Customer onboarding in B2B SaaS is changing fast, but the resources for onboarding teams? Not so much. That's why we're kicking off Onboarding Therapy, a podcast that tackles the real challenges onboarding teams face every day.
I think that is the misconception
of when product or senior leaders
think we can solve all of this
in the product or in the app.
, I think you can solve a lot of it, but
I don't think you can solve all of it.
And it requires a lot of work
welcome to onboarding therapy.
I'm Kim.
And in this episode, Cheryl and I
are talking about the balance between
human led and in-app onboarding.
It looks for the benefits of
both approaches and strategies
for combining them effectively.
Let's get into it.
On our last episode, we talked
about getting leadership
buy in for onboarding teams.
And one thing that came up very briefly,
but as a hot topic in onboarding is
when leadership or product teams are
convinced that there is no need for
humans in onboarding or an onboarding
team, because they believe they can
build a product that is so intuitive.
That they don't need to be guided
by a human or there doesn't need
to be a human kind of tracking
or monitoring the process.
So I think you probably have a
ton to say about that, Cherelle,
if you want to get started.
So I hear this a lot.
I hear this from our own customers even
at times of we're actually just doing
this onboarding program and eventually
we're working our way towards doing this
all in app and it's going to be great.
I think there's some truth to that.
I think you should start with
human onboarding and learn from it
and then scale that to maybe like
more strategic, what we consider
one to many onboarding things like
live and, or prerecorded webinars.
Things like motions where you can
reach more than one person at a time.
I think a really good onboarding program
also does incorporate in app onboarding,
whether you're using tools like Pendo or
Intercom or AppCue or stuff that you're
building in house into your product.
The challenge in my mind with.
The statement that in app onboarding
in and of itself is going to solve
all of your onboarding problems or
even activation problems or churn
problems, however you want to call
them, is the fact that we are talking
about adult learning and adults learn
differently, people learn differently.
So everyone might not actually
be inclined to click through a
bunch of pop ups in your app or
let's take it a step even further.
Everyone might not get the
design vision you had or the
intuitiveness of your design.
And I think actually a really
good onboarding program has
all three of those pathways.
Ways where a customer, depending on the
customer type or span can get one to one
service or enterprise type of onboarding
or white glove, whatever you call it.
The option to be able to do some stuff on
your own via learning centers or learning
management system, their onboarding
programs and some in app pieces.
Now I think everyone should strive
towards making their apps so
intuitive and so well designed.
I hope that that's the case and that's
what everyone's striving for and that's
what you should be building toward.
I think the reality is that you're still
going to always see churn in some way or
lack of activation or lack of people
getting everything or clicking into
everything or using every feature
because people just think differently
and people learn differently and
people learn in different ways.
So where I've seen it work actually really
well is where there is a combination
of those pathways and they're all
still driving towards the same thing.
And this is why I think.
And I love in app onboarding, don't
get me wrong, like I wish everyone did
some degree of it and had some pop ups
and some modules and some instructions
and on paper, that sounds good.
The first place that usually tends
to break down with people that have
that mentality is when it comes
to actually do it, you have to
start changing the look and feel
of the app or the design of things.
And now there's potentially video
pop ups or cues or notifications
telling you to do something or those.
Stupid little tours that we all see pop
up that in a sea of buttons and things you
can click on and pages you can end up in,
there's this one thing that says, click
here to learn how to run this report.
Like, sure, I can do that, but
is that going to make me actually
activated on this whole thing?
Is that going to help me actually
retain all of this thing?
Probably not.
Plus, it also only works when it is
so targeted and specific to my needs.
That I can see that thing or pop up
or even just the design of it and
think, Oh yeah, that ties to my goal.
I'm here to think, right?
Like you're relying so much on
me to basically activate myself,
which if that's my learning style
and that's my personality, great.
Maybe you have a little bit of a chance.
But to think that, that is going
to be your end all be all solution.
Maybe I'm biased.
I don't think that's possible.
And of all the customers that have told
me that it's been a few years, none of
them have stopped using the onboarding
software we have or dissolve their teams.
Not all of a sudden have their
activation metrics skyrocketed.
So I don't know.
I'm not a designer or a product
engineer, so I can't, I can't
judge too strictly or too heavily.
On the hopefulness or the wish that
that will happen in reality, I've
never seen it play out that way.
Yeah.
Most well built product led type of
growth companies and functions, like
even certain components of them still
require something beyond just me looking
at the UI and figuring it out on my own.
Yeah.
I completely agree.
Definitely.
I'm not a hater to in app onboarding.
In fact, I love it.
I think it's.
It's great.
And everyone should strive for it.
