A business is nothing without customers. And customers won’t stick around if they don’t get the support they need when they first start using a product or service. This is where customer onboarding software can help. We understand that customer onboarding is a difficult process to get right. But that doesn’t make it any less important that it does it get done right – from the get-go. We’ve worked hard to address everything our new customers would need in our onboarding process. It’s our goal to ensure we give new customers the best experience possible. And we use our very own product, Process Street, to document this process and create a centralized hub for all customer onboarding knowledge. Here’s a guide to help you do the same.

1. 1/9
Customer Onboarding Software: Ultimate Buyer’s
Guide
process.st/customer-onboarding-software
A business is nothing without customers. And customers won’t stick around if they don’t
get the support they need when they first start using a product or service. This is where
customer onboarding software can help.
We understand that customer onboarding is a difficult process to get right. But that
doesn’t make it any less important that it does it get done right – from the get-go.
We’ve worked hard to address everything our new customers would need in our
onboarding process. It’s our goal to ensure we give new customers the best experience
possible.
And we use our very own product, Process Street, to document this process and create a
centralized hub for all customer onboarding knowledge. Here’s a guide to help you do the
same.
What is customer onboarding software?
Customer onboarding software is specifically designed to help customer success teams
efficiently transition customers from potential leads to active users.
This software creates a centralized hub where all onboarding documentation can be used
whenever a new sales prospect becomes an active customer.
Customer success employees can then follow this onboarding process through the
software, making it easier to perform.
Providing a good customer onboarding experience is crucial for retention, and using
effective software makes it easy to deliver this stellar customer experience.
Why is customer onboarding software important?
90% of customers believe that companies can provide better onboarding
experiences.
Two-thirds of a customer’s decision about whether they remain with a vendor or not
depends on the support they receive shortly after making a purchase.
86% of customers state that they’re likely to remain loyal to businesses that provide
support to users after an initial purchase.

2. 2/9
After considering these statistics, it’s easy to see why delivering a good onboarding
experience is so important. That doesn’t mean onboarding is an easy process.
Customer onboarding software makes the process more straightforward and helps
decrease the workload on your customer success team. Onboarding comes with
extensive tasks that all need to be done in a specific order.
Software helps you track this task completion and ensures everything is followed in the
right order for a consistent and efficient experience.
Highlight and automate your recurring tasks for a more streamlined experience. This
savesyou time and reduces the risk of human error.
All-in-all, your employees can spend more time building a strong rapport with your
customers and delivering a personalized onboarding experience.
Signs you need customer onboarding software: Is it right for you?
You might already have a customer onboarding process in place. But you might not see
the necessity in using software to enhance this customer onboarding experience.
Here are some clear indications that your business is ready to use customer onboarding
software.
You have multiple onboarding guides (in different places)
Through onboarding your new customers, your team has found that they have a wide
range of learning styles. For this reason, your team has created varied onboarding
content to help these customers understand your product.
This onboarding content is in the form of audio formats, text, and video and can be
accessed in different libraries. These include your help center, knowledge case content,
blog, or Youtube channel.
Because this trail of content is long, it becomes tedious to update. This makes it difficult to
keep track of crucial metrics based on your user’s journey.
Modern customer onboarding software provides flexible content hosting, supports
multiple content formats, and allows on-demand training capabilities. This ensures all
your onboarding content is available in a central location and your user’s journey can be
tracked through the software.
You don’t have the capacity to offer 1-on-1 training to your new
customers
It’s typical for customer success teams to schedule training calls to educate new users on
their products. This is definitely an efficient way to offer a personalized onboarding
experience if the customer load is small. However, it’s impossible to scale over time.

