Suppose you have a great product and you have successfully marketed it so that your audience is interested in getting their hands on it. But when the time comes to onboard these new users, you are facing numerous challenges that are stopping you from effective conversion. 

These challenges are frequent when acquiring new customers and bringing them up to speed on how to utilize your products correctly. So, it is important that you address these hurdles in a timely manner, ensuring smooth onboarding and better customer success. 

To help you with that, in this article, I’ll explore leading customer onboarding challenges that hinder your ability to streamline user onboarding, and how you can get over them to win new customers. Having said that, without further ado, let’s jump straight into it!

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Top customer onboarding issues and how to overcome them

Getting new customers and driving revenue for your business is exciting. That’s why making sure that you don’t miss out on a conversion opportunity at the last stage of the onboarding process. The first challenge to address is the lack of information. 

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Unavailability of correct information

Oftentimes, users might not give the right or necessary details at the time of onboarding, increasing the difficulty for your onboarding teams to smoothly onboard them. Sometimes, it is your reps who don’t have enough information about your product in order to onboard new customers. 

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How can you resolve this issue? 

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Make sure that your customer-onboarding teams are fully informed about all the features and functionality of your product, making sure they can answer any questions that customers might have. Put in place a process where information about new features and product updates are conveyed properly to ensure every member is up to date with the latest changes. 

Now comes the part of understanding customer needs. Asking relevant questions when you interact with customers will give you insights into the problems they might be facing. For example, asking leading questions will get you the most information out of your customers. These questions can be like: 

• Are you currently using any platform? If yes, why are you looking to switch to another one?
• What are you thinking of achieving with our platform?
• Are you facing a particular problem that is stopping you from driving business success?

Asking these questions and listening to the answers from customers, will give you a clear understanding of what you should aim to achieve in terms of onboarding. 

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Long onboarding processes

If you are making new users jump through multiple hoops before they can start using your product, then it’s most likely that they will give up midway. Users are looking for value for their time and if your onboarding process is too lengthy, there is a possibility that they will lose interest in your company. 

Also, keep in mind that onboarding doesn’t mean simply signing up new customers for your product. Onboarding is considered finished when a user can utilize your platform on its own for their day-to-day operations. 

So make sure that your onboarding process is optimized. Create self-help content like product guides, documentation, and help articles to allow customers to learn more about how to use your product. 

On top of that, take advantage of digital adoption platforms to help you provide in-app training to new signups directly within the product, thereby reducing the likelihood of them reaching out to your customer support team. 

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Simplify your products

If you have a complex product by nature or if you are working in a niche that many people are unaware of, it will be challenging to onboard customers. So, to reduce the learning curve of using your product, try to simplify your offerings, making them more user-friendly. 

To do that, you have to leverage product feedback to get useful data to improve your product and make it more easy for users.

Another thing you can do to ensure product intuitiveness, is to create product videos or demonstrations to explain complex features and functionality. This way, you can reduce the need for constant support, resulting in lower burden on your service teams. 

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Technical difficulties 

Since most of the work these days happens virtually, it is common to run into technical difficulties during the onboarding process. At that time, it can be frustrating for you and the user to complete the onboarding, and once the process is interrupted, it can be very difficult to get the process back on track. Additionally, once the process is obstructed, customers also lose confidence in your product. 

So, to ensure that these glitches do not stop you from getting conversions, train your service reps to have the necessary information to tackle these issues immediately and ensure smooth completion of the onboarding process. 

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Ineffective communication

Being an online platform, your customer base spans all over the world, and onboarding international customers comes with a different set of challenges. This includes communication barriers. If your onboarding teams are unable to properly converse with customers, it can lead to frustrating situations, both for your reps and users. 

In fact, according to Statista, 27% of customers consider lack of effectiveness in customer service the biggest factor of frustration. 

So, to resolve this issue, give your onboarding teams the required resources or training to handle global customers in their native language. Plus, offer tailored onboarding experiences to your customers by providing help articles in different languages, allowing them to understand your product without going through the hassle of translation. 

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Helpful documentation & knowledge bases

In a study, it was found that 86% of users have a higher chance of increased brand loyalty if they are provided with informational onboarding resources. On top of offering these resources, it is equally important to make them easily accessible. 

Provide a clear navigation to the help section for your product, enabling new customers to learn more about it and start maximizing their ROI. For example, if you are looking to optimize SaaS customer onboarding, ensure that your app consists of a visible link to your knowledge bases and provide the same for your website as well. 

Additionally, craft your help articles in such a way that even a person with no technical background can understand how to use your product. Also, include complete information about every function and option in your knowledge base. This way, you can mitigate confusion, letting your customers start using the product at its full potential quickly. 

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Time-to-time follow ups

After successfully onboarding users, it’s crucial to send timely follow-ups to ensure customer success and build trusted relationships that help you in the long run. 

Instead of manually following up with customers, it would be a better idea to automate your outreach in order to not put additional strain on your support teams. To achieve that, you can leverage numerous sales automation tools present in the market. 

For instance, Zixflow is an AI-powered engagement platform that lets you automate your follow-ups by building custom workflows to engage your onboarded customers. 

With its code-free builder and clean user interface, it’s very easy to get started with the solution and maintain a constant line of communication between you and your customers. 

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Customer churn 

Although customer churn is not directly related to the problems faced at the time of onboarding, it’s still critical to consider this aspect when thinking of acquiring new customers. If you are seeing an increase in the number of customers who stopped using your product, then you have to take quick action to understand the root cause and fix it on priority. 

The common reason for this to happen is the inability to understand the features, value, and importance of a product during the initial stage of using the product independently. If the user doesn’t feel like the product can help them solve their problems or achieve their goals, the probability of them keep using or spending time understanding the product is low. 

This is because 63% of users think that the onboarding process is the major deciding factor for them to continue using a product or upgrade to the premium tier. 

So, to ensure that customers don’t feel that your product is not adding value to their life, create a comprehensive profile of each customer and learn more about their specific needs. Once you have a solid idea of customer expectations, you can tailor your pitch to address those key points by portraying how your product’s features can help them meet their objectives. 

Even after that if a prospect decides to not go further with subscribing to your product, don’t take it personally. Instead, act as a trusted advisor in guiding them in the right direction by using your industry expertise. This way, you will leave a positive impression that can allow you to get a bigger conversion down the line. 

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Handle customer onboarding challenges like a pro and boost customer success effectively

Knowing what your customers are expecting out of your products is the first step in overcoming onboarding hurdles and delivering value throughout the customer journey. 

By going through the challenges I have mentioned above and preparing for each of them, will allow you to better streamline your onboarding process, reducing the likelihood of losing an opportunity for a conversion. 

It’s always better to have a solid onboarding procedure in place, where your reps are trained to troubleshoot any issue. Doing so will not drive revenue, but also boost customer satisfaction and loyalty towards your business. 

Truly a win-win situation!