The problem is when leadership or
I've seen it where like CTOs, like
that kind of level, the engineering
side is like basically saying don't
invest more in a high touch onboarding
or don't invest more in onboarding
tools because we can build that.
I think like, I think engineers
and product teams feel almost
like, I wonder we should ask, I
wonder if they feel insulted that
their product is not so intuitive.
Yeah.
But their customers need someone
to walk them through using it.
I wonder if that's part of where it
comes from, because that's been my
experience too, where it's like, yeah,
the ideal is to make this so intuitive
that you don't need me to do training
calls with most of our customers, or you
don't need me to do multiple onboarding
calls to show them how to do X, Y, Z.
But.
Yeah, you're right.
Like it's been three years and
nothing, not even one improvement
has been made to those things.
And so the reality is you just need some
help until you get to this magical place
that you believe you're going to be.
And fine.
Rip out onboarding.
All you're going to do then is
overwhelm support with tickets.
And those questions are still
going to get asked no matter what.
So absolutely strive for the in app world.
I actually think when done
really well, those work in a
collaboration with each other.
You should be figuring out things in
one to one human onboarding and then
conveying that to your marketing team so
that they can figure out how to scale it.
And then conveying that to your product
teams and saying, actually, this feature.
Is the one that we get
hung up on the most.
Can you make it more intuitive?
Cause in an ideal state tier,
you said, I would love if every
app fully onboarded itself.
And then me in the success world
could spend my time on more
strategic conversations and more
why you should think about it
this way, unless how to set it up.
I've been doing this for 13 years.
Waiting for that day to come where
I don't have to answer questions
and people just onboard themselves
and I can just sit here and tally up
all the revenue that we're saving.
It's wishful thinking, not in
a negative way, of like, it's
wishful thinking you can't do it.
You should push that way, you should
strive towards that, you should
figure out what's working in one
to one and one to many and try
to incorporate that in your app.
And I think the reality just boils back
down to people are going to want to
learn differently, they're gonna want
to have different pathways, they're
gonna want to have different options.
The same person might, Like
three different pathways.
And we used to have data on this.
Like I would have customers show
up to their first kickoff call and
then say, yeah, this is all right.
I don't need to do the next two.
And then they would randomly
appear in some sort of webinars.
And then I would notice in the in app
tracking system that they actually weren't
activating certain features and so on.
The key I think is that all those
things shouldn't be driving towards
the same output, which at the
end of the day is customer goals.
It's one thing to get how to use it.
You have to also then be able to
correlate that back to the thing you're
paying for, the value you signed up
for, the goals you're trying to achieve.
And that has to happen very quickly
in that split moment of time where I'm
looking at the thing or clicking on the
thing or now I maybe didn't activate it.
I have found that most of those in
app tours or guides or even well
designed things are really driving
towards feature usage, which is good.
You're driving usage up, you're
driving activation, you're driving
sessions and those bits, but are you
actually hitting customers goals,
achieving their goals, and helping
them solve for their pains that they
came to you in the first place for?
And if not, it, again, to me, doesn't
feel like a well designed tool
in and of itself is going to just
solve for that, or just unlock that.
At least not, at least not across
Enough of your customer base to
feel confident saying, yeah, we're,
we're ripping apart everything else.
I'm going to rely purely on
product and design to do this.
Yeah.
It reminds me of like founders saying
that they want their logo to be like
Nike, where people just know the
swoosh without knowing the brand name.
And it's like, well, Nike
didn't do that overnight.
Like that is not, that is a aspiration
that you should not, Even try for
like, that's just unrealistic for
most companies, most tech companies.
That's not going to happen.
I feel like it's the same kind of
thing where if you Google online, like.
Apps that have the best onboarding.
You're always going to
see Slack, for example.
And it's the same thing where it's like,
everyone wants their product to be as
intuitive or as easily adoptable as Slack.
And it's like, great.
You should definitely
take notes from Slack.
That's, that's great.
And your app is not going to be as
intuitive or as easily adoptable as
Slack for a very, very long time.
And you need to plan and put your
resources toward a plan that does not
include or rely on you being Slack.
I love the Slack example because most
people point to that and they say.
Well, Slack does it.
Well, first of all, Slack has billions
of dollars and a lot of powerful,
teams working behind that function.
And the part of Slack that is, there's
many parts of it, but the main part
that people compare it to is like,
well, yeah, Kim signed up for Slack
and she loved it and now Sherelle on
her team also signed up for Slack.
Look at that double the growth
and two users using it and
they activated each other.
Yes, true.
That is one of their growth models.
There are so many businesses within Slack,
things like the integrations, things like.
All of the setup and advanced ways that
Slack's talks to thousands of other tools.