3. 3/9
Manual training comes with its own set of difficulties. Knowledge is challenging to convey
through scheduled calls. Scheduling conflicts may hinder participation. It can also lead to
inconsistent customer onboarding results.
A better alternative is to provide various pre-made training that can be delivered instantly
regardless of instructor availability or time zones. This can be done with customer
onboarding software. On-demand training is more cost-efficient when you consider the
resource and time perspective.
With customer onboarding software, training materials can be updated through the
platform and its customization functionality can be used to cater to different user needs.
Tech support tickets have increased
Support inquiries grow if customers aren’t sure about how to use your product. This
results in the customer support team’s workload increasing.
If this is the case, customer onboarding software can play a significant role in reducing
this workload. New users will have access to all the information they need to start using
your product.
Through customer onboarding software, each user follows a process that gets them
acquainted with the product while customer success teams can then track the user’s
journey.
You’re reply on customer journey systems (but none support onboarding)
Many businesses use customer relationship management and marketing automation
tools to maximize their customer experience. However, none of these systems are
designed to accommodate customer onboarding.
When you adopt customer onboarding software, you can integrate it with your customer
relationship management (CRM) system, which leads to a more efficient experience.
Customer success teams have a better understanding of their user journey and other
metrics relating to successful onboarding.
By integrating training with CRM, customer success teams gain valuable insight that can
measure the impact of their programs related to customer retention and product
adoption.
Must-have features of customer onboarding software
Before you decide on a customer onboarding software tool, you want to consider these
features:
Media additions can be uploaded

4. 4/9
You want your onboarding process to be as interactive as possible. This means using a
customer onboarding software that allows you to easily add media within a process. No-
code is the way to go in this case.
Your chosen customer onboarding software should allow you to add onboarding videos
and other materials that can be used to make your process more engaging. These
interactive on-screen tutorials help your customers see how to use your product or
service.
Reporting and analytics
Analyics are vital for your customer onboarding process as this data can help you make
data-drive decisions when it comes to improving overall experience. When you have
access to accurate reports, you can:
Stimulate interaction with customers
Highlight cross-selling and up-selling opportunities
Improve retention rates
Market new services to your existing customer base
Simplify your user experience
Access to an onboarding community
You want a customer onboarding software solution that helps you connect with like-
minded people.
This community can help you improve your onboarding process through brainstorming
sessions, workshops, and other events nurtured by your software provider.
Using a software that has an active community of users is an excellent way for you to
learn more about the product from people who are also users.
Improvement and continuous updating plans
This is one of the most crucial features of any customer onboarding software. Your
onboarding software should offer continuous improvement to meet new changes related
to user behaviors and trends.
Instead of showcasing plans, it should have a history of continuous improvement. This
way, you know your chosen vendor doesn’t just make plans and promises. It actually
follows through.
This will ensure you’re working to the most efficient level possible. Otherwise, if your
vendor isn’t dedicated to improving their product, you’ll likely be left with an outdated
software tool.
What to look for in a customer onboarding software vendor

5. 5/9
When it comes to choosing a customer onboarding software vendor, you should take this
criteria into consideration:
User interface (UI)
You want a software tool that’s easy to understand. That means its user interface should
have clear designs and navigation. When you have an effective interface, your team won’t
have to waste time trying to navigate the software.
Price vs. value
You don’t want to be paying for things you aren’t using. It’s important to understand what
you wish to use from a certain onboarding software and what isn’t needed. That way, you
can find a package plan that fits your needs (and your budget).
Integrations
Essentially, you want a customer onboarding software tool that lets you integrate with
other automation or productivity tools in your tech stack to reduce data entry and create a
more centralized knowledge base.
5 tips to get the most out of your customer onboarding software
Introducing new software can be challenging. In order for you to see real results, you
need to make sure this transition is as soon as possible. It’s tricky business but that
doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Here are 5 tips to help you get the most out of introducing customer onboarding software
to your company:
Expect apprehension
To start, you need to expect there to be apprehension when you introduce customer
onboarding software. It’s normal for employees to fear the unknown, especially when the
older way has been around for a while.
Understand why your employees might be nervous about transitioning to customer
onboarding software.
As a best practice, you want to assume the best case scenario. Instead of viewing your
employees as uncooperative or lazy, get to the underlying anxieties they have.
There are two common reasons for employees being apprehensive:
They don’t see how it will benefit them personally
They’re worried about being replaced by the software
They’re nervous about learning to use the software
They don’t understand how the new way is better than the old

