Customer onboarding appears to be saddled with inefficient processes, according to a new survey by Rocketlane, a collaborative customer onboarding company. The report, titled “The State of Customer Onboarding,” reveals challenges and trends uncovered through a survey of customer onboarding professionals from companies that include Microsoft, Intuit and Pendo.
“Customer onboarding is the first major engagement after a sale is closed,” said Rocketlane CEO Srikrishnan Ganesan. “The experience delivered during the onboarding journey influences future engagements, upsells and cross-sells, and key SaaS metrics, including NRR and churn. But today it is marred with inefficiency and inconsistency. The survey brings these issues to the surface and highlights where SaaS customer onboarding needs improvement.”
The most inefficient elements of the process appear to be an overdependence on project managers to provide status updates, a manual method of asking for customer feedback, and the usage of too many tools. In fact, onboarding teams report spending up to five to ten hours each week simply following up or sending reminders to customers, and report tracking work across an array of tools as their top distraction.
This inefficiency is reflected in the data as well, with 54% of professionals feeling that the customer service they provide is of an average level, while 56% express that there is inadequate visibility into the work of each project.
“The report uncovers the daily struggles of customer onboarding and implementation teams,” Srikrishnan said. “A lot can be attributed to generic project management tools, which by nature aren’t built for customer-facing projects. Leaders now have strong data points to prioritize process optimization and formulate strategies to create a 5-star experience for customers and their teams.”
