Your company’s onboarding experience makes or breaks your customer relationships. You strengthen those ties when it’s smooth, streamlined, and easy to follow. But when it’s not, it becomes one of the most vulnerable aspects of your business. Because of this vulnerability, harnessing the power of executive-level insights to improve your onboarding process is just as crucial as using them to bolster your marketing and sales strategies. They will help you sus out untapped opportunities, identify and resolve problem areas, and steadily and sustainably grow your business.
Your business’s success hinges on that of your customers, and the data shows that their success hinges on a good onboarding program. But if you have no visibility into the successes and failures of your onboarding program, how can you accurately assess your company’s health? According to Forbes, the top metrics to monitor include number of participants, on-time deliverables, project completion date, and customer engagement. These and other executive-level insights not only help you determine what needs fixing, but give you a solid understanding of what you’re also doing right. This way, you’re not just putting out fires after they ignite but preventing them from happening in the first place by tracking churn rates in real-time. On the flip side, understanding your wins helps you repeat those processes for future success.
Data doesn’t lie—but the interpreter might. Not necessarily out of bad faith, of course; after all, as a species, we humans want to deliver information in the best possible light. In that sense, data can become subject to our own unconscious biases or desire to put a positive spin on things. And while glass-half-full is a good attitude for life, it’s not always the best for crucial business data. Executive-level insights provide a comprehensive picture of what’s really going on with your onboarding process using inherently objective data. Without them, you can’t develop an actionable plan—and you can’t get a truly objective perspective using a human interpreter.
A poor onboarding experience is one of the biggest contributors to churn. While churn is a normal part of any business, too much can be costly. In fact, an estimated 10 to 25 percent of business is lost to churn every year. The cost of acquiring new customers versus keeping your existing ones happy is significantly more expensive—5 to 25 times more expensive, in fact. But according to the Harvard Business Review, improving your customer retention rates by just 5 percent can increase profits by up to a whopping 95 percent! So, while it’s unrealistic and, frankly, impossible to keep every single customer, utilizing executive insights to improve your onboarding process can go a very long way in making you more profitable.
A positive first impression starts with a good onboarding process. By monitoring your onboarding program with each customer using executive insights, you can continually build a better process and, in turn, a stronger business. Adoption rates skyrocket, and customers see value that much faster. When existing customers have a positive experience, they’re more likely to spread the good word and generate quality leads with higher conversion rates. Even better, happy customers are more likely to stick around and buy more from you year after year, helping you grow your business from all directions.
Businesses that don’t apply executive-level insights to their onboarding process are making decisions about them in the dark. Don’t make guesses about why you might be experiencing higher-than-ideal customer attrition rates. Harness the power of executive-level insights to help you make informed and smarter business decisions.
