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The Best Definitive Guide for SaaS Customer
Onboarding
Are you confused while deciding SaaS Customer
Onboarding strategies? Do you want a definitive
guide for SaaS customer onboarding? Then this is
the right place. When is customer onboarding
necessary in SaaS? Do you have a product that is
so self- explanatory simple that your customer
would adopt it at ease? When we say onboarding,
in-context, we mean how frictionless your product
is for new customers. SaaS Customer Onboarding
is the process of helping new customers get
started and stay engaged. What is a good or bad
or even worse onboarding experience for SaaS
customers?
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The straightforward answer to this is Your
onboarding practices must stay aligned with that
- First Valuable Moment. You skipped your
assessed step - and you might lose the flow,
customers might get clueless about what to do.
Then bad or worse becomes a clueless consequence
in onboarding experiences. What are the perfect
practices for a successful customer onboarding
program? There are no perfect templates or steps
that you can imply that will work - It is like a
continuous improvement process. You follow a
plan - stay in touch with your customers - take
note of friction points - and improve! Especially
this guide is for SaaS companies to improve
their customer experience, identify customer
churn, and increase retention rate through the
proven customer onboarding methods with tools to
personalized SaaS Customer Onboarding. If you
get inspiration or this blog raised any questions
regarding your onboarding, here is your free
guide for your late whiteboard sessions.
Use the table of content to navigate the
guide. 1. What Is Customer Onboarding?
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• Why Is Customer Onboarding Important for SaaS?
• How To Implement Right Customer Onboarding?
  (Tools Methods)
• How To Create A Customer Onboarding Process For
  SaaS?
• Conclusion
• What is Customer Onboarding?
• Customer Onboarding is like a seed, you nurture
  it with the right amount of water, air, and
  sunlight it will flourish. Similarly, you
  nurture your customers by introducing them to
  your products services, making them
  comfortable in their initial journey.
• When any new customer sign-up to use your
  product, it means -Customers stimulated an idea
  in their head about how it would be with your
  product! It could be your technical setup, your
  product benefits, your features, or even your UX
  that might have attracted them to join.
• But, if customers are clueless to find what they
  are looking for as a solution, no matter how
  easy-to-access or attractive dashboard you have,
  customers will churn off.
• So, your entire efforts must stay aligned with
  manifesting ideas of the customer to become a
  living experience for them.
• E.g.- Twitter (content consumption app) makes it
  so smooth sailing for new users by mapping an
  image of what kind of journey they desire.

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Twitter Onboarding Metrics-

• Twitter allows users to choose their path of
  interest even before the sign-up - this process
  creates a space for users choice as in how do
  they want their journey to start using the
  application
• Follow your interests.
• Hear what people are talking about!
• Join the Conversation.

Why is Customer Onboarding Important for SaaS
Companies? It is a Sunday morning you excitedly
planned to head out for a coffee. While sitting
near the window of the coffee shop, your
attention drew towards two men humping with a
large acrylic-on-canvas pop art painting across
the street for an art exhibition. As your
interest pursued you to visit the fine art- you
stepped in found yourself surrounded by
everything related to art. You are clueless about
whether to roam around or keep staring around -
unless you are an art connoisseur!
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How Do You Think Your Software Relates To
Customer Perspectives?
Now, the question of the story asks
Essentially, which stage of your software
positions your customer best value? Remember, It
is not about mapping each step in detail - It is
about staying in close touch with your customers
on the macro level. To initiate any new
customers about your products and services - you
must use the power of storytelling. The Power of
Storytelling! (SaaS Onboarding Method) Everyone
loves stories! It is like, you visualized all
those characters and storylines within yourself
for that duration - And after a while, it becomes
a personal journey for you at the end. Does it
happen to everyone? But what is so special about
a story? The real magic lies in the hook the
promise! What is a Hook? It is that heroic
character, that struggling situation, that
winning story end that explores ideas
imaginations of the witnessing mind - it sets a
clear picture of the journey since the
start. What is a Promise? It is like connecting
dots or a puzzle with each character situation
according to the delivered hook. Similarly,
when you think about how your software can relate
to customers, you realize you need a story for
your product.
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How To Create Your Product Story Framework?
(Using Hook Promise Method) Like stories
involve characters and situations, you need a
hook and a promise to start with new
customers. What is the Hook for SaaS
Companies? It is the what of your company - What
does your software do? Now, if you happen to
notice the topmost publicly traded SaaS
companies in Montclair250 SaaS1000.com list,
you will observe the most successful SaaS
companies follow a pattern - It is the hook (what
do you do?) The World Most Successful SaaS
Companies - Montclair SaaS 250
And the promise (how you do that?) method in each
of their onboarding metrics. For an e.g. On the
homepage of Salesforce, they use the hook
promise method to communicate with new customers
even engage with old ones to explore their
features.
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And they say it right underneath the hook step -
a promise of how to do it. (Features Benefits)
Once you get into their footing with this
approach - it becomes a communicative
expectation for your customers - That is why
being thoughtful and intentional with the
language is a must-thing because customers will
be looking for evidence of what you said on the
homepage.
Onboarding was and is the one truly universal
problem every piece of software has.
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How To Create A Smooth Customer Onboarding
Process For SaaS?
When customers find a hook in your story, it is
time for you to onboard them smoothly so that
they do not feel lost after signing up.

