- by Carmen Apostu
- Posted August 22, 2016
Onboarding processes are critical to the success of SaaS companies. Check our first blog post of the series to see how high touch onboarding and integrations contribute to customer success.
“40-60% of users who sign up for a free trial of your software or SaaS application will use it once and never come back…” – software entrepreneur Patrick McKenzie.
In fact, the onboarding process has become so important to decrease churn rates and increase customer satisfaction, that more companies are investing their resources in finding the “magic formula” for onboarding success.
Of course, this magic formula is not magical at all, but an in-depth, extensive effort. It starts with establishing your business goals, how you want to position your product/service, who your ideal customer is, etc.
Ultimately you’ll have to determine whether a high touch, a low touch or a hybrid approach better fits your business. We’ve already discussed the first approach in detail, so let’s focus on low touch onboarding and how integrations can make it easier and more efficient.
What is Low Touch Onboarding?
The main characteristic of low touch onboarding is its one-to-many approach of customer interaction. It focuses on minimizing human interaction with customers and replacing it with automated processes. These processes include marketing/email campaigns, automated measurement and exception handling of early adoption indicators, automated training for the customer, among others.
This type of onboarding is most common with simpler product/service offerings that rely on many “lower value” users, instead of a few “high value” ones. Therefore, the process is a lot less about building relationships, and more about creating velocity.
In theory, it would be ideal to have an account manager devoted to each setup and onboarding process, however, what happens if you’re selling a product for $10 dollars a month?
However, this doesn’t mean you can’t run a successful SaaS business worth millions of dollars. Companies like Buffer, Mailchimp or Basecamp are clear examples of low touch onboarding done right, in order to sustain highly profitable businesses.
Making Automation Easier With Integrations
The ability to automate processes effectively is key to the success of a low touch onboarding approach, and intelligent integrations are key to a successful automation process.
Building integrations allow organizations to connect systems internally and externally, including the automation of management, operational, and supporting processes.
This is especially important in low touch onboarding, because its success relies in the effectiveness of its automated processes.
With the constant flow of new customer data to and from different systems, integrations give businesses an edge over competitors as they can focus more of their time and energy on driving new business, instead of worrying about data integration.
In other words, the key to low touch onboarding success is to integrate different web apps in a cohesive way that gets them working together. This will, in turn, allow users to have a more seamless experience and an easier time setting up the product on their own.
Marketing and Customer Success
In low touch onboarding processes, it is still key to help your new user understand the value of your product as soon as possible. Considering you will not be in direct contact with your users as often throughout the onboarding process, it is important to take advantage of integrations to build social proof and enhance your marketing efforts.
The use of marketing automation makes processes that would have otherwise been performed manually much more efficient, and makes new processes possible.
Additionally, by successfully integrating your marketing and analytics software, you can make sure that your brand is delivering the right messages to your users at the right time in their onboarding journeys, which will directly affect their overall experience.
Interested in finding out how you can use integrations to make your customers happier?