Customer onboarding is the process of guiding new customers get set up and running to help them achieve results and see the value of your service as soon as possible.

A lot of businesses put so much focus on acquiring new customers but fall short on delivering a great onboarding experience after purchase. In this blog post, we provide you with tips on how you can improve your onboarding to help your customers experience their first success with your service.

• Reduce customer churn rate and increase revenue - If customers are not happy with their initial experience, it's likely they will cancel. Not only do you lose the revenue from the sale but also the cost of acquiring that customer, and the opportunity cost of being able to offer additional products and services.
• Save time and money - converting new customers is costly, it's easier and cheaper to nurture existing customers than acquire new ones.
• Build great customer relationships - a great start sets the tone of the customer relationship, helps build customer loyalty and turn customers into brand ambassadors.
• Reduce customer tickets- Customers who are onboarded successfully are least likely to have issues or questions later on

1) It starts with knowing your customers. Knowing your customers and the goals they aim to achieve with your service can guide you in designing your onboarding map. For example, they may want to get their website up as fast as possible, or set up email accounts, or making their first online sale - making a list of your customer's goals and prioritising them can serve as a map in designing your onboarding workflow.

2) Leverage your welcome email. The first email after the purchase is probably the most important email you send to customers. At this stage, they are excited and have your undivided attention hence welcome emails tend to have higher open rates.
Make sure you're making the most out of your welcome email by pointing to contents to help new customers get set up like links to your knowledgebase, video tutorials or customer support page.

3) Keep it Simple, Don't Overwhelm. Design your onboarding process with simplicity in mind. Focus on the most important steps that your customers need to gain 'quick wins'. Avoid overwhelming by promoting additional products or extra features that are not necessary at this stage. Additionally, write instructions in a language that even your non-technical users can understand.

4) Aim to deliver that ''Aha moment'' as soon as possible. This is the moment when customers realise that your solution is exactly what they need. Whether it's seeing their website live or making their online sale - tailor your onboarding so that this moment happens early on.

5) Use different channels and format for your onboarding contents - Offer a variety of format like step-by-step guides, downloadable PDFs and video tutorials. WHMCS provides you with tools like knowledgebase and email automation to help you create and automate your full onboarding workflow.

6) Provide customer support - make sure it is easy for your customers to reach you. Your support contact details should be accessible on your website or you can also use tools like LiveChat and provide support to clients in real time.

7) Make onboarding personal - adding a human touch to your onboarding helps build rapport with your customers. It can be as simple as sending a personalised email on the 3rd day to check how they are progressing or scheduling a check-in call to answer any questions they may have.

Designing an effective onboarding process to help your customers derive value out of your services as soon as possible is important. I hope the tips above will help you deliver that ''Aha moments'' sooner than later and turn new customers to brand advocates.