What is a Customer Onboarding Specialist? Responsibilities, Salaries, and More
Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the field, understanding the nuances of customer onboarding specialists is essential for success.
In this guide, we’ll delve into the core responsibilities, salary insights, essential skills, and more, providing you with the knowledge and tools you need to excel as a customer onboarding specialist.
TL;DR
- A customer onboarding specialist helps onboard customers by conducting product tours, answering their questions, and helping them achieve their goals with the product.
- Immediately after a customer signs up for a product, the customer onboarding specialist steps in to onboard them. The onboarding process includes conducting product tours, explaining product features to the customer, answering their questions, and ensuring the customer can achieve the goal for which they bought the product.
- According to Glassdoor, the estimated total pay for a customer onboarding specialist in the United States is $71,285 per year, with an average salary of $55,673 per year. However, an individual’s salary may vary due to several factors, such as years of experience, geographical location, and industry.
- The customer onboarding specialist role is an interesting one you will find enjoyable if you like communicating with people and helping them achieve their goals. You can start with an entry-level role, such as a customer service representative, and from there, move up the career ladder. Here is what a typical career path for a customer onboarding specialist looks like:
- Customer Service Representative: The customer service representative role is an entry-level role in the career path. In this role, you interface with customers, listen to customer complaints, and help resolve them.
- Customer Onboarding Specialist: As a customer onboarding specialist, you are more involved with your customers. Here, you are assigned to specific customer accounts and ensure the success of that customer with your product. Your function ranges from welcoming and onboarding them to facilitating product adoption.
- Senior Customer Onboarding Specialist: This is a more senior role in customer onboarding. In this role, you have more level of experience and are assigned to bigger customer accounts.
- Customer Onboarding Manager: In this role, you will manage a team of customer onboarding specialists and ensure the overall success of customers.
- Director of Customer Onboarding: The director of customer onboarding manages the onboarding department, develops customer onboarding strategies, and facilitates customer retention.
- Looking into tools for customer onboarding specialists? Userpilot is an all-in-one product platform with engagement features and powerful analytics capabilities. Book a demo to see it in action!
How Product Management uses Userpilot
Product Management uses Userpilot to:
What is a customer onboarding specialist?
A customer onboarding specialist helps onboard customers by conducting product tours, answering their questions, and helping them achieve their goals with the product.
The customer onboarding specialist role is vital in a SaaS company because it plays a huge part in customer retention. They train customers on how to use the product, answer questions, resolve issues, and help with user activation.
What does a customer onboarding specialist do?
Immediately after a customer signs up for a product, the customer onboarding specialist steps in to onboard them. The onboarding process includes conducting product tours, explaining product features to the customer, answering their questions, and ensuring the customer can achieve the goal for which they bought the product.
Customer onboarding specialist’s main responsibilities
The customer onboarding specialist role is a role that interfaces with customers and is important in ensuring customer success. They relate with customers, listen to them, and help them accomplish their goals. Some of the main responsibilities and duties of a customer onboarding specialist are:
- Learning and becoming an expert on the product.
- Welcoming the customer via onboarding emails and calls.
- Acting as the primary contact for the customer and providing support for any issues related to the product.
- Training the customer on how to make use of the tool, especially SaaS tools that require a bit of technical knowledge.
- Answering the customer’s questions and addressing any problems that arise.
- Checking in on the customer regularly, even after a successful onboarding process.
- Sharing customer feedback and insights with the other teams such as marketing and sales.
- Ensuring continuous customer satisfaction.
Customer onboarding specialist salary
According to Glassdoor, the estimated total pay for a customer onboarding specialist in the United States is $71,285 per year, with an average salary of $55,673 per year. However, an individual’s salary may vary due to several factors, such as years of experience, geographical location, and industry.
Your years of experience are a major determinant of your salary as a customer onboarding specialist. If you are just starting in an entry-level role, you do not expect to receive the same amount as someone will over 10 years of experience in the role. Here is a breakdown of a customer onboarding specialist’s salary based on the level of experience:
- 0-1 year: $55K – $82K/year
- 1-3 years: $58K – $90K/year
- 4- 6 years: $60K – $96K/year
- 7-9 years: $62K – $102K/year
- 10-14 years: $64K – $111K/year
- 15+ years: $69K – $125K/year
Another crucial determinant of your salary is your industry. According to Glassdoor, the top 2 paying sectors for customer onboarding specialists and their median salaries are:
- Education: $67,561/year
- Information technology: $60,774/year
Your geographical location is another factor that affects your salary. Here is a breakdown of the customer onboarding specialist salary in some of the biggest cities in the United States.
- San Francisco: $72,470/year
- New York: $71,040/year
- Boston: $69,484/year
- Washington DC: $64,215/year
- Chicago: $55,947/year
Customer onboarding specialist career path
The customer onboarding specialist role is an interesting one you will find enjoyable if you like communicating with people and helping them achieve their goals. You can start with an entry-level role, such as a customer service representative, and from there, move up the career ladder. Here is what a typical career path for a customer onboarding specialist looks like:
- Customer Service Representative: The customer service representative role is an entry-level role in the career path. In this role, you interface with customers, listen to customer complaints, and help resolve them.
- Customer Onboarding Specialist: As a customer onboarding specialist, you are more involved with your customers. Here, you are assigned to specific customer accounts and ensure the success of that customer with your product. Your function ranges from welcoming and onboarding them to facilitating product adoption.
- Senior Customer Onboarding Specialist: This is a more senior role in customer onboarding. In this role, you have more level of experience and are assigned to bigger customer accounts.
- Customer Onboarding Manager: In this role, you will manage a team of customer onboarding specialists and ensure the overall success of customers.
- Director of Customer Onboarding: The director of customer onboarding manages the onboarding department, develops customer onboarding strategies, and facilitates customer retention.
Best practices for being a great customer onboarding specialist
- Get good customer onboarding tools: Getting good customer onboarding tools will make your customer onboarding processes smooth and efficient even when you are working with several accounts at the same time. An example of such a tool is Userpilot.
- Active Listening: One of the communication skills that helps make your onboarding career is to listen actively to your customers, empathizing with them, and solving their problems.
- Be Genuine: A great onboarding specialist genuinely cares about their customers and helps them achieve their goals.
- Communicate: Great onboarding specialists continue to communicate with customers, even after they have been successfully onboarded. They keep checking in, assessing customer needs, and offering solutions.
- Build a Review System: Great customer onboarding specialists set up review systems where they review their customer onboarding experience and onboarding process. They keep making adjustments that facilitate customer retention.
Customer onboarding specialist FAQs
- What is the role of a customer onboarding specialist?
A customer onboarding specialist helps the customer set up their accounts, organize product tours, and set up the customer for success with the product.
- What skills do you need for customer onboarding?
The skills you need for customer onboarding are good communication skills, problem-solving skills, and empathy.
- Who manages customer onboarding?
The customer onboarding manager manages customer onboarding; however, the customer onboarding team is a team under the customer success team. All of them work together to ensure customer success.
- What is the purpose of customer onboarding?
The purpose of customer onboarding is to ensure the customers can achieve their goals and are retained.
Conclusion
We hope this guide has provided you with valuable insights into the roles, responsibilities, and rewards associated with this role.
Looking into tools for customer onboarding specialists? Userpilot is an all-in-one product platform with engagement features and powerful analytics capabilities. Book a demo to see it in action!
How Product Management uses Userpilot
Product Management uses Userpilot to:
