Why is Consumer Onboarding Critical for Startups

The success of your startup is intertwined with the success of your consumers. And consumer onboarding is the first and most important step of consumer success.

So, what is consumer onboarding?

Consumer Onboarding is a process that involves all aspects of introducing a new consumer to your organization's products and services. Its purpose is to make sure that your consumer is well trained on how to use your product and get the most out of it.

Why is Consumer Onboarding Important

It is imperative that consumers achieve desired results from your product or services. Failing to do so results in poor consumer retention rates. A few other goals include:

Reduce churn

Approximately 52% of consumers abandon products or services within 90 days due to a flawed onboarding process. 55% of people say they've returned a product because they didn't fully understand how to use it.

A good consumer onboarding process ensures that your consumer is achieving the desired outcome of your product or services and as a result, it will help you reduce the churn rate.

Once your consumers get the desired outcome from your product or service, they will be happy to talk about you to their contacts seeking similar services. Your consumers will not hesitate to talk about you and give good feedback on their social media network.

According to a Nielsen survey, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends, family, and online reviews.

Lighting in consumer service load

Good consumer onboarding not only delights your consumers but also reduces consumer service and support load.

If your consumers are properly educated about your products and services during the onboarding process, they are less likely to face issues during the product adoption.

Recurring business

Happy consumers are more prone to stick around and do more business with you in the future instead of taking risks with a new product or service provider. Acquiring new consumers is more expensive than maintaining existing consumers.

How to Onboard Your Consumers

There is no single method of successful consumer onboarding as it depends on the nature of your business. Following are some elements you should consider in the onboarding process.

Signup form

This is the first touchpoint of your consumer onboarding. Therefore, the signup process should be simple and secure. Nowadays, consumers are concerned with the lengthy signup process and data security. Instead of building your signup form, you can opt for Best CIAM providers to ensure a good user experience, data security, and compliance.

Welcome email

Keep your welcome email simple and include links to helpful resources and information that help consumers achieve their goal for which they sign up for your product, along with the ThankYou note.

A welcome email is an excellent opportunity for relation-building with the consumer and its ideal to manage customer database.

Knowledge base: Video and documentation

The knowledge base is an essential aspect of onboarding. Documentation helps consumers self educate on how to use your product and troubleshoot the issues if they are facing any before they reach your support desk.

Pro-active help emails

Using good consumer activity tools keeps track of the progress of your consumer's product usage and identifies the possible roadblocks. Help consumers by sending some relevant information in the emails proactively.

Feedback and survey forms

Don't forget to take feedback from the consumer after onboarding. Ask them if they liked your product, services, and its good for importance of customer onboarding process. This will help you identify the area of improvement so you can upgrade your onboarding process accordingly.

Consumer Onboarding Tools

There are many free and paid tools available that help you set up a good consumer onboarding process. You can also refer to this article for the list of highly recommended consumer onboarding tools for businesses.