Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid in Customer Onboarding for Saas Companies
- Ivy Lobo
- Jun 11
- 10 min read
Updated: Oct 1
For a SaaS company, nothing is more thrilling than putting the final touches on a new product and watching your vision come to life.
However, this excitement can be overwhelming and sometimes even a trap! By focusing all your energy on perfecting your product, you might overlook a critical element of its success—the onboarding process.
You may have heard of or experienced common mistakes that many SaaS companies make during customer onboarding, leading to customer churn and even cancellations.
Keep these mistakes in mind when onboarding new customers. If you're encountering these issues, this blog is designed just for you.
Let's get started with onboarding.
1. Trying to Convince.
Even the most doubtful customers recognize the value of a meaningful experience. What turns them away are exaggerated promises. Therefore, when onboarding new customers, keep in mind that it's not about showcasing your features or the benefits they receive. It's about how effortlessly they can use your product.
When writing about your product, it's tempting to use adjectives like "breathtaking" or "groundbreaking." However, try to avoid this pitfall—your customers may not perceive the value of your product as you envision it.
So, be straightforward & precise about what all customers are getting out from using your product. Make them have a vision about their future wins.
Avoid using too many marketing lines in the initial stage of SaaS customer onboarding. Try to stick with real-time customer assistance, know-how are they experiencing the product use, and figure out if there are friction points.
For example, HelloBonsai makes it fun for freelancers managing it all! One of the many struggles that freelancers often face is management. Bonsai is very peculiar about how new customers are relating to their product and identifying the rights knots?
Customers often envision how your proposed solution can transform their current challenges, imagining themselves in that future state. Bonsai helps new customers see the bigger picture.
Recognition of the Problem - Unstructured Work Ethics.
A Comprehensive Solution-based Process. (From Proposal to Tax Season)
Your onboarding doesn't need to emphasize the benefits customers might gain from your product. Once you understand your customer, guide them through the journey, showing them their first success! This approach is more effective than relying solely on your features to persuade them.
2. Assuming Customer’s Win.
You possess all the necessary information: customer behavior demographics, analytics-driven predictions, and even graphs demonstrating initial success. But what if your customer doesn't know what they want?
Your customer knows how to sign up, use your product, or, if they're satisfied, spread the word about your company. However, they aren't aware of what their winning situation will be. They understand the solution your product provides through experience, but are they envisioning it while using it?
This is the bridge that connects imagination and desires! Your information is only as valuable as their uncertain desire regarding how it would be with your product.
So, what is your customers' win?
When a new customer learns about your product, it essentially means they know how to use it. Yet, this isn't enough for them to start conceptualizing.
It's within the environment—the thoughts that emerge, the mindset, the emotional balance that sparks imagination.
No stressed or even relieved mind contemplates any software or its appealing UX once they’ve finished using it. It is the relaxed state of mind that recalls their experience with your product.
Then they begin to imagine—how burdensome it would be without your product, how smoothly things went, how they succeeded elsewhere because your product saved them extra effort.
This is the stage of acknowledgment!
When onboarding your customers, it becomes crucial to identify individual user success. Some may be satisfied with the basics, while others need premium features to achieve their goals.
Road Map to Your Customer’s First Win.
Your onboarding process should concentrate on empowering various customers based on their achievements:
Segment your audience!
Develop a Customized Environment.
Establish Objectives. (Daily, weekly, and monthly)
Tailor your content specifically. (Provide what they desire)
Offer incentives. (Gamification - trophies, stars, even perks)
Support them. (Train your customer support team & utilize technology)
Solicit feedback & Enhance. (Contact them through emails or calls)
3. Over-Automating Support.
When your customers face issues while using your product - they are probably looking out on google to assist with suitable solutions - Surrounded by tons of different opinions and methods to solve one problem - they are inevitably confused about whom to choose.
But why did they choose to google it rather than relying on the experts (you) to solve it?
