PDF Summary:Onboarding Matters, by Donna Weber

Most businesses lose customers during onboarding because they invest heavily in sales and marketing but fail to guide new customers to success. In Onboarding Matters, Donna Weber presents a framework for turning customer onboarding into a strategic advantage. She explains how poor onboarding leads to customer churn and lost revenue, while effective onboarding increases satisfaction, retention, and profits.

Weber introduces her six-stage Orchestrated Onboarding Framework, which aligns internal teams and guides customers from purchase through implementation and beyond. You'll learn how to reduce buyer's remorse, accelerate time to first value, manage change across customer organizations, and measure onboarding effectiveness. Weber also covers how to scale onboarding programs across departments and use metrics to demonstrate ROI to leadership—helping you transform onboarding from a reactive process into a proactive strategy for customer success.

(continued)... Weber points out that gaining a new customer can be as much as nine times as costly as retaining a current one. Profits from a new customer might not appear until they've renewed once, twice, or even three times. If someone leaves as a client within the initial year, it’s a loss for everyone. However, when clients renew, the profits continue to increase. Re-enrollments accumulate, gradually generating substantial earnings.

Active Onboarding Reduces Client Turnover and Increases Profits

Research supports Weber’s claim that active onboarding reduces client turnover and increases profits. Companies that are “loyalty leaders” in their industries—meaning they have the highest customer retention rates—grow revenues 2.5 times faster than their competitors. These companies also have a 25% higher profit margin than their competitors. This is because they spend less on acquiring new customers and more on retaining existing ones. They also invest more in their employees, which leads to better customer service and higher employee satisfaction. This creates a positive feedback loop where happy employees provide better service, which leads to happier customers who are more likely to stay with the company.

Financial Risks of Reactive/Poor Onboarding

Weber warns that inadequate onboarding results in losing customers, which costs businesses a lot. In the US, businesses spend more than $136 billion each year. The majority of customer attrition stems from inadequate onboarding and service. Many customers end up departing in the first year, having failed to derive value from your product initially.

(Shortform note: While Weber’s claim that inadequate onboarding is the primary cause of customer attrition is compelling, it’s not entirely accurate. The sources she cites for the $136 billion loss and the primary drivers of customer attrition don’t specifically attribute these losses to inadequate onboarding. Instead, they point to a range of factors, including product fit, pricing, and service quality. In Customer Experience 3.0, John A. Goodman emphasizes that customer attrition is almost never the result of a single touchpoint.)

The Orchestrated Onboarding Framework: Stages & Implementation

Next, we'll explain the six steps of the framework for Orchestrated Onboarding and provide tips for implementing it.

The Six Stages of Orchestrated Onboarding

Overview of the Six Steps

Weber's Orchestrated Onboarding Framework consists of six phases: Embark, Transition, Initiate, Adopt, Assess, and Grow. The Embark stage kicks off while buyers are in the sales process, helping them understand what's in store. The Handoff phase involves building a sense of reliability and the overarching objectives and results. The Kickoff phase covers the specifics of implementing and adopting the system. The Adopt phase encompasses implementation steps like tailoring, merging, and introducing your product or platform.

Weber notes that, apart from the Expand stage, the Adopt phase is the lengthiest of the Orchestrated Onboarding framework. It can extend for weeks or potentially months.

Operationalizing the Customer Journey

In The Customer Success Professional’s Handbook, Ashvin Vaidyanathan and Ruben Rabago recommend that you operationalize the customer journey by defining a standard set of lifecycle stages, specifying clear, observable exit criteria for each stage, and tracking every account’s movement through those stages based on customer outcomes achieved rather than internal tasks completed. To apply this to Weber’s framework, create a simple tracker with the six phases as column headings. For each new customer, only move them to the next column once you’ve defined and achieved one concrete, observable outcome for the current phase. This ensures you’re focused on delivering value at each step, not just checking off internal tasks.

Detailed Stage Breakdown

Weber describes the Handoff phase as the transition between the sales group and those focused on customer success. It's an alignment stage that prepares internal teams for onboarding and customer teams to implement and use your product. The Handoff phase is important for fostering relationships and cultivating trust. It establishes a collaborative relationship with well-defined objectives and a plan for communication, tackles any risks and worries, and specifies how both parties are accountable. The internal handoff sets up your teams to manage the client relationship in the future.

(Shortform note: To ensure the Handoff phase is effective, make it a policy that no new customer can enter the onboarding phase until a short internal Handoff meeting has taken place. This meeting should be documented in a standard template in your CRM system. This ensures that all teams are aligned on the customer's needs, expectations, and potential challenges before onboarding begins. By making this meeting a mandatory step, you create a clear accountability structure and prevent customers from being handed off without proper preparation.)

The client transition is advantageous for both customer and internal teams. It guarantees the sales group is committed to the customer's success by integrating the CSM and post-sales teams into the relationship. This expands the existing trust in the account to include the new teams, helping new customers silence any hidden regrets about buying, along with worries and uncertainties, so they can be at ease and feel confident in their capable care.

