No matter how amazing your services are, your product will fall flat within days if your SaaS onboarding process is not good. Think about it this way: How will your users even get to use your world-class services if they struggle initially just to be on board? They would immediately abandon the product.

After all, nobody likes confusing signups, overwhelming interfaces, no tutorials, zero welcome emails, lengthy training periods, and lack of personalization. As a result, it’s super important to focus on simple and smooth onboarding of your users as this is the deciding factor whether the user will stay and adopt your product or not.

It has been estimated that 70% of customers abandon the product if it takes more than 20 minutes to complete the digital onboarding process. This shows how limited your time is in creating a lasting impression on your users so that they stay hooked to your product.

Are you worried about how to carve the perfect SaaS onboarding experience? Well, luckily, you’ve landed at the right place, as we’re about to share everything in detail about customer onboarding.

What is SaaS Onboarding?

SaaS product onboarding is the process of introducing your product to new users engagingly and effectively so that they interact with and adopt it. The primary goal is to show the most important parts of your product just when users enter to create a positive experience. Show them the benefits that regularly come with using your SaaS product.

SaaS product onboarding allows users to grasp the value of your product by looking at all the products and services. There are several phases of B2B SaaS onboarding that help the user to get started with the product so that they can start reaping its benefits. A successful product onboarding results in a significant ‘a-ha’ moment. This happens when users gain full knowledge of your product and are in control of it. At this stage, users get to see the software’s potential value, which keeps them hooked.

The onboarding process should be customized according to your user base, industry, and customer success platform. However, this is not enough, as you need intelligent ways to apply these things to create a flawless and user-centric SaaS onboarding experience. 

Why does SaaS Onboarding Matter?

We all know that the first impression is the last. Additionally, if a user doesn’t benefit from a product or doesn’t adopt it quickly, there is a high chance that they will abandon it, and you won’t be able to retain them.

Therefore, it’s super important to give your users an excellent onboarding UX experience if you want them to stay your long-term customers. A good onboarding experience would not only reduce churn rate but would also make users purchase other products and services when they will stick around for a long time.

Signs your SaaS Onboarding Needs Improvement

You should always keep an eye on your SaaS onboarding process and its results and reviews to know when to revamp or update it for an improved user experience. Here are a few signs that indicate that your SaaS product is in a major need for onboarding improvement.

• High Churn Rate: If you notice a significant number of users abandoning your service shortly after signing up, it could indicate that they’re not finding value or having difficulty getting started.
• Users failing to complete the signup process: This impacts the crucial onboarding metric known as time-to-value. Those who take longer to reach the “Aha! moment” are at a higher risk of churning.
• Low Activation Rate: Users may sign up but fail to complete essential actions within your platform, like creating an account, setting up key features, or integrating with other tools.
• Users not returning after the product’s free trial: Users not returning after signing up to get the product’s free trial is a major red flag.
• Lack of Engagement: Users not engaging with your platform, such as not logging in regularly, not utilizing features, or not completing tasks, may indicate a disconnect between their needs and your onboarding process.
• Customers are not opting for a paid account: Several factors influence this, including industry size and the terms of your product’s free trial. Ideally, users who grasp the value of your product should transition to paid plans over time.
• Cancelled subscriptions: A notable number of new customers are discontinuing their subscriptions after paying their initial invoice. Utilizing customer success software can help monitor user activity and engagement levels, offering insights to enhance onboarding metrics.
• High Support Ticket Volume: An influx of support requests related to basic onboarding issues indicates that users are struggling to understand or use your product effectively.
• Negative Feedback or Reviews: Pay attention to user feedback, especially if you consistently see comments or reviews
• High customer acquisition cost (CAC): A lower CAC indicates effective user onboarding, while a rising CAC suggests a need for process improvements.

Common Challenges Faced During SaaS Onboarding

You might face several challenges while crafting an onboarding experience. Let’s have a look at some of the major ones and their possible solutions.

What If There’s No SOP For SaaS Customer Onboarding?

Customer onboarding can be mainly done in two ways:

• Simple, automated, low-touch, unoptimized
• Extremely high-touch and without a standard operating procedure

The first option holds the potential for streamlining workflows. However, it can swiftly become a drawback if the product doesn’t align well with your customers’ needs.