In a recent analysis done by Microsoft, it came out that few reasons are causing this customer frustration to another level:
Source: Microsoft
Let us take an example. Your customer is a salesperson - an information digger, an analytical mind, and a soccer player. S/he employs CRM Software to reach his potential customers & engage across networks. While using CRM, he experienced issues regarding email services - Responsible for n number of emails per day - s/he hurries & reaches out to the IT guy.
When things went too stretchy for him - he chose to tackle on his own.
Minor glitches should not deter you from utilizing technology in customer support; rather, it's important to prioritize your customers' urgency to find the right assistant.
Over-reliance on automated customer support can lead your customers to believe:
They are all treated the same.
You are not following up to understand their experiences.
Your team and channels operate in isolation, hindering the creation of a seamless experience.
Email is your primary communication channel.
You cannot anticipate when they might leave.
You are focusing on measuring and optimizing the omnichannel customer experience.
4. Ignoring the Slow Load Times.
According to the Radware case study - even just a 2-sec delay in the load time can lead to a page abandonment rate of up to 87% approx. The faster your load time is - the happier your customer gets as they can solve their problem without any unnecessary wait time.
In your perspective, when you optimize your web page’s load time, you can expect to see an improvement in your user’s experience (UX), conversion rate, and ultimately, sales revenue.
You can always use external 3rd party tools to monitor your application and webpage performance - here are a few frontend performances monitoring cloud-based technology that you can use:
5. Unable to Follow Up.
You have onboarded your customers successfully - prepared the needed environment, enabled them initially in ‘how-to’ product tour, even managed to show them their first win.
Still, after some time - they lose interest, that long-sighted vision that once compelled them to keep progressing with your product - vanished - why?
A study by Harvard Business Review found that 56% of customers complain about poor customer follow-up.
Because of poor customer follow-up - your customers are feeling left behind in a clueless pit of information. That once they used to imagine it as a resource - has now become a task.
To keep your customers intact with their choice of experience, it is a must that you constantly stick with them while they are progressing each day. It gives them two things:
You are working with your customers.
Interactive customers experience.
To help you get along with your customers and create an effective follow-up process, here are few email templates that you can use for your customers:
1. How Did We Do?
Each time your customers reach out to your support team regarding their queries, they expect a quick, reliable, and empathetic response.
Once you have resolved their queries - you can use this template to assure your customer satisfaction.
Ensure you establish an accessible backchannel, such as customer care contact or a 24/7 responsive email, so customers feel they have dependable support.
2. Survey - Slack, Follow Up.
Sending a follow-up email with a rating is an excellent method for maintaining contact with a large number of customers. However, if you're seeking more in-depth feedback or customer responses, including a survey in the follow-up email is necessary.
The insights you gain about areas for improvement or the most valuable aspects of your product will depend on the questions you ask your customers.
If you're uncertain about what to ask your customers, here are several sets of generalized survey questions to help you get started:
Are you happy with the services that we are providing?
Were your queries resolved quickly?
What is that one thing that we can do better?
Was the service helpful?
Did we meet your expectations?
Ensure you craft questions that address what you need to know from the customer's perspective. Customers will only respond to your survey if they believe your intentions are genuine.
6. Delayed Response to Queries
Imagine being in a client meeting, anxiously waiting for that crucial industrial report you left on your desk in the morning rush. Every second feels like an eternity, doesn't it?
This is exactly how your customers feel when they submit a query or request—sending all the details and then just waiting! The response they receive could either drive them away or win them over.
If there is already a delay in responsiveness, customers are likely to become frustrated. This can lead to a high number of tickets being raised or even result in losing customers.
Communication serves as a vital tool in SaaS onboarding—both new and existing customers depend heavily on your prompt and reliable support.
If you're struggling to calculate your average response time, here’s a simple formula to help:
Remember, it's not just about speed but also about empathy, so ensure your customer support team is trained in these areas (keep a checklist!):
Listen to complaints with sympathy.
Always maintain a polite and empathetic tone.
Offer a suitable solution and promise immediate action.
After implementing the appropriate action, follow up!
Make sure they know their input is valued.
7. Abandoning Customers into Information Pit.
A frequent error made by many SaaS companies is inundating their customers with isolated pieces of information. Picture a welcome screen cluttered with a list of do's and don'ts—what do you think the customer will do?
