Strategies: Client Onboarding & Retention

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When you are onboarding a new client, whether it's for a digital product, a service, or even when launching a new feature or product, you often have to consider two key things: 1) What channels will you use to communicate, educate, and engage with your clients, and 2) What activities and types of communication will you use in each phase of the process. It seems simple, but this is actually a complex process with multiple decisions to make and often requires experimenting to figure out what works best.
If you are working on client onboarding, this tool is for you. It will guide you through the process and help you collaborate with your team. On the right side, you’ll find some common phases, from making the first impression to creating clients who will recommend your brand. At the top, you’ll see some of the most commonly used channels during the onboarding process, but you can customize these by adding or removing channels as needed.
At the bottom, for each channel, you’ll assign at least one person who is accountable for managing it. On the right side, there's a section to define how you will measure success. We will get to that in a moment.
How do you use this tool? First, discuss with your team if all these channels make sense for your specific process. Replace any channels you won’t use with ones that are more relevant, or remove unnecessary ones altogether. Do the same for the phases-organize the process based on your needs. For example, we often adapt this tool to follow the typical buyer's journey. Once you’ve made these decisions, think about what you’ll do in each phase.
Let’s say in the first phase, when you're trying to influence how users perceive your product or new feature, they’ll likely be interacting with the product, maybe creating an account. In this case, your key channels could be the product itself and email. Here, you’ll describe the overall strategy. What will the in-product welcome message look like? What kind of email will the user receive once they start using the product? This is where you outline the strategy and how it helps guide the user in the right direction.
If you have specific details, you can add a link to a document. But for now, this space is for an overview. You can also use this space to brainstorm with your team, adding sticky notes and voting on ideas.
Once you’ve covered the first phase, move to the next. Go through the same process: decide which channels are best for that phase and outline the overall strategy. Continue this for each phase. Afterward, assign ownership for each channel and define who is responsible for implementation.
If you wish, you can also define key metrics you’ll monitor to evaluate the success of your strategies. In this section, you’ll describe each key metric, noting current results and your expectations. For example, if you expect a 10% increase in sales over the next three months, you’d add the current average monthly sales here and your projected average after three months.
This space can also be used to track improvements and test how small changes affect your revenue and customer acquisition.
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