What is customer onboarding?
New customer onboarding is an important process for any company. In fact, it can be the difference between a customer who is satisfied and remains loyal to your brand, and one who defects to a competitor.
The digital transformation gives companies several tools to create a great customer onboarding experience. Thanks to digital technologies they can make the process smooth and easy for customers.
What is the digital customer onboarding? If traditionally customer onboarding is the set of activities to make a service/product/company known to a new customer, digital customer onboarding is the evolution. It exploits digital technologies to allow a positive and, if possible, personalized customer experience.
The greatest benefit of digital onboarding is that it allows the company to bring consumers into its world without them having to leave the house. Everything can happen remotely. Think about entering into a contract for the provision of a service. The consumer can send and sign documents digitally. In addition, they can authenticate themselves via secure systems. Finally, they can access a lot of information whenever want from any device.
Why is important to create a positive customer onboarding experience?
Customer onboarding is the process of welcoming new customers into a company. It is important because it sets the tone for the relationship between the two.
A great onboarding experience can lead to:
- Improved customer satisfaction: by making the process easier and more intuitive, companies can reduce frustration and increase satisfaction;
- Reduced costs: automating onboarding can save time and money;
- Increased retention: a great onboarding experience can reduce customer churn and increase loyalty.
How can digitalization and technology help with customer onboarding?
Digital Onboarding is a process that needs easy-to-use, secure and reliable tools. Digital transformation is introducing new useful technologies. Here are a few examples.
- Two-factor authentication, biometric recognition, but also electronic signature and time stamp allow customer and company to share sensitive data and documents without fear of theft or tampering.
- AI and machine learning help companies analyze data on consumer behavior and thus make better decisions. In addition, tools such as chatbots allow you to offer customer assistance immediately.
- Through emails, websites, social networks, newsletters and online magazines, tutorials, apps, companies can offer content that responds to the doubts and needs of customers and increases their engagement. In particular, an online self-service portal can provide 24/7 access to information and customer support.
- A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system allow companies to track the customer journey from start to finish.
The benefits of the digital onboarding
Digitalization can help you create a great customer onboarding experience in different ways:
- you can automate and streamline the onboarding process so that it is simpler and faster for your customers (and less expensive for you).
- personalization and customization become easier, so that each customer feels like the experience is tailored specifically for them.
- you can track data and analytics about the customer onboarding, so that you can improve the experience over time.
Onboarding experience and customer retention
When can you say that a customer is really onboard? Is it enough that they bought your product/service? No, the following statistics are clear:
- More than 1 in 2 consumers say they’ve returned a product because they didn’t fully understand how to use it;
- 86% of people say to would be more loyal to a business that invests in onboarding content that welcomes and educates them after a purchase;
- Over 90% of customers feel that the companies they buy from ‘could do better’ when it comes to onboarding new users / customers.
Customer retention requires a strategy that goes beyond the first contacts between the company and the consumer.
The onboarding customer experience ended when the company won consumer loyalty. And this is only possible when they see the value of what they have bought. Companies need to facilitate this process.
If you don’t know how to get started, talk with experts.
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