Client Onboarding Checklist: Steps, Templates & Best Practices
Successful businesses thrive on an ever-growing base of customers. But the reality is that acquiring new customers is as crucial as retaining and keeping them happy. According to the book Marketing Metrics, the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% and just about 5-20% for a new customer.
To keep your customers happy and help them achieve their desired outcomes with your product, you need an effective customer success strategy. When you help your customer win, you win as well. Customers won’t just buy your products; they'll become loyal advocates for your brand and keep coming back for more.
Remember, customer success means so much more than offering support or ensuring clients have fulfilled their contracts. It's a virtuous cycle from building customer-centric products to optimizing your solutions to offer strategic enablement through customer success. By reducing the revenue losses caused by churn, your company can grow faster.
Not sure where to start? This article will take a deep dive into everything you need about customer success. We'll explore the different strategies and tools to help you successfully incorporate customer success into your business process.
So, let’s get down to it!
*Disclaimer: The comparisons and competitor ratings presented in this article are based on features available as of August 23,2024. We conduct thorough research and draw on both first-hand experience and reputable sources to provide reliable insights. However, as tools and technologies evolve, we recommend readers verify details and consider additional research to ensure the information meets their specific needs.
Customer success is a strategy to ensure customers achieve their desired outcomes and maximize the value they receive from your brand.
This approach goes beyond the traditional customer support model. Each interaction isn’t just about reacting to customer queries. Rather, the focus is on building deeper relationships and meaningful customer engagement through enhanced strategic customer enablement and product/service optimization.
Getting it right with customer success means your team needs to:
What’s in it for your brand? It elevates customer satisfaction and retention, leading to increased revenue and reduced churn.
The main difference between customer success and customer experience lies in their scope.
Customer Experience (CX) focuses more on improving how users feel about your brand across multiple touchpoints. To gauge user experience, CX teams gather insights from:
Every interaction across the entire journey affects their perception. That makes CX a collective responsibility that involves every employee and department in the company.
CX also tends to have involvement with product, customer services, marketing and sales. They all work together, and CX is the strategy that ensures that customers get what they expect.
Customer Success teams are focused on the outcome of the customer journey. They zoom in on specific customer needs and goals and ensure they are achieved.
Customer Success teams can provide insights to help the company improve the user experience.
However, they aren’t always responsible for how these insights are used or what happens at different touchpoints.
Customer Success also often works tandemly with Sales. A good synergy and cooperation between Sales and Customer Success teams can lead to great results in improving the sales journey and ensuring positive fulfillment of the customer’s needs defined during their buying process.
The focus of customer success and service teams is on serving the customer. However, both teams take a different approach to achieving their goals.
Customer Success teams are generally proactive. Not only do they advocate for customers, but they anticipate and address problems before they occur or customers reach out.
Customer Service and Support teams are usually reactive. This means they respond to incoming requests and questions – working to remedy situations after they've occurred or educate users on how to achieve something they need.
Another thing that sets them apart is their primary focus.
With customer service, the relationship is short-term. Customers have brief sessions with different agents through email or chat and sometimes via phone. The emphasis is on answering questions and resolving customer issues quickly so the customer can achieve their needed results. Once that is achieved, service and support agents then move on to the next customer.
Customer success teams are big on creating deeper and longer-term connections with clients. They work to help their customers strategize the use and application of their product and/or service to achieve desired results or alleviate customer pain points
The focus is moving beyond solving immediate problems to creating rave-worthy experiences that drive repeat business and make them loyal customers and advocates of the brand.
The customer success and account management teams work together to keep clients happy. However, there’s a subtle difference between the two.
Customer success may involve offering personalized assistance and support to customers throughout their customer journey. However, account management transcends providing support and handling day-to-day interactions. Account managers focus on identifying opportunities for growth and expansion within existing accounts, such as:
Here’s the thing: this model doesn't apply to every organization. Some organizations structure their CS departments according to what works best for them. Sometimes, that means that CS teams may carry the responsibilities of AMs, too.
First off, customer success yields massive returns. And if you're not investing in customer success, you're missing an opportunity to grow your customer base and business.
And guess what? Your competitors are waiting in the wings to scoop up your customers if they are compelled to look elsewhere because they haven’t maximized your product or service offerings.
Here’s why customer success should be a top priority for your organization.
Keeping customers happy leads to repeat business and positive word-of-mouth referrals. Over time, happy customers become loyal and rave about your brand through product reviews, recommendations and social media posts.
Bad experiences are a major turnoff for customers. In fact, 32% of all customers would sever ties with a brand they loved after one bad experience. Successful customer success increases customer retention rates, reducing churn and the associated costs of acquiring new customers.
