Customer onboarding plays a pivotal role in setting up an organization to drive customer adoption with their customers that will result in additional expansion opportunities and ultimately lead to a renewal. Onboarding has a domino effect, whether done poorly or executed well, and it can have positive or negative consequences which may, or may not, result in expansion and renewal.

The (LAER) engagement model framework by TSIA gives a tried-and-true formula for delivering a positive customer experience. The (LAER) stands for Land, Adopt, Expand, Renew. There are areas where internal departments overlap the customer’s onboarding journey that can have positive or negative results depending on how an organization engages the customer. Mistakes are made and best practices are established, but at what cost to the organization?

Some organizations lose focus and view customer onboarding as only the first step in the customer experience. They forget how it plays a massive part in laying out the foundation for additional revenue opportunities. The following information will cover three key areas where customer onboarding can lay the foundations for securing adoption and future expansion opportunities as well as renewal.

Key Areas of Customer Onboarding

#1. Designing Adoption

The beginning of customer onboarding must always start with the entire customer and technology supplier journey in mind. Ask yourself, “Is the adoption plan created to reflect a positive customer experience that results in strong customer buy-in and stickiness to your products or solutions?” The onboarding plan must identify what customer adoption looks like and provide a predictive metric to support a timeline on when customers are developing adoption-like characteristics.

#2. Creating Expansion Opportunities

Expansion opportunities are earned not given. It is better to get customer adoption correct the first time at bat than risk a churned account on the last pitch. If the customer experienced a botched or difficult onboarding experience, the recovery time to regain their trust and respect for future expansion opportunities has been exacerbated.

Just as onboarding adoption plans must be created with the end (renewals) in mind, onboarding plans must also identify areas for expansion opportunities. This can be the result of linking the customer’s strategic objectives back to the products or solution. Or, it can be done by earning the customer’s trust and respect during the onboarding cycle and using predictive analytics. Onboarding done well earns the right to ask for introductions into other parts of the business as well as the right to ask for more business opportunities.

#3. Paving the Way for Renewal

Onboarding plans must be designed with a renewal in mind. In the TSIA Webinar, “What Every Customer Success Team Needs to Know About Renewal and Expansion,” our team examines how to leverage the Customer Success Manager (CSM) to help set up the organization for success. The customer’s journey should include a value validation which will be executed post-go-live. The value validation will review the onboarding plan and validate if the value the customer perceived was received. Both the customer and your organization should have previously agreed upon the metrics to be used to measure their success.

During the value validation, lessons learned will be established but more importantly, both sides must agree on the success, or lack thereof, of the execution of the onboarding plan against the customer’s expectations. If the customer grades the company well, then that organization is positioned for a renewal. If the customer presents concerns or issues, then there is still work to be done to meet those expectations with the hope of satisfaction and renewal.

3 Ways to Improve Customer Onboarding

There are a plethora of ways to improve customer onboarding ranging from engagement, metrics, reporting, sponsorship, and relationships. However, three key onboarding best practices are significant in driving a successful customer onboarding experience.

#1. Alignment to Corporate Strategic Objectives

Before even starting the onboarding process, an organization must document how their product or solution aligns with the customer’s strategic objectives. Successful customer onboarding aligns the customer’s requirements against their strategic corporate objectives. This small but monumental step can be used time and time again to validate the solution by linking it to strategic objectives.

Once this link has been identified, ensure that the customer validates the value your product or solution brings to support the strategic objective(s). Then, ensure that the executives who have the responsibility to execute against the strategic objectives are aware of how your company’s product or solution will support those objectives.

#2. Building the Right Team

Building an onboarding playbook with the wrong team members can have negative outcomes for both sides. There are many verticals of business that cross many industries. Not everyone can understand the intricacies across the vast number of businesses today. Just because you have a solid CSM that has onboarded ten Software-as-a-Solution (SaaS) companies well, does not mean that the same CSM will understand how to successfully onboard a government entity or a supply chain management company with a heavy focus on retail and logistics.

Successful onboarding means knowing the talents and limitations of your employees and the personalities associated with the customer. Each side must do their part to build the right team. However, the best any company can do to influence the composition of the customer team is to give them guidelines on the skills and experience necessary to form a successful team.

The rest of the team building belongs to your organization. Great companies will examine their employees' skills that best align with the new customer business. Success cannot be guaranteed by simply selecting the employees who are next in the queue to take the next onboarding.

#3. Repeatable Processes

The action and effort to develop continuous process improvements require a constant critical eye for internal onboarding processes. Great companies will conduct a post mortem after an event like onboarding to identify areas for improvement. This action forces everyone to use critical thinking to evaluate the information received to match it to the corresponding process and procedure improvement.

TSIA encourages our members to never make the false assumption that your processes and procedures are solid. Why? Business practices are ever-changing and by taking the time to conduct a “lessons-learned” meeting, it will force your organization to improve and change with the ever-changing business climate. Companies that are striving for excellence and the opportunity to ask for additional business and the renewal will invest in continuous process improvement.

These are just a few examples of ways to improve your company’s onboarding operations. Do you want to learn more? Come to TSIA Interact and learn from top Customer Success leaders on ways to improve your customer onboarding operations.