This is when the second way is used when there is a high-value account with various CSMs in charge of each one.

Solution: Always go for a SaaS customer onboarding framework that works well for your organization and customers

What If The Existing Onboarding SOP Is Poor And Outdated?

As a Customer Success Manager (CSM), starting a new job sometimes feels like receiving a “gift” in the form of a flawed customer onboarding SaaS flow. This often comprises disjointed procedures that have been hastily put together, possibly by multiple individuals, lacking coherence and resulting in a subpar user experience. The daunting realization may sink in that you’re alone and responsible for fixing it. Feeling the pressure? Don’t worry; we’re here to assist.

Solution: Firstly, assess and stop ineffective processes wherever feasible. In high-touch SaaS environments, prioritize personalized onboarding calls with new customers based on account size and complexity. For tech-touch and low-touch models, enhance your onboarding automation sequences and consider starting anew if needed.

The optimal customer experience (CX) varies depending on your customers and product. Thus, customize your approach to suit your specific requirements moving forward.

What If There’s No Tracking Setup

You might encounter a lack of verified data to optimize SaaS onboarding, which can be a major problem for bootstrapped companies and startups.

Solution: The effective way to address your tracking concerns and ensure comprehensive data availability is by implementing a unified approach to customer success operations. This can also be complemented by dedicating CS Ops individual.

What If We Have Mismatched And Disparate Data?

If you think having no tracking setup is a bad sign, then you should know that having a bad one is even worse. Incorrect data can cause you to make wrong decisions due to misinformation and a fake sense of security. This can cause extreme problems during critical stages in product lifestyle. The SaaS customer onboarding will be severely impacted as you will be ignoring the real pain points, friction points, and issues your customers face.

Solution: Your customer manager or team should take care of data governance and hygiene

What If We’re You’re on a Tight Budget with Few Resources?

The fluctuating nature of business often brings budget cuts, resource limitations, and various constraints. The lead Customer Success Manager is responsible for onboarding, and these circumstances can leave you with insufficient time to adhere to your initially planned frameworks or processes.

Solution: There are several ways to address this issue, with solutions made according to the unique needs of your business:

• Providing comprehensive product documentation, tutorials, and how-to guides can alleviate the workload of CSMs and streamline the onboarding process.

• Implementing automation can significantly reduce the number of tasks, allowing you to allocate more time to deliver a thorough onboarding experience.

What is the step-by-step process for doing SaaS Onboarding?

There is no one set SaaS customer onboarding framework for every product or company, as this is done through careful planning and extensive data analysis. Every SaaS onboarding platform should be customized to meet the product’s and its users’ unique requirements.

Here are some steps to create a winning SaaS onboarding experience.

Identify your Customer’s Goals

The first step to creating a SaaS onboarding process that users will adopt easily is to first identify your users’ goals. Study your customers’ actions deeply, ask them the right questions, and listen carefully to them to understand what they are looking for. After all, a user doesn’t buy a product by looking at ravishing interfaces or fancy features. Instead, they are looking for platforms to solve their unique problems.

They can have a wide range of goals like increasing productivity, boosting efficiency, streamlining complex tasks, or reducing costs. There are several ways to know your potential audience’s objectives and pain points. Let’s have a look at them.

• Conducting surveys
• Taking users interviews
• Analysis of user behavior

Your main goal should be to create a customer onboarding SaaS platform that is according to the customers’ specific needs and develops a user-centric mindset. By doing this, your customers are more likely to stick around and engage as they will note that the platform is customized according to their unique needs and objectives. This will result in long-term loyalty and high user satisfaction.

Work on your Platform’s Negative Action Points

Every platform has certain action points, which can be both positive and negative. While positive action points improve your product, negative ones can disrupt smooth onboarding flows. This is the main reason why customers abandon your products or fail to adopt them. Therefore, it’s important to note where your customers are hitting the wall so that you can work on those areas to create the perfect uninterrupted SaaS onboarding process.

The real game is to ensure that your customers reach the ultimate “aha moment” so they can trust that it is the right tool for their problems. Once they realize your platform’s value, there is a high chance that they’ll stick around in the long run. The aha moment motivates the users to continue their journey on your SaaS platform.

