#91: Common Mistakes to Avoid with Customer and Client Onboarding

Aug 30, 2020 | Working with Clients

In today’s video, I go over some common mistakes businesses make with onboarding and how you can avoid them.

Welcome to Systems Sunday as we wrap up our series on creating your onboarding process.

Today I’m going to go over some common mistakes businesses make with onboarding and how you can avoid them.

First, we have overpromising.

It’s important to emphasize the benefits that the client or customer gets from using your product, service, or program, but if you overpromise and they don’t get the results they expect, this will undermine all of your other efforts. If your product only offers 2-3 benefits per use, don’t promise it offers 8. In fact, it’s better to under-promise because then you can exceed expectations.

A good way to guard against this is to seek feedback from customers and use it. They will tell you exactly what benefits they receive from the product from each use.

Next is lack of response or slow response.

It doesn’t make much sense to give customers a variety of ways to reach you and encourage them to do so, and then to take forever to get back to them. Make sure that you and your sales team or your client care person is ready to deal with customer issues as soon as they happen. Make this your first priority, especially during the first month after the purchase. Establish a timeframe for resolution and turnaround.

Make sure that your help and support tools work and are up to date. Test them to make sure and make it a regular part of your routine to check occasionally.

 I’ve had clients who have had a “support” email and then down the road they delete it because they wanted something fun, like “hello@xyz.com” and totally forget they had another email and they stopped checking it. So, make sure to revisit that occasionally.

Next, is offering a generic experience.

It’s good to automate wherever possible, but too much automation and standardization can make the customer feel like they’re just a number. The more personalization and customization you can use, the better, even though it’s more labor-intensive. Your customer is a raving fan and future referral, so treat them as such. From the customer’s perspective, every experience should feel like it’s just for them.

Finally, we have difficulties in the first usage stages.

If it’s difficult to use your product or access your content in the initial phase, this could start your relationship with your customer off on the wrong foot. Make sure that, especially at the beginning, the process is smooth, easy, and flawless. Make it as easy as possible for your customer to use your product, login to your site, use your service, whatever it is, and consume it. They are going to be, like I said, raving fans and you want to make sure they are having a great experience with you.

Action Steps:

  1. Document how you will address customer service issues. How will you respond? And in what time frame?
  2. List 3 ways you can make the customer experience personal and not just automated.

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