Do you want to automate the customer onboarding and offboarding process?
Well, you’ve arrived at the right spot.
Customer onboarding and offboarding are important processes as they shape the opinion a customer will have of your business. These two processes complement each other in that sense.
When you have a user onboarded, it means they’re brought into the organization, allowed to make full use of the product, and are now a more active part of your user base.
The goal of offboarding is to increase the likelihood of customers returning to your business, and increase your referral rates. Customer offboarding also helps to preserve the positive experience you have created for your customers. That’s why it’s essential to do it well.
That said, as your user base expands, it can be challenging to manually go about onboarding and offboarding, and that makes automation important.
This article explores why you should automate customer onboarding and offboarding programs.
Why Should You Automate Customer Onboarding and Offboarding?
When you automate customer onboarding and offboarding, you essentially create a great experience for your users without having to interact with your team:
Another advantage here is that automated customer onboarding and offboarding helps to deliver a consistent and seamless experience across the organization.
So, here are a few reasons why you should automate customer onboarding and offboarding processes.
1. Reduce Churn
Have you ever sent a beautifully crafted welcome email, only to never hear back from the client?
It happens to the best of us.
This is what churn looks like for most businesses during the customer onboarding process.
In fact, churn is a big problem across multiple industries, as shown in the image below.
Image via CustomerGauge
The biggest problem, especially with remote customer onboarding, is that it is very difficult to grab someone’s attention when you can only reach out to them through phone or emails.
If your email requires your customers to think too much, there is a high chance of losing them. Also, if you try to manage new clients manually, you may not be able to give them fast and convenient support and service.
Similarly, offering an easy and seamless offboarding process can help you avoid bad PR, and pave the way for more win-backs.
People nowadays are comfortable using technology and are looking for self-serve digital experiences. An automated customer onboarding and offboarding process can give them just that, enhancing customer loyalty.
2. Comply with Data Privacy Laws
Security is paramount whether you are onboarding a customer or offboarding one.
Flourishing data privacy laws have exposed many small businesses to fines. In fact, even big players have not been spared, as you can see below.
Image via Statista
When you automate customer onboarding and offboarding processes, you can better protect your customers’ documents and data.
A customer onboarding and offboarding automation solution will organize sensitive data and customer files on a centralized platform. This means that you will no longer need to use emails or other unsecured tools to store customer data.
At the same time, the attack surface is reduced as there won’t be any manual intervention from your team.
Many automation solutions come with built-in security features, such as:
- Consent Capture: It records the day and time when the customer accepted your privacy policy and agreed to share data with you.
- Log File: Helps keep track of every single activity on your customer records
- Auto-deletion: You can schedule the automatic deletion of client records that no longer need to be stored by your business after offboarding.
In a nutshell, ensuring compliance with data privacy laws becomes a lot easier when you automate customer onboarding and offboarding processes.
3. Grow Your Company
47% of companies that use customer onboarding programs have grown to a company size of 100 or more.
And that points to one thing — automation is key to growing your business.
By automating repetitive tasks during the onboarding/offboarding process, your teams get more time for having strategic conversations with customers that need it.
Instead of sending repetitive introductory emails and trying to get customers to engage, focusing on helping customers increases customer satisfaction and engagement. You can have your team focus on more impactful tasks, such as strategic consultation.
When you automate customer onboarding and offboarding, you also reduce the risk of costly errors and unnecessary friction.
What’s more?
Automation can also help you decrease the size of your onboarding/offboarding team. This can help you use your resources for other valuable tasks. In both cases, you save on hiring costs.
This way, investing time and effort in identifying the processes to be automated can give you great rewards in the long run. As a result, you can scale your business more effectively than a situation where you’re trying to out-hire demand.
How do you know if it is time for you to automate customer onboarding and offboarding?
If you notice these signs, it is the right time.
Image via Frevvo
4. Improve the Sales Lifecycle
All businesses are looking for ways to close deals faster irrespective of the industry they operate in. The more sales you have, the faster you can grow.
Have you invested in the HubSpot alternatives CRM tools? With it, you can easily automate your sales lifecycle and get more customers onboarded quickly.
Sending your leads a secure invitation link is one simple way to get them onboard faster. You can set up triggers for these invitations too. As soon as the lead reaches a certain stage on your CRM, the invite link gets sent.
Here is an example:
Image via Appcues
We recommend choosing an automation tool that integrates with other tools your sales team may use, such as your e-commerce tools, sales CRM tools such as Copper sales CRM tool, customer success tools, and so on.
Training your teams to use such automation tools is also easy, thanks to various online course platforms out there on which you can create courses for them. This way, you can automate employee onboarding with ease and manage it with a smaller team.
5. Increase Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is the key to business success. When you automate customer onboarding and offboarding, your customers will have to spend less time waiting in the support pipeline. This increases their satisfaction with your product or service.
Even when a customer is terminating their account with you, quick responses and faster service ensures that the positive customer experience is maintained.
It increases the likelihood of your customers associating with you again, or referring your business to people they know.
And with automation tools, you can accomplish exactly that. When you automate customer onboarding and offboarding, you are basically giving your customers the reins.
Automation tools help you create personalized processes for each customer. You can give them the choice of how much or how little support they want to receive during the process.
For instance, a tech-savvy IT Manager may require a lot less technical support than a Bank Manager who is not very comfortable with technology.
Similarly, someone using your offerings for a side hustle may have different requirements than someone whose livelihood depends on it.
By allowing the customer to make the call, you show your customers that you care about their experience and want to make it customized for them.
Conclusion
Customer onboarding and offboarding are critical processes for any business. They can also be time-consuming and error-prone processes for companies that aren’t using automation.
An automation tool can automate customer onboarding and offboarding, making your customer experience much smoother. So, go ahead and start improving your process to retain customers and get more referrals.
