In the joy of a brand new undertaking, it is simple to overlook the entire little particulars to get a consumer arrange. Having a documented onboarding course of makes your life a lot simpler. You get purchasers on top of things sooner, showcase your organizational expertise, and save psychological area for the work purchasers employed you to do.
Client onboarding guidelines
I've onboarded lots of of purchasers in my time, so that can assist you streamline your day by day to-do listing, I've created a consumer onboarding guidelines (click on that hyperlink or the picture under for the Google Docs template) for freelancers and businesses, masking six important administrative areas.
Make a duplicate, personalize it, and reference it each time you land a brand new consumer. But first, learn on for extra particulars on every step.
If you wish to streamline your workflow much more, you may automate your consumer onboarding. As we break down every step of the onboarding course of, we'll supply some recommendations on how one can put your operation on autopilot.
1. Send welcome paperwork
This is fairly meta, however step one in your buyer onboarding template is onboarding new clients. Kicking off the undertaking with a heat welcome begins the connection on a constructive be aware and units expectations.
There are two sides to welcoming your consumer: sending details about you and gathering details about them. Sending a ready welcome doc to each new consumer helps you to reply steadily requested questions upfront. Use the doc to stipulate your course of, introduce your workforce, and remind purchasers of your fee phrases.
This can be the purpose the place you'd ship purchasers an consumption kind to get undertaking particulars or entry to paperwork. To make this step even simpler, embody a hyperlink to the consumption kind in your welcome doc. Then, you may automate the method of getting a notification any time a consumer completes your kind.
2. Get your authorized geese in a row
The much less you could take into consideration contracts within the onboarding course of, the higher. Having a longtime settlement and NDA course of additionally makes it clear you are on high of every part, even when your left eye is twitching from an excessive amount of espresso.
Your buyer onboarding course of will range a bit on this step of the template, relying on who holds the contract. Sometimes, your consumer's firm has an NDA or contract from the authorized workforce that they need you to signal. If that is the case, you must await the consumer to provoke this step—or nudge them to take action.
I extremely advocate automating your contracts. Take a have a look at Zapier's listing of the very best eSignature apps for some solutions on the very best apps to make use of, after which handle the signature course of routinely: you may simply arrange automations to arrange paperwork for brand new purchasers, ship follow-up emails, get alerts for accomplished signatures, and extra.
And even when your app of selection saves the contracts inside its system, be sure to save copies of all agreements in your consumer/undertaking administration app as nicely.
3. Prepare to receives a commission
Doing a bit of little bit of administrative work upfront will get you set as much as receives a commission on time.
Similar to your authorized onboarding duties, your monetary steps may range based mostly on the consumer. For instance, you doubtless have your personal accounting or bill software program to handle, however you may have to work inside your consumer's fee platform of selection.
There may additionally be tax duties to handle, like sending a W-9. And you will wish to have a central location the place you log agreed-upon charges for purchasers (if there's any variation). If you require a deposit or fee upfront, now could be the time to set that up, too.
If you wish to make bookkeeping simpler (and fewer vulnerable to human error), you may join your fee processor to your accounting app. This means, revenue monitoring is automated, and you may keep away from manually transferring numbers between apps.
4. Open the communication traces
Any company or freelancer that is ever handled a clingy consumer or a ghosting collaborator is aware of the significance of communication. In addition to setting expectations round response instances, it helps to ascertain communication channels proper from the beginning.
Ideally, you and your consumer have the identical most popular communication channel. In that case, there will not be a lot setup wanted. If you're employed throughout instruments, although, it's possible you'll have to get arrange on a consumer's chat app or invite them to yours.
Creating a particular folder, channel, or label for the brand new consumer in your inbox or chat app helps you keep organized. And if there are nonetheless some particulars to type out, use this step of the consumer onboarding template to schedule a kickoff name.
5. Set up your undertaking plan
Now that you've got nearly completed onboarding your consumer, it is time to get set as much as work.
First, you could create an area in your undertaking administration workflow for the brand new consumer. This may very well be a brand new Google Drive folder or Notion web page, a board on Trello or monday.com, or something in between. The steps you could take so as to add a brand new consumer workspace will range based mostly in your undertaking administration instrument of selection, so be sure to customise the guidelines accordingly.
Note: you may additionally be requested to affix your consumer's undertaking supervisor too. It's not best to be working inside a number of instruments, I do know, but it surely's the character of the beast.
You'll additionally need a method to observe and assign particular duties, and add due dates if in case you have any. If you wish to maintain your purchasers or teammates within the loop, you should utilize automation to ship undertaking updates as messages in your chat app or in any other case automate your undertaking administration workflows.
6. Share your masterpiece
No matter what service you are offering, you will doubtless have some recordsdata to share, whether or not it is a pitch deck, an article draft, a personalised health plan, or something in between. So all that is left to do is ship it to the consumer—after which refresh your e mail time and again as you await suggestions.
You can wait till the work is full to care for this step, or you are able to do it earlier on within the course of.
You may need a separate folder or workspace the place client-ready recordsdata reside. If you go that route, you may invite purchasers to that area at first of a undertaking after which alert them if you add a brand new file (and you may automate your file administration to make that occur routinely). Alternatively, it's possible you'll select to "flip the switch" on the finish and activate view or edit entry as soon as a undertaking is able to share.
Automate your consumer onboarding course of with Zapier
Most of the steps required to carry a brand new buyer on board do not require revolutionary thought. These forms of repetitive admin duties are the right candidates for automation.
If you wish to streamline your consumer onboarding workflow, you should utilize Zapier to attach your favourite apps. Start by selecting one step in your onboarding movement to automate, and go from there. Automating even just a few steps in your course of can clear up psychological area for extra high-impact duties.
This article was initially revealed in July 2021 and has since been up to date.
