By Brian Hartley
Throughout my career in Customer Success, I have been fortunate to manage the onboarding effort. This allowed me to learn first-hand the impact a positive onboarding experience could have on the customer. Since the very first step after the ink is dry is onboarding, onboarding is the “honeymoon” phase as the customer is still riding the high of purchasing your software and presumably had a very good sales experience. It is important for the onboarding efforts to sustain the momentum and build on the precedent the Sales team started.
I am going to share a few tips I have learned over the years (often the hard way) that helped our team build a strong bridge with our Sales counterpart. These are lessons I learned at small start-ups or in scale up mode. None of these are rocket science and are likely ones you have already deployed. Consistency is key if we as practitioners of the Customer Success function can continue to build on the great things we have done in the past, it will help to further define our purpose. I am going to break this blog out into people and process.
Process
1. 15-minute internal prep meeting, after the contract is signed.
a. This will allow for your Onboarding team to cover the basics with the account executive who sold the deal. This is an opportunity to ask about project specifics, personalities, any anomalies of the deal and to discuss initial success outcomes.
b. This practice gave the Onboarding team an opportunity to speak directly with their Sales counterparts prior to any customer call. As customers are anxious to get started, it is important to be in sync internally before starting the call.
2. As an Onboarding team, create a list of requirements that you can have your Sales counterpart populate with data. You can keep it brief as you don’t need an entire book written but ensure you hit the important pieces.
a. This extends beyond a basic contract. While your requirements document may include some components of the contract, there is likely a lot more you will want to understand prior to kicking off your project. This could include user license count, storage allotment, integration requests, milestone date the customer may be trying to achieve for launch, etc.
b. If you have a customer relationship management (CRM) or customer success platform (CSP) the list of requirements could be populated in either system. This is advantageous because you now have a data set tied to your customer alongside all the other data that will tie to it throughout the customer journey.
i. For example, at one stage in my career we created a custom implementation object in Salesforce.com. This tied to the account object, and we could then start to analyze time to go-live alongside revenue, support tickets and upsell opportunities.
People
1. Develop a good relationship with your Sales counterpart, and encourage members of your Onboarding team to do the same.
a. We are all working towards a common goal. While there are likely to be personality differences from the top down between the two departments, don’t let that be a barrier. A healthy relationship builds trust and empowers both teams to speak up when something seems out of place. If the trust and respect isn’t mutual, the bridge will be broken and not only will internal frustration ensue, your customers will likely suffer as a result.
i. This includes having honest conversations around when a kick-off call can and should realistically occur. The larger the company, the more anxious customers there are waiting to be onboarded. Before Sales sets a fast turnaround for a kick-off call, all parties need to agree prior to committing.
ii. If you lead an Onboarding team this could include talking to the Director of Sales if you feel members of his or her team are setting poor expectations with customers. You would also want this for your own team as well.
iii. Empower your individual contributors to work with one another to solve problems that arise during the onboarding. Escalating to managers each time consumes time and energy. If problems can be solved quickly out of the gate, everyone is a winner.
2. Establish a cadence between the Onboarding and Sales teams. Depending on the size of each team, you may consider a smaller audience. The meeting could only be 30 minutes and would allow for both teams to share pertinent updates.
a. For example, let’s assume a new user experience is being deployed. You will want to ensure that your Onboarding team is training in the new user experience once the Sales team begins to sell it. Failing to be organized on this effort could degrade the experience.
b. Or, your organization is growing really quickly and you can no longer leverage Slack for onboarding assignments. As the Onboarding team, you will want to ensure you have communicated to the Sales team, in advance, what the new process is for assignments.
As I mentioned up front, it is likely you are doing this and much more as you continue to build your relationship with the Sales team. As you get larger it will be important to evolve your process with the size of the team. Failing to set the foundation up front will lead to breakdown in process and employee frustration. On the flip side, if you learn from your mistakes and build for the future you can feel confident the “honeymoon” will continue throughout the onboarding journey.
The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that offers both CS Leadership and CSM Certification programs. Please visit TheSuccessLeague.io for our full offerings.
Brian Hartley - As Senior Director, Customer Success, Brian leads the customer success manager team at RFPIO Inc. He is responsible for creating outstanding and memorable user experiences through engagement, enablement and continuous support. He has been with RFP360 for 2.5 years (recently acquired by RFPIO) and 15 years of customer and client facing experience. In his free time he spends time with his three daughters, wife and dog.