The worst place for you to drop the ball in your business processes is during the client onboarding phase. It is crucial to have a strong client onboarding process to make sure that your new customers feel well taken care of and secure in their investment in your services.
Many companies struggle with the client onboarding process because there are so many hands that have to touch this process. Your sales team closes the deal and then they pass the client off to the other teams in the company. For example, the finance team has to send the invoices, the administrative staff sets up the folders, and on to and operations manager to put things together for the fulfillment team, and so on. It is very critical to think through all of the details regarding what needs to be done, who is going to take on each part of the process, when each piece needs to be done and how to communicate all of these points to your internal team and to your new client in the best possible way.
In this post we are going to share 3 important questions to consider when onboarding a new client.
What do you need to do to get started with a new client?
Think about the contracts that need to be signed. Are there non-disclosure agreements that need to be sent? How will you invoice for the first payment. This part of the process can easily be automated so that it is nice and smooth and the customer feels well taken care of. One of my favorite tools for automating this part of the process is PandaDoc. I use it to handle my contracts and non-disclosures.
How are you going to communicate your onboarding process to the client?
I encourage you to send them a “What to Expect” email. Let them know what your team is going to be working on, what emails they should be looking for, and let them know if there is any specific vocabulary that is used by your team that they may not know.
What needs to happen on your administrative and fulfillment teams?
It’s also important to make sure that the communication with these teams is super clear and well coordinated so that the message is being passed down the line and everybody knows what to do with the new client that is being onboarded.
I have created a great free tool that will help you to think through each one of these steps in more detail. Using the tool you will outline who should be doing each task and what the timeframe will look like. Click Here to download the Client Onboarding Process Template.