This article is based on a presentation given by Mike at our Customer Success Festival in Las Vegas, 2024.

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Empowering your customer success team through effective onboarding is crucial for driving customer satisfaction and reducing churn. 

My experiences at companies like Oracle, Mitek, and others have provided me with valuable insights into the transformative power of a robust customer onboarding program. 

In this article, I'll share my proven strategies and practical steps for elevating your onboarding process. From engaging executive sponsors and journey mapping to defining success metrics and leveraging data analysts, you'll learn how to create a seamless and efficient onboarding experience. 

By the end, you'll understand how to reduce churn, enhance operational efficiency, and foster stronger customer relationships through a well-executed onboarding strategy.

Understanding customer onboarding

So, what is customer onboarding? To me, customer onboarding is distinct from implementation. In many companies I've been a part of, the focus is primarily on implementation without considering the broader picture. 

Implementation often involves connecting the technical aspects —talking to the development teams and getting the systems up and running. However, other crucial components are frequently overlooked.

These components include training, enablement, and executive alignment. Additionally, expectation setting is typically left to the Customer Success Manager (CSM). The process usually follows a pre-sales cycle: you sign the contract, implement the solution, and suddenly, there are wild expectations. 

It then falls on the CSM to manage these expectations and explain that things might not work exactly as anticipated. This part of the job can be particularly challenging.

Defining verified outcome scorecards and change management are also critical aspects. Change management, in particular, is becoming, if it isn't already, one of the most significant roles a CSM plays. Working with customers to navigate and embrace these changes is essential for their success.

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The customer journey: From contract signing to achieving value

I’ve outlined a timeline that illustrates the customer journey, starting a little before contract signing and extending through the go-live phase to the point where value is achieved. Defining both "time to live" and "time to value" is crucial. 

Many companies I've worked with track the time to live and treat it as the finish line. They celebrate prematurely, thinking that getting one production transaction through signifies success. They then hand the process over to the CSM, which often leads to problems requiring reimplementation.

It's vital to view customer onboarding as encompassing not just those small milestones within the larger process but continuing until real value is achieved. This could mean first value or ongoing value tracking, but it certainly extends beyond the go-live date. One common mistake companies make is treating the go-live date as the end of customer onboarding.

Various teams and roles are involved in this journey:

  1. Sales team: The sales team is engaged up to the contract signing. Afterward, their role becomes more secondary, stepping in when necessary, such as for contractual matters or upselling opportunities.
  2. Customer onboarding manager: This is a specialized role distinct from the CSM. Not every CSM makes a good onboarding manager —I know I wouldn’t have. Once you find the right individual for this role, their sole focus should be on onboarding customers. They ensure that the transition from signing to achieving value is smooth and effective.
  3. CSM: The CSM steps in after the customer starts realizing value. Their job is to maintain and grow this value over time.
  4. Implementation manager: Also known as a solutions architect or similar titles, this role is more technical, working closely with development teams to ensure the implementation is successful.

Understanding these roles and their contributions at different stages is essential for a seamless customer onboarding experience. Each role has its unique responsibilities, and their coordinated efforts ensure that the customer not only goes live but also achieves sustained value from the product.