All of the like other things
you can layer on top of it.
And most of those aren't like self
guided, self sign up, do your own thing.
You have to talk to
somebody, you gotta do demos.
You have to sign up for
different tiers of product.
And that's again, why I think like,
yeah, really good brands and really good
products do have really good design and
a chance for me to do it myself and grow
myself and learn myself to a degree.
If you have one product and
that's all it is, and it's super
intuitive, great, I've had it.
But once you start layering in anything
complex, anything with reporting,
anything with strategy involved, and
then the other thing, now that, now
that you've really got me riled up on
this topic, this has also happened to
me a couple of times where it's like,
okay, fine, go build it, like, build the
crap out of it, design it, and I would
love to not talk about this because
it's eating up my time and my energy.
You have to also then maintain
that and keep up with it and hear
feedback on that specific feature
over and over and over again.
Like, where is that going to happen?
Where are you going to
feel that information?
How are you going to capture those bits?
And then how are you going to act on them?
And are you going to update them and
change them and keep them current?
And so that's, that is where sometimes
it is a little easier when you have
this working in conjunction to say,
all right, Kim, I'm going to go test
this thing for the next 10 customers.
It worked great.
Okay.
Product, please help me
make this more intuitive.
Please.
I would love to not talk about
this again and again and again.
So I don't know.
It's a great aspiration to have.
I think everyone should strive
towards making their application
more intuitive, better design.
I.
Would be pleasantly surprised if I
learned of a company that did it so well
that all of a sudden they were able to
remove all of their onboarding teams and
support teams and all those questions
that come during those early activation
moments and had churn rates figured out.
And all those customers are also, cause
it's not just like the churn piece.
You also have to keep these
customers around and keep them
growing and keep them expanding.
And it's just harder to do all of
that in app on my own without any.
Help or support in those early days.
I think we should get some
engineers on this call.
I mean, like, Hey, no, I think
that's, I mean, I think the moral
of the story is we're all on board
to make the product more intuitive.
It actually makes
onboarding so much easier.
It's just not ever
going to replace people.
I mean, never say never, who knows
with everything happening right now,
but for a long time, you can't rely.
On your product being so easy to
adopt that you don't need someone
tracking and managing onboarding.
And I will say at arrows, we talk
to onboarding teams all the time
on the sales side, specifically.
And sometimes people will say, okay,
we love arrows, but actually we just
decided to do all of this in app.
So our product team is going to
build out an onboarding flow in app.
And almost always a year later,
they come back to us and they say,
Well, either we never did it because
it can't be prioritized because
you have a million other things to
prioritize from a product perspective.
Or you built all of that stuff in
app and you still have an onboarding
problem because it didn't really
address the problem that you had.
And you actually just like
need a better process.
And it's, I think it's just
like such a problem when that
is the only solution to people.
It's just almost impossible to have
that be the only solution to onboarding.
Again, I said, introduce
me to that company.
I mean, that sounds great.
If they have that all figured out and
everything's working in app, like sign
me up, yeah, it's, and it, I mean, I
like how you paused on, it's not going
to replace humans because with AI and
everything we're seeing, maybe, you know,
it's more expensive than a few onboarding
people is a few engineers to maintain all
of those changes and updates and so on.
And again, I would be to do it.
Well, you have to make so
many design changes in an app.
And often introduce things that weren't
there before that could actually be
more of a distraction and there could
be pop ups and there could be like
modules popping up and how often are
people actually clicking into those
things unless they're so well programmed
and it's possible but again you need
engineers and you need data and you need
all sorts of setup and operations to
manage it it's not impossible to do it's
going to So much money and effort and
energy from everything else that you're
not going to see the results you want.
You're going to likely spend
a lot of effort doing it.
And you're, I'm not going to say you're
going to be back in the same place
because things might be different, but
your odds are, you're going to have
similar activation and churn problem or
different activation and churn problem.
Yeah, definitely agree.
Any final thoughts on this?
Like I said, I think it's great.
I don't want the takeaway to be.
Don't strive for better in app
design or onboarding or intuitiveness
or whatever you want to call it,
combination of all those things.
Try to learn from one to one onboarding
and incorporate, like if you're, if
that is your goal, at least start
with some human and some component
of it involved, and then take lessons
out of that and build on that.
And then, Figure out some sort
of one to many strategy and
some sort of in app strategy.
I think eventually you're going to run
into, as you try to get more upstream
and enterprise type of customers.
Some of that, they just
want to hand it on support.
They don't care how great your tool
is or how great your design is.
They will sign just knowing there is
somebody to support them on that front,
even if they don't necessarily need
it or take that time from that person.
