The customer journey is made up of multiple touchpoints, and the experience at each one must meet or exceed expectations for brands and marketers to be able to move possible buyers along to the next one. A lot of attention lately has been given to the post-purchase stage, where many customers have faced the most frustrating problems with customer service. But new research from collaborative customer onboarding and PSA platform Rocketlane turns the attention to the evolving landscape of customer onboarding.
The firm’s new State of Customer Onboarding 2024 report delves into this topic and reveals the top challenges for onboarding teams. From streamlining processes to enhancing customer experiences, the report offers invaluable insights for customer service and onboarding leaders striving to drive meaningful value for their clients.
“More organizations are now tracking the time invested by their onboarding and implementation teams,” said Rocketlane CEO Srikrishnan Ganesan, in a news release. “This trend underscores the growing significance of bandwidth and cost considerations in onboarding processes, driven by the CFO’s need to assess expenses and gather comprehensive data for staffing decisions. It’s not surprising that companies are also charging for implementations today—it brings the right intensity and seriousness around the activity and that leads to faster go lives.”
Key highlights from the 2024 report include:
- 60 percent of teams have established or are in the process of setting up dedicated onboarding functions, signaling the growing recognition of onboarding as a distinct and strategic function.
- 42 percent of companies now charge for their implementations, indicating a shift in perception where onboarding is seen as a revenue source rather than just a cost center.
- Respondents emphasize the need to automate follow-ups, reminders, and reporting, with a growing interest in integrating AI into everyday onboarding activities.
- Over 70 percent of onboarders prioritize streamlining implementation processes and enhancing customer experience as their main goals for the year.
These insights underscore the critical role of customer onboarding in driving revenue growth and enhancing customer satisfaction in today’s landscape.
“I’m invigorated to see an increasing focus on initial value delivery and value expansion, rather than solely product implementation,” customer onboarding expert Donna Weber says in the report. “2024 is the year for teams to move away from running as cost centers to charging for crucial onboarding services to keep customers accountable and empower customer onboarding teams to drive increasing value.”
“Automation and standardization as a top goal also acts as an important reinforcement that companies are looking to bring more consistency in how they execute—which in turn impacts time-to-value and cost of onboarding,” Ganesan added.
Download the full report here.
The report draws insights from over 850+ onboarding professionals from companies like Salesforce, Hubspot, ZoomInfo, Freshworks, and Front.
