I think I figured out what should I do while on-boarding a customer

Customer onboarding is an important touchpoint in the customer journey in SaaS. SuccessCOACH defines customer onboarding as a "process of helping a new customer to get the setup, trained, and using the product to deliver business value". Being a very critical touchpoint of the customer journey, the 'customer onboarding' process tries to achieve the following goals.

1) Understanding the customer needs

Different customers will have different needs and come to you with a certain set of expectations. For example, we at NetAnalytiks Technologies Pvt Ltd provide SaaS-based AI-supported English grammar analysis ( English writing analysis) with content and six levels of certification. We have a different set of customers like publishers, students, and faculty. The needs of these customers are entirely different. For example, publishers need is grammar, style, and text correction and the need for a student is not only writing analysis but also certification. Before onboarding the Customer, we should know the context of the customer and what he is looking for from our tool.

2) Understand the 'Success of customer' and think like a customer.

In the majority of the cases, we assume that 'Customer Success' is what we think as 'Success for the customer'. However, the definition of success may be entirely different for customers from your definition of success.

3) Educating the users and motivating them to use the platform or service more and more.

The best example I can give here is that we at NetAnalytiks Technologies Pvt Ltd work with Educational Institutions and even though buyers are Vice-Chancellors or Directors, end users are the students. The company's success entirely depends on the usage of the platform by the students. Hence, we ensure that students are given all the relevant training required to use the platform. Some times we go for a face to face workshops wherein we handhold the customers to use our platform, we do provide video content, we explain about benefits of the platform, we do give PDF content on FAQs, etc so as to ensure that the students understand how to use the platform. Even though customer education is carefully embedded in the flow, we take extra care to ensure that the customer is given all the relevant information. The details of benefits or business value motivate Customers to use your platform more and more.

4) Manage the change

When a company purchases your platform ( in B2B2C scenario), the company asks the employees to use your tool to derive the business value. What we need to understand here is that employees have been working in a particular fashion for many years and suddenly adopting a technology tool may be difficult. There may be resistance to use the tool from the actual users since the platform is very new to them.

Hence, during the onboarding process, change management is an important function to be focussed on.

5) Deliver the business value which was promised to the customer.

This is a very important aspect of the onboarding process and the customer has to experience the first business value which was promised to him during the sales process. There must be an 'aha' moment and the customer has to be excited and motivated to use the platform. During the 'Customer Onboarding ' process, the Customer has to be reinforced with the business value which can be derived from your platform.

For a successful 'Customer Onboarding' process, it is better to have a robust knowledge transfer from the sales team to the 'Customer Onboarding team. A piece of detailed knowledge about the customer is a must for successful customer onboarding.