tool. It can be used to drive feature adoption, collect user feedback, and streamline the onboarding process. Some key features include:
- Checklists: Userpilot’s checklist creator enables you to customize your list with specific tasks and style icons. You can also link distinct flows or actions to a list item.
- Resource Center: Userpilot lets you create a resource center and personalize it for specific customers or use cases.
- Automated flows + survey: Userpilot’s flow builder features UI patterns like modals, tooltips, slideouts, etc. The survey builder, meanwhile, features various customizable templates for CES, CSAT, and NPS surveys.
- Segmentation: Userpilot lets you segment users based on their demographics, NPS scores, product usage data, and more. You can then trigger flows or surveys based on these segments.
With Userpilot, the complexities of creating an automated customer onboarding process are much lighter. The user-friendly interface and extensive customization options make it easy to design efficient onboarding flows.
Need more info? Book a demo today and our team of experts will get in touch to demonstrate how Userpilot can help you automate your onboarding processes.
FAQs
What is onboarding automation?
Customer onboarding automation uses technology to streamline and improve the way customers are welcomed into your product.
How to automate the user onboarding process?
Start by defining your goals. Then, map the existing onboarding journey and identify potential areas for automation. Next, choose the onboarding software for your needs and create automated workflows with it. Finally, test your flows with a pilot group before a public release.
What is customer onboarding software?
An onboarding software is one that helps businesses to automate the onboarding process. It should support personalized checklists, in-app tutorials, welcome screen management, and more.
What is customer service automation?
Customer service automation involves using technology to automate various aspects of customer service. It covers things like self-service provisions, chatbots, and automatic routing of customer inquiries to appropriate agents.
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