Online Customer Onboarding
How do you onboard twice the number of new customers without increasing employee numbers?
New customers need an introduction to your product.
And right now, you’re doing that with one-on-one calls. That’s, as you can imagine, not scalable. It doesn’t make sense to throw headcount at that problem because that’s expensive. But how can you get new customers up and running as quickly as possible?
What if your product was complemented by self-onboarding materials?
Customers would be able to onboard themselves and problem solved! But wait a minute, you already doing that. You ship your product with detailed documentation. So why do customers still call for help when starting up? The answer lies in the application.
Imagine you buy a fancy cooker that makes cooking tasty stews a breeze.
The accompanying instructions tell you how to operate the cooker. But they lack any direction on making a stew. And the whole reason for you buying the cooker was to make that delicious stew. A cooker is just a tool that simplifies making these meals. Similarly, self-onboarding materials should focus on product application.
Introducing BridgeTheGap approach
BridgeTheGap self-onboarding is a system that helps customers become operational with your product quickly and without a million people helping them. With the self-onboarding solution doing the work, your customer base growth will not be limited by the size of your support team.
BridgeTheGap is a system built on 3 learning design steps of improving human performance.
Step 1: Identify desired performance
Oftentimes customers fail to adopt a new product because they focus on learning product features instead of practical product applications. That’s why the first step looks at the client’s desired outcome with your product. Using the cooking analogy, we define what “dishes” your customers intend to make by using your product. By starting with the outcome, we only focus on the “recipes” applicable to the customer’s goals. And avoid the temptation of covering every feature your product has.
Step 2: Identify current performance
One of the trickiest parts of creating a training program is to accommodate various knowledge levels. It is like teaching a split class of 3rd and 7th graders. Make it too easy and half the students are bored. Make it more advanced and you lose the other half. For that reason, the next principle looks at your customers’ current level of ability. It helps define the starting point (or points) for self-onboarding. And connect the content to what your customers already know.
Step 3: Determine the performance gap
Now we know the starting and destination points, but which road will take us there? We create the road by looking at the starting and the destination points to determine the performance gap. The performance gap reveals missing skills and knowledge that customers need to become operational with your product. Then we design self-onboarding training to address this gap.
How can self-onboarding help my business?
Product introduction without the overhead costs
When your customer base is growing quarter over quarter, how do you match the increasing demand for basic product training? After all, if you do that with sheer people, the support team would be enormous. The online onboarding solution is fully scalable. Even with huge company growth, you will still be able to provide the same high-quality experience to all of your customers.
Transforming Your Product Into a Must-Have Tool
When they start using your product, new customers may think they know what they’re doing. But they often make mistakes and get stuck. Instead of helping them with their job, your product turns into an obstacle. Customers grow frustrated, open up support cases, or call your sales. Self-onboarding steers them through a very guided process of what they should do when they’re new. That means customers start to see your product as an indispensable tool for their work.
A free platform for promoting your paid services
Advertising your products or services is a recurring expense. Yet, the information often falls on deaf ears because clients are unaware of the problems they are having. Product training materials help educate your customers about problems without the pressure to buy anything. Once problem-aware, customers become curious about the solutions. That’s when product training can point customers to your solutions: be it implementation services, paid training, or other products. And do that while keeping your advertising budget untouched.
Improvements to your product usability
Every product can be made better. With the myriads of possible improvements, how can you make sure you implement the most important ones? Onboarding helps uncover areas where customers get stuck when using your product. Collect this feedback and you will have new angles on how to make your product more user-friendly.
Shortening the buying cycle
When prospective customers evaluate your product, they want proof that your product is right for them. And while you provide them with information materials, demonstrations, and trials, this proof-of-concept stage can still drag on for months. A quicker way to prove your product value to customers is to let them play an active part during the evaluation stage. Let them use your product and get results that are meaningful for them. And self-onboarding materials can become the foundation for your proof-of-concept guide. A guide that helps your prospects to quickly see your product value and how well it works.
Can I see snippets of other onboarding training?
“Creating online onboarding Academy with Oleg reduced the average number of calls we receive per newly onboarded customer. So we can focus our time with each new customer on more advanced clinical uses of the system.”
Robert Orlando,
Implementation Lead
“Oleg’s expertise in learning design and rapid course development along with his ability to decipher technical training content and convert into meaningful interactions allowed us to work towards a solution that was customized to our company’s business needs, rather than something more generic or off-the-shelf.”
Tanzin Bhuiyan,
Manager, Learning
“Technical training at Teradici covers all phases from planning, deployment, management and troubleshooting for PCoIP technology. Oleg has a great combination of an Education Degree and years of experience working in technical support. This background allows Oleg to cover different learning modes to convey technical concepts effectively.”
Stuart Robinson,
Director of Global Support Services
What’s unique about this approach?
Most training content still requires customer hand-holding. And the reason for it is that most training content is built like product documentation. Explaining one product feature after another. This is far from how people get started using a new product.
I build online onboarding that allows customers to start using your product right away. The method is based on my extensive experience working in customer service. New customers rarely have time to leisurely ask about product features. Instead, they anxiously want to know how your product can help them do specific jobs. So instead of giving customers another product manual, I take users’ perspective of looking at your product as a solution tool. And build customers’ skills with your product. Layer after layer.