The customer will likely close each pop-up and attempt to navigate independently. However, as he struggles to focus on finding a solution, he is not enjoying the process at all.
Within 8 Seconds, you can win or lose your customers
The same principles apply to you. If your customer support team isn't adequately trained to handle various customer issues, it results in more tickets being raised, which is not a pleasant experience.
Therefore, aligning your onboarding program with diverse customer expectations and needs will enable you to tailor your content effectively. It will also help customers concentrate on a few key steps to advance and enhance their experience.
You keep it simple! Don’t overpopulate their screen. Here’s an example - how you can go about like Dropbox, a modern workspace storage design tool - Allows customers to share and save their work, cloud-backed up.
Dropbox uses the white space on the screen like a wingman. It keeps the customer in the loop with the precision of what he might be searching for a solution.
Capture your customer's attention with targeted content that encourages them to meet their expectations. Additionally, keep the following checklist in mind when crafting your content, which should:
Avoid being generic for every customer.
Be easy for the customer to understand.
Concentrate on the goals of individual customers.
Be engaging enough to inspire imagination and desires.
Feel natural so customers find the tone familiar.
Therefore, when your customer success or marketing team plans your onboarding content deliverables, ensure the checklist is used to discuss the nuances of customer experience.
8. Missing Out Feedback Since the Start.
Feedback is the key to putting your onboarding program on a path to scalable improvement. This is common among SaaS companies—they often don't gather customer feedback during the initial onboarding phase.
There are two reasons why SaaS companies might hesitate to request feedback:
They fear that the additional effort might cause customers to leave.
They aim to deliver value first and then seek feedback.
What do your customers think about feedback? (Online reviews - Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Tripadvisor)
94% of consumers say a negative review has deterred them from a business.
53% of customers expect businesses to respond to negative reviews within a week, yet 63% acknowledge that some companies have never replied to their feedback.
45% of consumers are more likely to visit a business that responds to negative reviews.
Customer feedback is a process—when you encourage your customers to engage in a results-oriented environment, they appreciate it and place their trust in you.
Therefore, when considering onboarding new customers, ensure you include an engaging method for requesting feedback.
9. Unable to Monitor the Onboarding Process.
If your customer success team does not detect customer churn during the onboarding process, it's likely that you will see an increase in customer support tickets.
From the start, your customers rely on your support and envision a seamless experience with your product. However, when they encounter issues, their comfort diminishes, prompting them to look for better alternatives.
To decrease customer churn and boost LTV, you can monitor onboarding metrics such as:
Frequency of customer logins
Duration of each session
Features they prefer or dislike
Implementing a tracking system for your onboarding process will help you understand completion rates, usage times, daily active users, churn rates, and time to value.
Identifying friction points will enable you to enhance and refine your onboarding.
10. Unable to Demonstrate a Long-term Vision.
The global software as a service (SaaS) market, expected to grow up to $272.49 billion by the end of 2021 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.8%.
(Source: GlobalNewsWire, 2021)
Each year, customers are presented with a plethora of software options. What is the key factor that will ensure your customer's loyalty to your product?
While gaining a customer sign-up might bring the satisfaction of converting a lead, a high conversion rate alone won't necessarily become a revenue-generating asset in the future.
Therefore, the loyalty of your customers and their long-term perspective will determine your company's revenue. Every SaaS company should focus on demonstrating a long-term vision during onboarding—not solely for financial growth (intention matters!)—not just for customer benefits (they require more than just a solution)—but ultimately for enhancing customer experience.
Conclusion:
Customer onboarding is one of the oldest business practices. In ancient times, Indian street artists and vendors pioneered the 'technique of customer knowledge' by introducing the origin, characteristics, and taste of their products, sparking curiosity and encouraging people to try them.
Back then, word-of-mouth marketing was a way to gauge customer experience—the more popular the vendor, the more engaged and loyal the customers.
Today, with so many options prompting us to explore customer success, you must use this 'how-to' guide to avoid making mistakes when planning your SaaS customer onboarding.
