Client Onboarding Workflow
Jonathan D. Rhyne
Ensuring a positive customer onboarding experience is critical to ensuring a smooth onboarding workflow for new clients and new projects and to ultimately ensuring customer satisfaction goals are reached.
What is the Client Onboarding Process?
The client onboarding process sets the foundation for the ongoing relationship between the client and the vendor. It is the critical step where client and project information is collected for use throughout a project lifecycle and customer expectations are set appropriately. Stakeholders in the process may include client-facing team members but also members of the marketing, sales, customer success, operations, and finance teams.
With the proper tools, the onboarding workflow can be standardized and streamlined, and critical data and information become more accurate. This helps guard against downstream workflow issues and provides a better way of setting expectations.
Client Account Onboarding Form
The client onboarding process usually begins with an information form completed by the client or the vendor (or both). The gathered data on a client questionnaire may include the following:
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Client point of contact
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Additional client contacts information
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Executive sponsors and stakeholders
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Account setup details and requirements
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Billing information
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Contracts
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Addresses
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Project information (if it is project-based)
In some cases, the client onboarding form may be completed directly by the client in an online portal that walks them through the process and ensures relevant details and documents/files are collected. In other cases a staff member at the vendor may be completing the form, in which case, additional internal information may be captured upfront, including:
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Cost estimates
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Hours estimates
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Project type
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Project group
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Channel director
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Product owner
Client Intake Process Routing
Depending on the complexity of the client onboarding and intake process and the size of the teams involved, there may be more to the routing of collected information than simply populating a CRM or ERP system. There may be additional reviews, intake forms, a client onboarding checklist, approvals, a kickoff call, etc., that need to be deployed internally to ensure what the client expects—a smooth rollout.
Below is an example of one client onboarding process that is project-based. This organization is a large technology and management consulting firm that needed to streamline the project onboarding process for new clients while ensuring that all the proper steps were taken and accountable. Note the approvals and hand-offs have been automated to ensure a compliant and consistent workflow.
Don’t Get Your Business Off on the Wrong Foot with New Clients: Why a Good Client Onboarding Process Matters
An effective client intake process seems like an easy win with real long-term value, so why don’t more companies adopt a consistent, automated process for new customers? Sometimes, the onboarding process isn’t tied to critical metrics like customer churn, lifetime value, time to value, and customer success criteria.
From Marketing to Sales to Operations and Support, teams need to ensure proper, consistent hand-offs, but they also need to realize that their ability to perform well impacts the entire customer value chain. Organizations can instill this message by creating dashboards for critical metrics and sharing them with everyone involved in the customer journey.
By then tying those metrics to team performance, everyone can see the impact of their work on organizational outcomes. Without a trackable process, tying performance to outcomes is very difficult. By using an automated workflow platform like Nutrient Workflow, you can improve the client onboarding process and your ability to measure it.
Interested in Automating Your Client Account Onboarding Process?
To ensure your process for onboarding new customers meets your organization’s needs and delivers the level of customer satisfaction you expect to provide, the best approach is building a customized process. Nutrient Workflow offers a completely scalable and customizable platform for building forms, processes, and portals for client intake or any other workflow needs you have.
We have a variety of resources to help you on your journey to an automated onboarding workflow.
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Workflow Automation Tools and eBooks
Jonathan joined Nutrient in 2014. As CEO, Jonathan defines the company’s vision and strategic goals, bolsters the team culture, and steers product direction. When he’s not working, he enjoys being a dad, photography, and soccer.