Take the example of Calendly. They automatically connect your calendars to Calendly as soon as you sign up with your Google account. This eases the user as their tasks are already being done, giving them a sense of accomplishment and making them continue using the product. If this is not a successful aha moment, then what is it? I mean, their name is even an Aha moment (well-chosen), and they make their value proposition quickly. Moreover, Calendly also takes users’ attention to integrations by placing them in front of their top bar.

Furthermore, it’s necessary to implement the right approach to know what exactly is stopping you from creating an uninterrupted SaaS onboarding process. Let’s have a look at some of the approaches that are worth trying.

• Heatmaps/Session replay tools: You can know where your user stopped reading a page or which webpage has a higher bounce or exit rate. Heatmaps and session replay tools can locate macro actions that interrupt a smooth SaaS customer onboarding flow.
• Journey Mapping: You can better understand your customers’ journeys as this process reveals any gaps in your current SaaS onboarding. You can use tools like Miro to map out the entire onboarding journey – starting from the sign-up process until the entire product is set up. This way, you won’t miss out on any steps.
• Surveys/Customer Feedback: This shows important information about your product, like which part customers enjoy the most,  what exact feature made them try your product, or how long it takes them to understand how it works.

Make a customer welcome series. 

The key to making a winning SaaS customer onboarding is to do what your customers expect. As soon as the user signs up, they need direction and guidance to use your product. Therefore, it’s super important to create a welcome email to not only greet your customers but also instruct them about how to use your product, educate them about special features, and remind them you exist if they haven’t paid a visit to your product for a long time.

Moreover, other amazing ways to welcome your customers onboard are through messages, product tours, campaigns, and embedded videos, which can be done inside or outside the platform. These ways are attention-grabbing, make the user feel greeted, and help them better understand the product.

Pick a SaaS Onboarding Model

Once you’ve done your research and made preparations about how your SaaS customer onboarding model should look, it is time to pick your model. There are several SaaS onboarding models that you can pick. Let’s have a look at them.

Self-service Onboarding

This is the most basic type of onboarding, which works well if your product is simple and does not require much time or guidance to be set up. A self-service onboarding offers a walkthrough or a getting started guide as it is more of a contextual onboarding flow. Once the customer is in, they have to finish the rest of their journey with the help of a guide or an in-app user onboarding checklist.

Self-service onboarding works well for products where users are left to explore the product on their own after a few screens of getting started. This model is widely used in mobile apps and social media networks.

Low-touch onboarding

This onboarding model is used for slightly complex products that require several steps but do not need customer assistance for each step of the process. Although customers get some support in this model, no special support is dedicated to a single user.

Low-touch onboarding offers a little more support than the self-service model as it offers in-app product tours, getting-started tutorials, step-by-step interactive onboarding walkthroughs, and checklists. This model is popular among companies like Mailchimp, Shopify, Canva, and Zoom. They utilize low-touch onboarding to create loyal fans by creating engaging onboarding flows through the low-touch model.

High-touch onboarding

This model works best if your product is heavy, complex, involves a lot of steps to set up, and would take a lot of time for SaaS users to understand the product. High-touch onboarding works best if you want to create personalized onboarding for your customers to address their unique needs. It offers an amazing one-on-one experience and customized onboarding collateral.

The perfect example of using high-touch onboarding can be seen in Allbound’s SaaS onboarding process. This product takes a lot of time to set up as it asks a lot of questions and requires training sessions. They also include a kickoff call to walk you through the product and discuss future virtual meetings. They also help customers better understand their products and train them by offering an extensive self-serve knowledge base.

Provide Ongoing Support 

No matter how good your product is, there are always going to be some users who will find it hard to set, use, or adapt to your product. Therefore, it’s super important to provide constant ongoing support to your customers. This is the point where you can either turn a new customer into a happy one who’ll stick around for a long or you’ll turn them into a frustrated one who’ll abandon your product in no time.

According to research by Zendesk, it has been estimated that three out of five SaaS users have said that good customer service is necessary for them to stay loyal to a brand. That shows how important ongoing customer support and service is important. There are several ways you can provide this.

• Answer Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• A knowledge base section
• Live chat or chatbots that can provide real-time assistance.
• Help users navigate hurdles as they arise.
• Direct customer support through email, message, or call for more complex issues.
• Creating a community where existing customers can share news reviews, comments, and best practices.