Satisfied and loyal customers directly impact your bottom line. McKinsey’s benchmark data suggests existing customers account for up to 33-50% of total revenue growth.
They are more likely to make repeat purchases and consider upselling or cross-selling offers, contributing to revenue growth.
Customer success initiatives provide valuable insights into customer needs, pain points and preferences. You can glean this insight to continuously improve products and services.
A strong focus on customer success sets your company apart from your competitors. It gives you a competitive advantage and enhances your brand's reputation.
Customers want value from brands. Indeed, 56% of customers indicate that value for money is a big factor affecting their loyalty to a brand.
Value realization is a system you can use to keep customers returning for more. However, customer success management is what keeps that system working like a well-oiled machine. It involves a myriad of client-facing and behind-the-scenes activities, including:
1. Customer Onboarding: Helping customers set up and get acquainted with your product or services. Help your users achieve success and reach their aha moment quickly with a user onboarding checklist.
2. Customer Engagement: Keeping up with customers' needs as their business evolves and providing continued assistance to improve their experience. Customer service teams should know when and how to communicate with their customers to keep them engaged.
Keep your brand at the top of customer's minds via social media, blog posts, community engagement and newsletters like the one below:
3. Value Delivery: This is about making sure customers are getting the value they crave for from your product or service.
Hot Tip: As an organization, work with your Customer Success team to understand how to calculate return on investment (ROI) for your product or service and enable CSMs to have a solid handle on how to help their customers calculate their own ROI. That’s how you deliver value on top of value!4. Relationship Building. Cultivating strong customer relationships by asking for and responding to their feedback, building trust and rewarding loyalty. Some of the ways to reward customer loyalty with incentives, memberships, discounts and other perks.
5. Upselling and Cross-selling: This is about analyzing data to spot opportunities to provide customers with more options that match their needs and improve their overall experience.
The Customer Success Journey and Lifecycle represent the various stages and experiences a customer goes through, from their first interaction with a company to becoming a loyal, long-term customer.
When you understand what a client is looking to achieve when using your product, you can map out a journey that helps them achieve those goals as quickly as possible.
Here's a breakdown of the typical stages in a customer success journey and lifecycle:
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1. Awareness: The customer learns about your product or service through marketing, advertising, referrals, or other means. Your goal at this stage should be to create a positive first impression and generate interest.
2. Consideration: At this stage, the user conducts research to get detailed information and reviews and also evaluates your offering against competitors. Aim to provide in-depth, accurate information to help the customer make an informed decision.
3. Decision: This is where the customer decides to buy your product or service and completes the transaction. Make your buying process seamless, user-friendly and barrier-free.
4. Onboarding: The customer starts using your product or service and learns about the features and functionalities. Provide effective onboarding to help customers get started and experience initial value quickly (more in the latter part of this article)
5. Adoption: The customer incorporates your product into their routine, exploring advanced features and benefits. Encourage active usage, demonstrating the product's full potential and addressing initial challenges.
6. Retention (Renewal or Repurchase): For subscription-based services, the customer decides to renew their subscription. But for physical products or usage-based services, customers may decide to repurchase. Provide clear value propositions and incentives for renewal, ensuring a smooth and attractive renewal process.
7. Expansion: The client explores and adopts additional services, features, or upgrades.
Identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling, showcasing additional value propositions.
8. Advocacy: Satisfied customers become advocates, referring others and sharing positive experiences. Nurture relationships, encourage feedback and leverage satisfied customers for testimonials and case studies.
9. Reactivation (If Necessary): The customer churns for various reasons like product fit, pricing or better offers from competitors. Re-engage with inactive or lost customers and understand their concerns. Address concerns, demonstrate improvements, provide tailored solutions and rekindle their interest in your product or service.
Understanding and optimizing each stage of the customer success journey and lifecycle is vital for building strong customer relationships, enhancing customer satisfaction and driving business growth.
Remember to tailor your strategies and support efforts according to the specific needs and challenges customers face at each stage.
Many brands from different industries are nailing their customer success strategies. Here are some examples of customer success stories from well-known brands:
Amazon's customer obsession is legendary. They have disrupted industry after industry by focusing relentlessly on customer needs.
Amazon regularly gathers customer feedback through surveys, reviews and social media to attain this degree of customer loyalty. They customize the user experience using machine learning algorithms. Customers, for example, receive product suggestions based on their purchase history or browsing activity.
Furthermore, Amazon has made significant investments in developing a strong customer support infrastructure, including a huge workforce of customer success professionals.
