A killer product won’t sell itself. Your marketing and sales teams need to put a lot of effort into generating sales. But it doesn’t end there. A whopping 60% of users who opt for a free trial will use your product once and will never return.
Why?
Because getting used to your product or making it work needs a lot of hard work. Others leave as they don’t understand how your product benefits them.
In most cases, it isn’t your product that turns potential customers away – it is your customer onboarding process. A minor customer onboarding mistake can cost your business a lot. A mere 1% difference in churn rate can have a 12% impact on your company valuation in 5 years.
The following 4 customer onboarding mistakes are the most common that some of the biggest businesses make. Let’s understand these mistakes and how you can avoid them.
1. Not helping customers with their ‘first success’
The First Success with your product is crucial. The earlier your customers get to know your product and get their first success, the better it is. Research shows that a delay in delivering your customers their first success with your product will result in churn.
The gap between customer acquisition and first success has to be decreased in order to boost engagement and reduce the churn rate.
Businesses repeat a couple of mistakes when dealing with first success.
Not understanding success from customers’ point of view: When a customer converts to a paying customer is your definition of success – not how your customers perceive success.
This is something you have to ask your customers if you don’t have any clue about how they define success. In most cases, it is quite evident.
For instance, when a customer purchases a quadcopter, the first success might be a safe delivery of the quadcopter, when a customer assembles the quadcopter successfully, or when a successful flight takes place.
Ask your customers and see how they define success.
Making it hard for them to get first success:If you’re throwing a 7-hour training video series to your customers that will allow them to start using your software, you aren’t of much help.
Don’t make it hard or cumbersome for your customers to achieve their first success.
After you have identified the first success, you have to ensure your customers achieve it quickly and easily.
For instance, Clash Royale takes its users immediately to a mock battle after they sign in to Game Center. It is instant. It is easy and fun. And users do it themselves.
As much as 69% of millennials feel good when they can solve a problem related to a company themselves instead of someone else or the company itself doing it for them. Your job, therefore, is to make it easier for your customers to get first success. Help them.
You don’t have to do it on their behalf.
Key takeaways: Understand first success from your customers’ point of view and then help them achieve it as quickly as possible.
2. Unable to deliver exceptional value
Helping with the first success isn’t enough. It is just the beginning.
If you fail to provide immediate exceptional value right from day one, you’ll lose customers – and revenue. Statistics show as much as 95% of revenue comes from renewals and upsells.
You need to validate your customer’s decision to choose you.
This is, unfortunately, where a lot of businesses go wrong. Because they’re too busy celebrating the number of acquired customers and meeting their sales goals and forget to focus on delivering the value that their customers expect.
So how do you do it?
Make every customer’s success count by ensuring them that they made the right choice in choosing your product. Deliver value throughout the customer journey right from first success.
This value could be related to customer services, product features, bonuses, personalization, usability, tutorials, or anything that makes your customers WOW.
One big mistake that businesses often make is that they overpromise benefits. The hype businesses create to generate sales gets challenging to deliver. That’s where delivering true value to your customers becomes a next-level game.
For instance, your customers expect a revolutionary, all-in-one, and self-managing project management tool and you send them a traditional tool that doesn’t meet their expectations (that your marketing team had set).
Don’t fall into this trap.
When you overpromise and under-deliver – no value.
When you under-promise and over-deliver – exceptional value.
Key takeaway: Deliver exceptional value to your customers. Don’t create hype. Don’t focus on generating sales instead focus on lifetime customers by delivering value throughout the customer journey.
3. Lack of a focused approach
What do you think your customers will do when they have too many options to choose from on the welcome screen?
They will either skip the onboarding process (if there is an option) or you’ll receive a refund request.
The onboarding process has to be focused on the most important features of your product. Take, for example, Dropbox. It asks the users to add photos to their Dropbox right away as soon as they choose a plan. Sharing photos and files is a core Dropbox feature.
Nothing fancy. No multiple CTAs. Either do it or skip it.
Here are a few tips to avoid throwing spaghetti at the wall, as Eric Siu calls it, during the onboarding process.
- Reduce clutter by removing anything and everything that’s unnecessary and doesn’t add any value.
- Reduce form fields. Keep it simple, short, and sweet. If you don’t need a piece of information, don’t ask.
- Focus on core features first. You don’t have to explain every single product feature during the onboarding process.
- One CTA per screen. Avoid throwing everything all at once.
- Allow customers to skip the onboarding process.
- Avoid upgrades, upsells, or cross-sells. You’ll have a lot of time for it.
Key takeaways: Channelize user attention on the most important product features without making it appear messy. Let them focus on one thing at a time.
4. No follow up
While overpromising can be suicidal, over-communication is better than under-communication, says Karla Cook.
Not communicating with your customers during the onboarding process is one of the worst mistakes. If you send a couple of automated emails to your customers throughout the onboarding process, you’re missing customers, losing revenue, and breaking the rules of communication.
And no, a welcome email isn’t just enough.
Follow up at every stage. Celebrate your customer wins. Remind them of features they aren’t using. Share case studies. Offer help.
Here is an example of the type of communication we are talking about. This is the message that Typeform users get when they create a template. This isn’t an email, instead, it is incorporated into their onboarding process.
Communication and regular follow-ups build trust and help to convert users into customers. Onboarding isn’t all about your product, rather it is about customer experience and building trust. Here is a handwritten note that Stride sent to its users.
The purpose of follow-ups should be:
- To make user success quick and easy.
- To deliver value.
- To reduce churn rate.
- To collect data.
Key takeaways: Communicate throughout the onboarding process to ensure customers achieve the desired outcome from your product as soon as possible without extra effort.
Customer onboarding is a journey that begins as soon as conversion happens. It is a journey that you have to make fun and meaningful for your customers.
Keep testing and tweaking your onboarding process with the intention of delivering your best to your customers by avoiding these mistakes.