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Whether you are a digital agency or an expert services company, customer onboarding is a critical process that needs to be done right. Nail it and also you set the tone for successful, long-term customer relationships.
But nailing it is not at all times easy. With greater than 90% of shoppers believing that firms can do higher when it comes to onboarding, expectations have never been higher.
At the identical time, ensuring a smooth and seamless deployment process is just not nearly satisfying customers. Additionally it is about organizational effectiveness. As your business grows, you’ll have to find smarter, faster ways to onboard latest customers.
By automating yours client onboardingyou’ll solve each of those problems. You offer your customers a smooth and hassle-free experience while saving money and time. In this text, I’ll show you five ways you may achieve this.
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1. First contact support and lead generation(*5*)
Taking a step back, let’s take a look at a couple of ways to automate and streamline the processes leading to customer onboarding.
Before the shopper agrees to work with you, he’ll make the primary contact, often through your website. They’ll likely have a couple of questions they need to answer – and likelihood is, those are questions that other prospects are asking as well.
As a substitute of spending countless hours answering probably the most often asked questions, you may automate those initial interactions with an AI-powered chatbot. The bot can either answer questions directly or direct potential customers to a self-service knowledge base.
At the identical time, chatbots can capture lead data, upload it to CRM, and schedule automated emails—all without lifting a finger.
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2. Collecting customer information(*5*)
Once the client agrees to work with you, it is time to gather all the data you wish from them to get the job done. This may increasingly include:
- Basic data and phone details
- Details and goals of the project
- Time-frame
- Budget
Firms often collect information via email, spreadsheets, or other shared documents. This could lead to the dispersion or complete lack of key customer information.
With the best form builder, you may quickly create and share digital forms that guide your customers step-by-step through the process. One of the best tools allow you to add context to your tickets with embedded video, text or attachments. In addition they allow you to send automatic reminders about missing information.
Should you select a form builder with Zapier integration, you’ll give you the chance to connect to various tools and arrange automated workflows. For instance, once you fill out a form, you may robotically run the next actions:
- Add customer information to your CRM
- Create Slack notifications to keep your entire team informed
- Send a thanks email to the shopper explaining the following steps
3. Scheduling meetings(*5*)
Most facets of customer onboarding are ripe for automation, nevertheless it’s still a people-centric process. In some unspecified time in the future, you’ll need to have a face-to-face meeting or video call with a latest client.
There are lots of ways to streamline and streamline the meeting scheduling process.
With scheduling tools like Calendly or Coach Marketing Hub being my business, you may save numerous time spent sending emails forwards and backwards trying to find the best time for an interview. By integrating the scheduling tool with Zoom or Teams, you may robotically create appointments when the client selects a time slot.
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4. Transcription of meetings and conversations with clients(*5*)
Video and phone calls are an ideal way to construct lasting skilled relationships with your clients. But because these are one-time events, you may’t return and alter what was said for those who missed something.
Even worse, after the conversation is over, it might be difficult to remember what was said and what wasn’t. Without the usage of technology, all you may do is organize time-consuming follow-up calls or risk making big mistakes.
That is where automatic transcription tools turn out to be useful. With real-time or retrospective meeting transcription, you’ve gotten a record of what you discussed. You possibly can then search the transcript for keywords or phrases.
Transcription tools are also great for perfecting connections. You possibly can return and take a look at the way you communicated, the order wherein key points were discussed, and the way it was received by the client—and make improvements where needed.
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5. Management of offers, contracts and signatures(*5*)
Client onboarding involves many legal formalities. Even though it could seem boring, it is extremely vital to define and agree on the scope of the project, expectations and costs at such an early stage.
Manually managing quotes and contracts generally is a tedious and time-consuming task. But it surely doesn’t have to be that way. With the best bidding software, much of this process might be automated while eliminating the danger of human error. For instance, you may:
- Use templates to robotically generate quotes, quotes and contracts
- Integrate with CRM to populate documents with customer data
- Allow customers to view, comment and sign e-documents
- Mechanically update your team via Slack when a document is reviewed or signed
- Secure payments or deposits robotically
And that is just scratching the surface. With a growing range of pre-built integrations, including automation tools like Zapier and CMH, you may create all types of automated workflows.
How much time could you save?(*5*)
Let’s end this text with a brief thought experiment. How long would it not take to manually perform the processes discussed in this text?
It’s hard to quantify, but when you think about we’re talking about answering a lead’s questions, writing the following email, gathering key information and adding it to your CRM, informing the team, scheduling a gathering, and preparing a proposal and contract, it’s protected to say that the reply is many hours.
Should you multiply that variety of hours by the number of recent customers you add each week, you may roughly see how much time you may save by automating the onboarding process.
Now take into consideration how much value you possibly can bring to your company with on a regular basis you’ve got regained.