In last week’s webinar with Gainsight, Coastal Cloud and Conversica, our panelists shared their thoughts on the role of onboarding in customer success and addressed the need for user-level, rather than account-level onboarding. While companies generally sell, renew, and track adoption of their products or services at an account-level, this process does not take into consideration user-level maturity. As discussed, there are a variety of maturity levels that require different types of onboarding, including:
New users on new accounts,
New users on existing accounts,
Mature buyers (who may be repeat purchasers) on new accounts, or
End users who are evolving to become admin-level users
In order for an onboarding program to be successful, the education level must match the user’s level of maturity. In order to effectively address these different users, it's important to consider using multiple types of training, such as:
In-product training such as pop-ups and standalone courses outside the product to connect with users where they are
Along with a user-focused mindset, a successful customer onboarding program is not a one-time event - it’s a continuous process that changes as customers advance and as new customers join the fold.
To help scale onboarding programs, the panel also shared a three-prong framework for pairing users’ goals with the most effective channels and tactics. And understanding that these programs require a lot from Customer Success Managers, our webinar participants explained how technology like artificial intelligence and on-demand training courses can be leveraged to assist CSMs with time intensive and routine tasks and enable them to focus on building relationships and driving product adoption with customers.
Interested in learning more about user-level onboarding and how to balance automation and person touch? Click here to access the full recording!