6. 6/9
They don’t realize how it will benefit the company long-term
Understanding what is the cause for your employees apprehension is the first step to
addressing it.
Share the customer onboarding process with your employees
You shouldn’t downplay the complexity of transitioning to a customer onboarding software
tool. Instead, assure your customer success team that you understand the difficulty of this
change.
But also enforce the benefits that comes along with using it. This way, no one feels as
though they’re expected to become an expert at this new system overnight. But they’re
also motivated to learn and gain these advantages.
Here’s a simple process you can use when introducing a new customer onboarding tool
into your organization:
1. Announce that customer onboarding software will be implemented into the
organization (and why you’re making this transition).
2. Schedule a meeting with your customer success team to introduce and discuss the
new tool.
3. Demonstrate how this new tool will be used. Someone who really knows how to use
the tool should do this demonstration as any fumbling will cause uncertainty around
the tool.
4. Be open to discussion and address any questions or concerns your employees
might have.
5. Let everyone start playing around with the tool before you make the switch.
6. Implement the new customer onboarding software.
7. Ask for feedback from your employees. This could be anonymously if you believe
that would be best but it will depend between organizations.
8. Make regular check-ins with your customer success team to understand if there are
any problems.
You should also share this process with your employees so you’re transparent about what
they can expect.
Describe the personal advantages of using this customer onboarding
software
Before your employees will buy in to the new system, they need to understand how it
benefits them. One of the reasons for implementing this customer onboarding software is
to make your employees’ work easier. You need to describe how this software will do
exactly that.
You’ve probably already got a great, motivated team who want to:
Gain useful new skills

7. 7/9
Feel appreciated by their colleagues and leaders
Be productive and an asset to the team
The goal would be to explain how your new customer onboarding software can help them
achieve this. For example:
Customer onboarding software eliminating time-consuming and repetitive tasks,
allowing employees to get more work done quicker.
Learning comes from understanding how to work the new customer onboarding
tool, which is an excellent way to offer on-the-job training to your employees.
Customer onboarding software allows collaboration to happen more efficiently,
which will benefit the entire organization and won’t go unnoticed by management.
Highlight the company-wide advantages
When you introduce customer onboarding software, you want to address one of the most
common questions:
“How is this solution better than what we’ve been doing before?”
Even if your employees don’t ask this question, they will be thinking about it so address it
from the get-go. After all, it’s a fair point. Why even switch if the new solution isn’t
distinctly better?
You want to clearly communicate what advantages come with using the new customer
onboarding software.
Here are two considerations to make:
Your new solution might have functionalities that you previously didn’t have access
to
Pain points you previously had (and how the customer onboarding software wipes
these away)
Here’s an example:
You use Gmail for your customer onboarding process. The problem is that multiple
employees can end up replying to the same user because there isn’t a clear record of
ownership.
In Process Street, you can see which team member is responsible for what thanks to its
role and task assignments.
Explain what high level business metrics and goals are affected by the
customer onboarding software

8. 8/9
Efficient customer support is invaluable for both customer loyalty and the organization’s
bottomline. The Harvard Business Review found that customers with great past
experiences with a company spent 140% more than customers with poor company
experiences.
And what is the first company experience your customers have?
Their initial onboarding.
That means a more efficient customer onboarding experience equates to more money for
your company. The next step would then be to showcase how your new customer
onboarding software can support these vital experiences:
Innovative automations streamline the process and free up time for employees to
spend building relationships with their customers
Smarter, more accurate analytics offer a clearer overview of what has been done
and help make more informed decisions
Easy visibility helps make collaboration more efficient and ensures everyone knows
what they’re responsible for
Effective customer onboarding is the secret to low churn
When you’re providing your new customers with the support they need, you’re making
them feel appreciated and seen. Far too often, customers feel like a number with a fat
wallet – that companies couldn’t care less about their experience.
By investing in your customer onboarding process, you’re telling your customers that this
isn’t the case. And in doing so, you win over their loyalty. Customer onboarding software
enables you get your ducks in a row to ensure you deliver this stellar customer
experience.
Related posts

9. 9/9