Their strategy has resulted in breakthroughs such as Amazon Prime shipping, Alexa voice assistants and drone delivery. The end result? With over 300 million active customers globally, Amazon has become one of the world's most valuable companies.
This video sums up Salesforce’s approach to customer success.
Salesforce is all about understanding customer values and helping them overcome barriers, innovate and change the way they do business.
To serve their clients, Salesforce has created a complete Success Ecosystem, which includes Salesforce Customer Success, Trailhead, the Trailblazer Community and partners.
Salesforce’s relentless focus on customer success is paying off. The company has not only experienced rapid growth, their platforms and services are widely adopted by businesses of all sizes.
Undoubtedly, Visme is big on customer success. Visme's attention and dedication to Customer Success starts with our CEO/Founder, Payman Taei. Even in the early days of Visme, Payman worked on support tickets to help Visme's large number of users within our platform.
In 2019, and as Visme foresaw even more user growth on the horizon, Payman and other Visme leaders knew the need for a dedicated Customer Success division was needed.
Visme has millions of users who may use Visme as individual users for personal or professional needs. We also provide multi-user customers with dedicated workspaces that allow multiple users to collaborate effectively.
Through our commitment to our customer's platform use, optimization and expansion, Visme's Customer Success team services key accounts, which are determined based on the subscription rate of multi-user plans. We offer an initial training meeting for smaller Team plans and personalized training and onboarding for Enterprise customers, along with ongoing engagement, meetings and platform reviews.
Enterprise plans also work with CSMs to fulfill Customer Success Plans that are started on the very first kick-off meeting with the Enterprise accounts and those CS Plans act as the north star for activating the team within the platform according to their needs, goals and previous pain points in order to fix those pains through the implementation of Visme into their content process workflows.
Our team takes a personalized approach while also applying a tried-and-true method of success for onboarding other customers over the last 3+ years that has led to an over 90% retention rate of key accounts.
Discover the transformative power of our all-in-one design and visual content platform through the voices of our ecstatic users.
Senior Corporate Relationship Executive, Kraft Sports + Entertainment’s New England Patriots
The role of customer success teams is pretty much the same in all organizations—whether big or small.
But over the years, the field has evolved from sales, customer care and account management to proper customer success management.
Now the goal has shifted from just making sales to navigating customers toward success. And achieving this is down to a wide range of activities that we’ve covered earlier in this article, which include:
All in all, customer success teams are powerful growth engines. But customer success managers (CSMs) are the ones that ensure the engine runs in the most efficient way possible. Beyond managing the entire process, smarter CSMs are able to bridge the gap between:
As your organization grows, these balancing acts become a real challenge. However, navigating these competing interests is the true test of a well-rounded customer success manager.
The “3Ps of Customer Success—People, Process and Product—are three key elements fundamental to a successful customer success strategy.
One-to-Many Customer Success Strategy refers to an approach where customer success efforts are scaled to efficiently serve multiple customers simultaneously rather than providing individualized attention to each customer.
This strategy is particularly useful for businesses with a large customer base or a Software as a Service (SaaS) model where personalized interactions for every customer might be impractical. It enables them to deliver valuable resources and support efficiently while focusing on customer satisfaction and retention.
A customer success plan is a strategic document that lays out what customer success means and how your business will help its customers achieve their goals and objectives using the company’s products or services. It serves as a roadmap for ensuring customer success and satisfaction throughout their journey with the company.
A customer success tool is a software designed to help businesses manage, monitor and optimize customer relationships throughout their journey with your brand.
It enables teams to proactively engage with customers, address their needs and help them achieve their desired outcomes.
Customer success tools typically offer features like customer data management, self-service, onboarding assistance, health scoring, automation and analytics.
The five pillars of customer success are:
These pillars help customer success teams build strong, lasting relationships with customers and drive retention, growth and long-term success.
A customer or client success manager (CSM) requires various tools to effectively manage customer relationships, deliver personalized experiences and improve satisfaction. These tools include:
The three metrics for customer success include:
There you have it—your guide to incorporating customer success into your company.
Getting customers to buy from you is just the beginning. In this article, we’ve shown you how to keep them coming back for more—and even become loyal advocates of your brand.
Now it’s time to take the next step. Visme has a complete suite of tools to help you streamline your customer success strategy. The software has a comprehensive library of templates for creating marketing, sales, client onboarding, customer training and feedback materials.
The intuitive, drag-and-drop editor is literally foolproof. Anyone, regardless of their design skills can create stunning visual content, including brochures, product sell sheets, one pagers, videos, presentations, infographics, ads, reports, manuals, ebooks and much more.
Contact the Visme sales team to get started on the path to exceptional customer success.
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