So have at it, strive for it, build it,
do it in conjunction with your teams.
If you think it's going to solve all
of your onboarding and activation
problems, you and I don't think so.
Most of the customers we've talked
to, Don't think so and continue
to prove that that's not the case.
And we've both done onboarding at
multiple different companies and in
different verticals and in different
sizes of spaces of companies.
And we've both had onboarding jobs
throughout them and we've worked
on teams and added headcount.
And I think that the goal could
be don't add more headcount.
Maybe what can we do with
this group of people?
Can we get strategic with this
two folks instead of adding more?
And how do we stretch
this to its capacity?
Make your teams more efficient,
make those people more efficient.
Totally.
That's what I was going to
say too, is when I was running
onboarding, I was advocating for.
Putting more stuff into
the app to make it easier.
Like you were saying earlier, like that's
actually an onboarding team's dream.
Like we want you to take away
the parts where we are just
explaining how to use features.
That's actually not the
value of onboarding.
So that's great.
Go put a guide to how to use
specific features in your app.
Amazing.
Love it on board, but there's just a
whole, that's not all onboarding is.
And in fact, if that's the way that
you're viewing onboarding as just like
a guide to show different features.
Then you're under utilizing
your onboarding team and just
thinking about it the wrong way.
Ideally, actually your product
is intuitive enough that your
customers can understand it.
And then the onboarding specialist
is kind of like a intro to customer
success, being strategic, telling them
how to do certain things in the app in
a more strategic way, rather than like
click this button, then click this.
It's like, okay, here's the thing
that you need to do right now.
I'm going to give you kind of our playbook
or the way that we recommend setting this
up so that they're actually set up for
more success rather than just clicking
buttons on onboarding or kickoff call.
And if you're really adamant, hire
a dedicated engineer and a dedicated
designer and have them talk to customers
and at least like understand the
goals and the space and because just
like human, just like any function,
but human onboarding included.
There's has to be revisions and
optimizations of all that stuff.
And things are going to change and
features are going to change and goals
are going to change and design is going
to change and all of that has to be
accounted for, like the second you create
some sort of in app module, it's outdated.
So after that, if anything changes,
that has to be kept up to date,
depending on when you, Present those
things to a customer might not be
the right time or the wrong time.
So you run the risk of losing value.
And like you said, not only have I
advocated for it, I've worked with
teams, building an app, onboarding for
my programs, and I love it, like drive
toward let's drive towards the same goals.
Like I would much rather your product
design solve that answer for a question
than have anyone on my team spend 10
minutes describing it in a calling.
That's not a good use of time.
I a hundred percent agree, but
there's only so much that can do.
So.
Pick and choose where it makes sense.
Pick the parts of the app or the parts of
the process that get the most questions
or the most feedback in support, in
success in onboarding and chip away at
those and see if you can reduce all that.
And again, this goes back to a
conversation we had last week,
where if you actually have goals
and targets that you're measuring
and tracking towards that.
Yes, this is great.
Now we can break it down even further.
One to one onboarding.
Here are the results.
Human led onboarding.
Here are the results.
In app onboarding, here are the results
but it was great because we were
partnering on it, we're working towards
the same thing, new features launched,
you advertise this in app, we'll talk
about it in a webinar and I'll make sure
every onboarding rep touches on this.
And now we can actually measure
activation across all these
pathways and say, all right, we
all focused on this collectively.
Here are the results.
But any of those individual pathways
are only as good as the people's
willingness to learn in that style.
Plus discovering it.
And so that's the other piece of it.
Like, if you have one simple
app, one page, a few clicks,
great, it's discoverable.
Most tools don't work that way.
There's depths of clicks
you have to click into.
And also not every thing should
have a pop up or a video or a
module appearing in the app.
And I think that now, as we talk
about this more, I think the
misconception is that if you do
it in app, it's like one and done.
And we'll do it one time and
we'll design it one time.
And this is going to work forever.
I think that is the misconception
of when product or senior leaders
think we can solve all of this
in the product or in the app.
I think you can solve a lot of it, but
I don't think you can solve all of it.
And it requires a lot of work to maintain.
It's not just going to be a thing
that you turn on and it's magic.
And so you can't depend on
that as a leader to hit.
If we run one template in our
onboarding process, that doesn't mean
all of a sudden it's the best one.
We have to fix it and optimize it.
I move stuff around all the time in
our, in our process because of that,
because I'm learning in real time
and I'm learning from our teams.
So, yeah, maybe that's the takeaway.
Okay.
It's not a set it and
forget it type of thing.
well this one turned into a little
bit more of a rant than a real
solutions, but sometimes that's
needed and we needed that, I guess.
And probably other people did too.