(Shortform note: If the client transition is poorly executed, it can have the opposite effect of what’s intended. If the transition introduces more handoffs, it can increase the customer’s effort and decrease the trust in the account. To avoid this, make sure there’s a single person who owns the customer relationship and is responsible for the customer’s success.)

Next is the Kickoff stage, which offers a well-defined framework for onboarding and implementation. It encompasses objectives, expected results, easy early victories, and holding customers accountable. The Kickoff phase is critical because it prevents customers from feeling lost, limits too many support tickets, and avoids buyer’s remorse. It moves attention from strategic big-picture thinking to the tactical details of starting and carrying out implementation. It establishes a framework for advancing past the stages of adoption, review, expansion, and beyond. It addresses implementing the success plan, clarifies customer involvement with your teams, and emphasizes the role your customers play in achieving their own success.

(Shortform note: In organizational psychology, the concept of temporal landmarks can help explain the importance of the Kickoff stage. Temporal landmarks are significant moments that mark the beginning of a new period, such as the start of a project or a new phase in a process. These landmarks create a psychological separation between past and future, making it easier for individuals to adopt new behaviors and mindsets. The Kickoff stage serves as a temporal landmark, signaling a clear transition from the initial stages of onboarding to the implementation phase. By establishing this distinct moment, organizations can help customers mentally prepare for the next steps, increasing their receptiveness to new processes and reducing resistance to change.)

The Kickoff phase usually includes plans for executing and adopting the project, which can be provided via onboarding software, project management applications, or basic spreadsheets. It lays out the implementation stages, the duties of each role, and necessary details and schedules. The services and implementation teams probably develop these plans, so it's important to involve them in the Kickoff stage when necessary. Then share the plan with customers, so they know how their journey begins, with whom they are to associate and when, and the direction in which they’re headed.

Choosing the Right Tool for the Kickoff Phase

When choosing between onboarding software, project management applications, or basic spreadsheets, consider which tool best integrates with your existing customer system of record. This ensures that the Kickoff plan always reflects live account data, keeping everyone aligned and informed. Onboarding software often offers the most seamless integration, but project management tools can be effective if they sync well with your CRM. Basic spreadsheets may suffice for smaller teams or simpler projects, but they require manual updates and can quickly become outdated.

Implementing & Supporting Orchestrated Onboarding

Weber recommends using visuals to communicate the onboarding process and progress. She explains that people process visuals 60,000 times more quickly than text, helping customers understand and remember information better. They also alleviate stress and uncertainty by showing customers how far along they are.

To achieve this, make straightforward visualizations that depict the onboarding journey and the connections necessary for launching your product. Use visuals to convey critical details, including key points, outcomes, and significant moments in the process.

The Myth of “60,000 Times Faster”

The claim that people process visuals 60,000 times more quickly than text is a myth. This statistic has been widely circulated in marketing and business circles, but there is no scientific evidence to support it. The origin of this figure is unclear, and experts in cognitive psychology and neuroscience have debunked it as an exaggeration. While visuals can enhance learning and communication, the relationship between visual and verbal processing is far more complex than this oversimplified statistic suggests. For a more nuanced understanding of how visuals impact learning, consult E-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth C. Clark and Richard E. Mayer.

Weber also advises customizing the Orchestrated Onboarding structure to fit your brand and processes. The stage names and processes included should make sense to both customers and your internal teams.

To accomplish this, outline the objectives and aims for each phase of onboarding. Employ a mind mapping tool to capture the details, including roles, duties, prompts, scheduling, materials, gatherings, and performance indicators. Then, adapt the framework to align with your brand and internal workflows.

(Shortform note: To ensure your onboarding stage names and processes make sense to customers, try a quick card-sorting exercise with a few real customers. Write each stage name and a brief description on separate cards. Ask them to group the cards in a way that makes sense to them and suggest alternative names if they wish. This simple exercise, recommended in Card Sorting by Donna Spencer, can reveal how customers naturally think about your onboarding process and what terminology resonates with them.)

Next, we'll discuss how to measure how effective your onboarding is. Then we'll discuss how to expand and operationalize Orchestrated Onboarding.

Measuring Onboarding Effectiveness

Weber suggests using metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of onboarding programs. These are measurements that show how onboarding programs affect results, and there are two types: outcomes that can be assessed after a period of time and outcomes that are immediately observable. Lagging metrics are measurements that are available after a period of time, such as the rate of renewal, overall retention, and customer LTV. Leading indicators are metrics you can see right away, like onboarding milestones reached, payment habits, logged support tickets, product use, customer satisfaction, and service utilization. Metrics are important because they help you show how onboarding programs benefit your company and customers. They also assist in improving conversations with leadership and showing how your efforts affect customer success. Metrics can show how onboarding programs cut churn, lower internal support costs, accelerate time to first value, and boost customer net retention.

