Customer Onboarding Checklist
Overview
Onboarding is so much more than just going live with your product. In fact, onboarding
customers is the most important part of the customer journey because when you carefully
monitor and engage customers throughout rollout, you’re on a path to a lucrative customer
relationship.
Use this valuable checklist to guide your customers along an orchestrated onboarding journey
that decreases customer time to first value, maximizes customer lifetime value, and increases
customer retention.
What is
Orchestrated
Onboarding?
Orchestrated Onboarding means delivering a proactive and prescriptive process to familiarize
new customers with your products and services. The Orchestratred Onboarding framework,
shown below, includes six key stages to guide your customers to success.
The Orchestrated Onboarding Framework
Learn about Orchestrated Onboarding.
Pre-Sales
During the buyer journey you sell and market the value of your Customer Success and
onboarding programs, even before the deal is closed.
❑ We have customer-facing collateral highlighting the value of our customer onboarding
program and services
❑ Sales reps set customer expectations by talking about customer onboarding before the
deal closes
Learn about the Embark stage.
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Deal Close
After the deal closes it is critical to make a positive first impression and align internal teams
and customers for the journey ahead.
❑ We have an internal handoff meeting with the pre-sales and post-sales teams to hand
over the customer relationship
❑ We share important details about the customer relationship and not just what was
purchased
❑ We have a strategic customer handoff meeting to formally transition the relationship to the
Customer Success teams, and to align the customer teams on their desired business
outcomes
❑ We create a success plan with customers to validate their desired business outcomes,
determine roles and responsibilities, and to define a risk management and escalation plan
❑ We determine quick wins for customers to reach during onboarding
❑ We schedule the Executive Business Review while business sponsors are on the customer
handoff meeting
Learn about the Handoff stage.
Kickoff
After handoffs, you kick off the implementation and detail all that’s needed for your product
to successfully go live.
❑ We refrain from diving into technical weeds during our kickoff meeting
❑ We provide an overview of working through the onboarding and implementation plans
❑ We keep customers accountable for their parts of the onboarding journey
Learn about the Kickoff stage.
Go Live
Set your customer and your users up for success before, during, and after your product is
deployed.
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We focus on delivering value as quickly as possible
We keep customers accountable throughout the implementation process
We deliver a one-to-many approach to enable new and existing users
We have tools to provide customers visibility into the onboarding process
Learn about the Adopt stage.
Review
Do you know how customers perceive your onboarding approach? Ask them! It’s important to
learn from your customers how things on going as their onboarding wraps up.
❑ We measure customer satisfaction at the end of the onboarding period to keep learning
and improving our onboarding programs
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❑ We review and update the success plan, update any objectives, note quick wins achieved,
and metrics of success
❑ We let our customers do most of the talking during the review meeting to learn about their
current challenges and opportunities
❑ We partner for strategic solutions with our customers
Learn about the Review stage.
Expansion
Onboarding is not one and done. To ensure continuous value for your customers and higher
customer lifetime value for you, consider a customer journey that engages existing customers
and users and increases customer maturity in your product.
❑ We provide proactive guidance to customers throughout their lifetime
❑ We hold strategic review meetings at a cadence that works for our customers
❑ We define a customer maturity model and help customers maximize their value with our
product
❑ We onboard and enable new users and organizations within existing accounts
❑ We onboard users to new features and products
Learn about the Expand stage.
About Donna
Weber
Donna Weber is the world’s leading expert in customer
onboarding. For more than two decades, she’s helped high-growth
startups and established enterprises create customers for life. Her
award-winning book is Onboarding Matters: How Successful
Companies Transform New Customers Into Loyal Champions.
Learn more at donnaweber.com.
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