• Customer Onboarding does not have to be the next
  big marketing project for your company - that
  you start considering after realizing the
  importance of customer participation. Onboarding
  is like a function of your company - the more you
  feel the friction that customers are getting,
  the more you improve grow.
• So, to create a personalized customer onboarding
  framework, you need to establish a
  customer-centric approach
• Identify Success (Customers).
• Map Milestones.
• Find the Friction.
• Clear the Path.
• Measure Iterate.
• Identify Success (Customers).
• When your customer starts using your product,
  they expect a visual - their first win. So,
  delivering specific goals according to unique
  customer solutions creates an achievable
  environment.
• Let us take an example,
• You are a startup owner looking to explore your
  services through social media - Neil Patels
  Ubersuggest in its trial stage allows a handful
  of customized features that can take you forward
• Access to their SEO tool
• Daily rank tracking

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2. Map Milestones.

• You dont need to map the tiny steps of the
  customer at the very beginning. Keep your focus
  on the macro-level output stay in the loop with
  the customers journey while tackling their
  ongoing friction points.
• Find the Friction.
• Customers using your software for the first time
  and customers finding their first success, your
  efforts is to find that point where you are
  losing them on a macro level - it will give you
  enough space time to improve their ongoing
  journey.
• What was the issue?
• The hypothesis tested and excluded
• Is the Customer Unhappy? No, they love it! (High
  NPS)
• Is there a cost that causes churn? (No, theres a
  free trial!)
• Is it too hard to set up? (Actually, its pretty
  easy.)
• Real Explaination!
• You might have missed out on a big chunk of
  customers churn while testing evaluating by
  yourself. Try out some quantitative analysis. Use
  these available tools to find out the links
  between customers churn.
• Effective analytics tools you can use
• Google Analytics
• Heap
• Hubspot

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• Clear the Path.
• Once you found the friction, now its time to
  find ways to solve it. There are mainly two ways
  to solve any friction point in SaaS onboarding
• Technology Enhance the UX, add a new platform,
  assist 24/7 chatbots. (Basically, ease off the
  friction points)
• Talk to your customers Whether its a
  one-to-many or one-to-one conversation about
• what to do, it is a very unscalable process, so
  pick up the phone - Ask them! Then try to
  resolve them in a more scalable manner.
• Measure Iterate.
• Maintain to keep yourself on the customers foot,
  remember - improving customer onboarding isnt a
  project. So, when suddenly improving onboarding
  pops up again, then its probably not why you
  should do it.
• It is a function of the company. It is a
  continuous process of improvement. So, never
  stop, find the next friction - improve - find the
  next friction - improve!

How to Implement Right Customer
Onboarding? 1. Welcome email. Your new customers
need to feel reassured and confident about their
decision to invest in your product - To make
them experience instant gratification or a
rewarding experience. A welcome email can
provide access to their instant gratifications
(bonus, lucky prize, added features, or even
free services)
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Mira Welcome Onboarding Mail

• Miro has enhanced its presence in the SaaS
  industry like a storm with its easy-to-use and
  interactive whiteboard sessions.
• And Miro has a very creative yet simplistic sense
  of onboarding new customers with emails. It
  brings out a Tips Tricks mode for customers
  during their focus whiteboards and also manages
  the workflow with a not-so-stressful user
  interface.
• The key ingredients to every compelling Email
  Onboardings
• It is super easy to read.
• It went straight into the customers inbox.
• It includes a helpful video (What to do next? Or
  even starting bonus)
• It came from the real person. (whom a customer
  can reach out to query!)
• It provides a helpful CTA.

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2. Product Walk-through.

• A welcoming message at the initial stage is a
  great way to initiate new customers about - how
  to get along with the product overview. You can
  attach a small snippet video about how-to
  start off using your product, or you can use
  different ways to present product tutorials
• Using Video Tutorials
• Demo/Explainer Video
• Mini-Movie Walkthrough
• Lively Instructions for Complex Products
• Friendly Tips for First Use
• An in-app learning section or a small product
  tour.
• Tutorial buttons or pop-ups alongside different
  features.

Canva makes it fun! Your product tutorial can be
simple, fun, and guiding. Take an example of
Canva - their growth process is simple proven
in work. You are free to choose your specific
design templates
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And then Canva uses animation to guide you
through the first design will remain a guide
throughout the process.
While you use or create design templates - Canva
assists along the way with welcome pop-ups and
infographics to assist you with features and
specific areas of application.
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The simple, fun, and personalized product tour
resulted in a 10 boost inactivation for the
company.
3. Messaging (In-App)
In-app messaging is there to introduce your
product or services to customers, especially
those who had been using your product for the
first time. By delivering welcome pop- ups and
brief product tours - you engage with your users
right from the start.
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Like, take this as an example built with Helppier
on Salient Demo. In addition to just onboarding
email messages, they included a specific video
resource for first-time customers to go
through before getting started.
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Build with Helppier on Salient Demo
Now there are chances that your customer is in a
hurry and tries to skip every onboarding step -
Thats why try to keep your onboarding In-app
messaging as simple beautiful as these top
SaaS companies Trello - Keeps it Simple
On-point!
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Hubspot - Simple, relatable, and actionable!
Slack - Informative, Direct, and Solution-based.
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Conclusion
Customer Onboarding is a function of SaaS
companies. Once your customers sign-up, they
need you as a guiding buddy on each step of their
journey. Because once the customers are lost or
feel churn to move ahead with your product
without any assistance - they wont come
back! So, if you want to increase customer
retention and LTV, improve your customer
onboarding process and reduce customer churn. We
hope that this definitive guide for SaaS
customer onboarding helps you.