(Shortform note: While metrics are important for measuring the effectiveness of onboarding programs, they can also have unintended consequences. For example, if you focus too much on leading indicators like onboarding milestones reached, teams may prioritize hitting those milestones over providing a great customer experience. This can lead to a situation where customers are technically "onboarded" but still don't fully understand how to use the product or service. Similarly, if you focus too much on lagging indicators like customer LTV, you may miss important early warning signs that customers are struggling. It's important to use metrics as a tool to guide your onboarding programs, but not to let them become the sole focus.)

To evaluate how onboarding programs perform, begin by collecting the key concerns of executives and the board. Identify a single measurement that propels your business, such as yearly contract value, yearly recurring revenue, how the product is used, or the lifetime value. Next, examine how your actions influence that main metric. Use predictive metrics like engagement data, NPS, customer health scores, and product utilization to demonstrate a link between those measurements and your services. To demonstrate your impact, document the company's status prior to introducing initiatives like onboarding and support programs. If no baseline exists, establish one.

(Shortform note: To choose between yearly contract value, yearly recurring revenue, product usage, and lifetime value, consider which metric most directly measures the bottleneck to your company’s growth. For example, if you’re struggling to get customers to use your product, product usage is the best metric to focus on. If you’re struggling to get customers to renew their contracts, yearly recurring revenue is the best metric to focus on. If you’re struggling to get customers to upgrade their contracts, yearly contract value is the best metric to focus on. If you’re struggling to get customers to stay with you for a long time, lifetime value is the best metric to focus on.)

Ask the teams that interact with customers how much time onboarding new clients generally requires, the effort needed, and the typical issues that need resolution during onboarding. Determine the expenses within the company to bring each new account on board. Listen to customers and inquire about their satisfaction with the onboarding experience. Ask them how many weekly hours they saved due to the onboarding program, whether it enhanced their product experience, whether the product helped them increase or retain income, and what the value of the average user's time is on an hourly or daily basis. Determine the number of hours saved and the user count.

(Shortform note: To get a more accurate picture of the time and effort required to onboard new clients, consider observing a small sample of users as they go through the onboarding process. This will allow you to measure the time spent on each step and identify any bottlenecks or areas for improvement. To determine the value of the average user's time, consult with your HR department or use publicly available salary data to estimate the hourly or daily rate for the roles involved in onboarding. By combining these two data points, you can calculate the total cost of onboarding and identify opportunities to streamline the process.)

To demonstrate ROI, multiply the amount of time by the average hourly rate. In addition to lowered support costs and greater customer ROI, factor in your organization's existing churn rates, average deal size, upsell and renewal rates as baseline metrics. Find out the current Net Promoter Score or how satisfied customers are. After collecting baseline metrics, take an initial data snapshot, and track the trends every quarter as you roll out your programs. Monitor the work required to bring new customers onboard and support them. Log the exact tasks your team does to onboard customers. Measure how your team spends their time. Assess the duration of activities involving customers and the number of interactions required for them to achieve rapid victories, key stages, and outcomes. This lets you assess which initiatives are effective and where your team should focus their efforts.

Treat Every Initiative as an Experiment

In Lean Analytics, Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz explain that to really understand the impact of a change, you need to treat it as an experiment. This means defining a clear hypothesis about how a specific initiative will move a specific metric, splitting comparable users into test and control groups, exposing only the test group to the change, and then using the performance gap between the groups as evidence of the incremental value created by that initiative. This approach applies directly to Weber’s advice. By logging the time spent on onboarding and support, you’re essentially creating a dataset that can be used to compare the performance of customers who receive enhanced onboarding with those who don’t. The difference in outcomes—whether it’s reduced support costs, increased customer ROI, or improved satisfaction scores—represents the incremental return generated by the onboarding work.

Scaling & Operationalizing Orchestrated Onboarding

Weber states that growing onboarding necessitates interdepartmental cooperation and an integrated technology framework. Scaling occurs when a business's revenue growth surpasses the rise in expenses. However, frequently companies struggle to scale as customer success managers attempt to guide every new client through onboarding and empowerment.

Teaching customers is the answer for scaling success and onboarding through a one-to-many approach, featuring repeatable, role-based, and interactive options. When everyone can create content, complex and cluttered resources can be developed that can impede customer learning.

To scale effectively, bring together a council from different departments to curate and oversee content. Additionally, manage your tech ecosystem to prevent redundancies and additional costs.

Potential Bottlenecks in Scaling Onboarding

While teaching customers is a great way to scale onboarding, there are some risks to consider. For example, a council from different departments can become a political bottleneck, slowing down the process of updating materials. Different departments may have conflicting priorities or visions for the content, leading to delays and compromises that dilute the effectiveness of the materials. To mitigate this, establish clear decision-making protocols and designate a final authority for content approval. Additionally, set regular review cycles to ensure materials stay current without getting bogged down in endless revisions.