Whether you have a well-established business or are new to the market, Client Onboarding is a crucial process that can make a world of difference to your overall success and longevity in the marketplace.
A lot of the hard work is done at this stage in getting your new clientele, this ensures their expectations are exceeded and you’re not left short-changed.
Client Onboarding can be viewed as a mutually designed strategy, born in the very first stages of contact between you and your new client.
The first 90 days are crucial to prevent your customer from churning, following are some key points to ensure you’ve covered all your bases and are on the right track to ensuring your customer is more than confident in their choice of your services or product.
Assess Your Customer’s Needs
As obvious as it sounds, it is important to thoroughly define a list of criteria and ensure all points are covered.
Formulate a template or questionnaire that can organically grow with you as a company and extract your various clients’ needs as they choose your services and products. Ask as many questions as possible, this is hugely important in the first few days and weeks of engagement with your customers.
In the new age of customer success, the word “success” is synonymous with the desired outcome they need your help facilitating. One of the biggest questions that need to be answered is how they define success.
Roles and Responsibilities
Once you have assessed their needs and expectations, take time to review all goals, processes, and milestones. Discuss and define the roles of everyone involved with the project and expand on the expectations for each role-player. Make sure both parties remain transparent here; sugar-coating the expectations of a client on their end can lead to miscommunication down the road.
If a role or responsibility you have imagined doesn’t seem to be aligned with that of your client, take the necessary steps to figure out a solution early so both parties remain happy and are treated fairly.
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Gather Data
Elite businesses attribute a large portion of their success to the prolific gathering of data about their business. Buying tendencies; sales cycle lengths and variances; website analytics and how they fare in the overall market are a few of a myriad of statistics and tools able to be incorporated into the presentation of data.
Focus on Relationship
Whether you have a well-established business or are new to the market, Client Onboarding is a crucial process that can make a world of difference to your overall success and longevity in the marketplace.
A lot of the hard work is done at this stage in getting your new clientele, this ensures their expectations are exceeded and you’re not left short-changed.
Client Onboarding can be viewed as a mutually designed strategy, born in the very first stages of contact between you and your new client.
The first 90 days are crucial to prevent your customer from churning, following are some key points to ensure you’ve covered all your bases and are on the right track to ensuring your customer is more than confident in their choice of your services or product.
Identifying
If your business model is facilitated by Zoom or similar; online identification and compliance services are often outsourced to smooth this process and make it more efficient. Yours may be simpler and have a face to face meeting, but in all mediums, one thing remains the same – first impressions count, and a high level of professionalism will go a long way.
Assess Your Customer’s Needs
As obvious as it sounds, it is important to thoroughly define a list of criteria and ensure all points are covered. Formulate a template or questionnaire that can organically grow with you as a company and extract your various clients’ needs as they choose your services and products. Ask as many questions as possible, this is hugely important in the first few days and weeks of engagement with your customers.
In the new age of customer success, the word “success” is synonymous with the desired outcome they need your help facilitating. One of the biggest questions that need to be answered is how they define success.
You can build a white label portal that’s fully customizable to fit your clients’ expectations. Extend your brand and build trust, all with zero coding.
Roles and Responsibilities
Once you have assessed their needs and expectations, take time to review all goals, processes, and milestones. Discuss and define the roles of everyone involved with the project and expand on the expectations for each role-player. Make sure both parties remain transparent here; sugar-coating the expectations of a client on their end can lead to miscommunication down the road. If a role or responsibility you have imagined doesn’t seem to be aligned with that of your client, take the necessary steps to figure out a solution early so both parties remain happy and are treated fairly.
Gather Data
Elite businesses attribute a large portion of their success to the prolific gathering of data about their business. Buying tendencies; sales cycle lengths and variances; website analytics and how they fare in the overall market are a few of a myriad of statistics and tools able to be incorporated into the presentation of data.
Focus on Relationship
Whether it is a simple once-off instant transaction, like a web purchase of a toothbrush or a sale of a managed fleet of forklift trucks; you have created a relationship between you and the customer.
Never ignore the fact that these relationships need to be treated almost the same in that in all of them lies opportunity and an inherent exploitability, this can be expanded and strengthened to ensure their retention and nurture the possibility of future growth.
Communication
Sometimes simple things like giving them premium access to events; commenting on their social media; including them in your social media or advertising campaigns; assigning specialized account managers and making sure they are aware of the dedicated channels of communication that are open to them, are but a few of many ways to help them understand their importance to you and relevance to your mutual growth.
Follow Up
Now that you have guided the client through the onboarding process, it is vitally important that you remain dedicated to the customers’ needs, this way any changes to the dynamic can be exercised and cemented without any delay.
In the current strongly social media-driven economy, keeping a customer happy goes a long way to generating new clients. But more importantly, it has a negative and massively destructive power to deplete your current customers and keep prospective customers far away from starting a relationship with you.
Summing Up With Continuity for Longevity
By continuously assessing their needs, you keep them happy, keeping them happy is right up at the top of the list, just under the one where you constantly exceed their expectations. It’s at this place that they increase their investment and recommendations.
