New clients. What does a company so right after signing a new client? Well, we do not know about practices implemented by B2B companies around the world, but SupportYourApp starts client support onboarding process.
What’s Onboarding?
Onboarding is a term describing internal company processes that is initiated right after the client is signed. Onboarding can define what the future relationship is going to look like. To put in a different perspective — successful onboarding is critical, as it is a perfect possibility for the client to see how the company operates and how fast and efficient the team can deal with the new tasks. No pressure, right?
We can say this — there is no point in downplaying the importance of the onboarding process for the new clients. Developing and implementing it is not an easy task. And we at SupportYourApp are glad to share our experience and our recipe to successful onboarding of the clients.
What Are the Special Ingredients to SupportYourApp Client Onboarding?
1. 🎨 We customize everything
Two simple words — client-oriented. There. That is a perfect way to describe onboarding of the new clients in SupportYourApp.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to onboarding new clients. Why? Well, every client wants to meet different goals and expects different things from the partnership. This means that there cannot be two similar customers, even if they are operating in the same segment. As a result, the approach to onboarding is totally different as well.
2. ✅ We try to check all the boxes — literally
When onboarding a new client, it is important to understand and cover all their needs. For that purpose, one of our first interactions with them is setting up a checklist of what needs to be done for the client to feel comfortable and taken care of. What do they want from their customer support team? What tools do they want to use? Do they want to integrate with our in-house tailored QCRM?
In short, the list was tailored to get the answers needed not only to set up the best support team possible but also to achieve success in the future.
3. 👩👨 We know — 2 heads are better than 1
How can we ensure that we cover all the professional needs of the new clients? Well, we assign two people — Integration and Delivery managers.
While we may go on and on about their individual tasks, it is better to concentrate on what their joined efforts are going for the onboarding process. Their collaboration makes the following processes run smoother and faster:
- Developing a knowledge base and facilitate the communication of every team with all the other departments.
- Teaching all the members of the support team the product and making sure that the knowledge base is up to date.
- Providing all the necessary KPIs and even doing some additional tasks in order to ensure that the UX is high.
- Making sure that the process of onboarding, teaching and QCRM systems integration runs smoothly and quickly.
4. 🏄 We hire and onboard new consultants
SupportYourApp is providing its services to over 100 clients from more than 35 countries. We have clients all around. And we do not expect each of them to come visiting us and helping us to comprise their support team. So, we look and teach the consultants for each of the projects, and we do not stop the process, even if everyone in SupportYourApp is working remotely.
Surely, we never make a final decision without client's approval. Their comfort is a number one priority for us, so the client is always the one who approves of every new consultant for their projects. This way, when the team is ready to start supporting a new product, the client is already familiar and comfortable with every single one of them.
5. 🕔 We set a trial period
On average onboarding clients which we just signed up takes 20-24 days. This is how much time it takes to integrate all the communication systems into QCRM, hire, onboard and teach all the consultants and start answering the tickets sent by end users. This is how much time is needed in order for us to set up a team providing high customer service quality.
As quality of onboarding directly impacts the success of the project, we charge our clients not earlier than the first ticked resolved by the team
6. 🤓 We follow up on the consultants’ knowledge
Even though it seems that we have left tests and quizzes at school, that is not the case. SupportYourApp regularly conducts check-ups of consultants’ knowledge of the product. We want their knowledge base to stay fresh and up-to-date and various tests using Google Forms and good-old talks with the supervisors help us with this task.
What About Remote?
The world is drowning in the word that seems to be everywhere now — ‘remote’. With 88 percent around the world encouraging their workers to stay at home during the COVID-19 epidemic, the amount of people working remotely has increased by approximately 39 percent.
❗ But wait! What about all the processes we just described? Is it possible to successfully onboard new clients while working remotely? Well sure! And we continue to successfully onboard the clients while in remote mode.
Yes, you read it right — it is possible not only to provide services and support clients while working on remote, but also to be onboarding the new clients. But how?
- We never lose communication with any of the clients, regardless, whether they are just onboarding or have been with us for years.
- We trace our tasks and their urgency. Asana and regular meetings via Zoom and Google Hangouts help us establish good communication within the team and with all the clients.
- We do not lose the pace of the process: we continue hiring and onboarding new consultants, conduct integration process, set up QCRM and all the other tools needed to be efficient. Remote customer service doesn’t change anything for us.
As you can see, SupportYourApp’s process of the new client onboarding has been in development for years. And with every new client we continue to develop and perfect it, even though we are already in a pretty sweet spot when it comes to client onboarding.