The main idea of offering ongoing support is to sort problems and issues when they arise and avoid them where possible. If you want a smooth SaaS onboarding experience, it’s best to stay proactive by doing regular check-ins or giving tips to avoid common issues. This will certainly help you avoid small misunderstandings that turn into big problems.

Test, Iterate, and Improve

Once you have completed your SaaS onboarding process, don’t just leave it. You are mistaken if you think that once your onboarding process is completed, it’s done and dusted. This is an ongoing process, and optimizing your SaaS product should always be done for improvements. It’s time to now test it based on qualitative and quantitative data so that you iterate and improve it accordingly.

You should keep an eye on your analytics to stay posted about the churn rate. Some ways you can improve your products are by:

• Regularly talking to customers
• Sending surveys
• Develop a system to get continuous feedback
• Create ideation loops inside your company
• Set hard dates to reflect on the qualitative and quantitative data.
• Use findings for onboarding improvements.

SaaS Onboarding Best Practices

Do you want to turn your SaaS onboarding process from good to great? After all, who doesn’t want to? Then, you’ll have to tweak your approach a little bit. Here are some of the SaaS onboarding best practices that can help you create a smooth, uninterrupted, and user-friendly SaaS customer onboarding flow.

• Decrease friction in the signup process.
• Keep the onboarding process simple and intuitive. Users should be able to understand and navigate through the product without feeling overwhelmed.
• Always begin with a welcome screen. The best option is to go with a microsurvey.
• Introduce features gradually as users progress through the onboarding process. Avoid overwhelming them with too much information upfront.
• Personalize the SaaS onboarding process according to user needs. Collect relevant information during signup and use it to customize the onboarding journey.
• Create an onboarding checklist with a progress bar.
• Create interactive and helpful walkthroughs instead of linear product tours. These tours should be easy to follow.
• Offer interactive tutorials or demos to demonstrate how to use key features effectively. Allow users to practice using the product in a risk-free environment.
• Ensure your onboarding is contextual.
• Clearly communicate the value proposition of your product during onboarding. Help users understand how your product can solve their problems or improve their workflow.
• Collect feedback from users during the onboarding process to identify pain points and areas for improvement. Use this feedback to iterate and refine the onboarding experience.
• Use the more subtle native tooltips, especially at later stages in the user journey.
• Ensure your SaaS onboarding flow is self-serve
• A/B test your onboarding process and continuously improve it
• Create an onboarding checklist or roadmap to help users track their progress and understand what steps they need to complete to get started.
• Offer comprehensive support resources, including FAQs, knowledge base articles, video tutorials, and live chat support. Ensure that users have access to help whenever they need it.
• If your SaaS product has a mobile app, ensure that the onboarding experience is optimized for mobile devices. Mobile users should be able to onboard seamlessly from their smartphones or tablets.
• Track user onboarding metrics and analytics to monitor the effectiveness of your onboarding process. Identify drop-off points and areas for optimization to improve user retention.
• Collect feedback from users during the onboarding process to identify pain points and areas for improvement. Use this feedback to iterate and refine the onboarding experience.

SaaS Onboarding Metrics and KPIs to keep in Mind

There are a few SaaS onboarding metrics and KPIs to consider when creating and improving the SaaS onboarding process. Let’s have a look at them.

Time to First Value (TTFV)

This metric tracks the amount of time it takes for a user to realize the first significant value or benefit from your product after signing up. A shorter time to the first value indicates a smoother SaaS onboarding process and higher user satisfaction.

Time to first value = AHA moment

Customer Churn Rate

Customer churn rate measures the percentage of customers who stop using a SaaS product over a specific period. High churn is a sign of SaaS user dissatisfaction or lack of engagement. This shows that your onboarding has inefficiencies. Addressing these issues is vital for improving retention and maximizing the value of the onboarding process.

To calculate churn rate:

(the number of customers lost during a period / the number of customers at the start of the period) x 100

Free Trial Conversion Rate

The free trial conversion rate is the percentage of users who transition from a free trial to a paid subscription. A high conversion rate indicates successful SaaS onboarding. This represents the effectiveness of the trial experience in showcasing the product’s value. Optimizing the free trial process is crucial for maximizing conversion rates and driving revenue growth in SaaS onboarding.

To measure the free trial conversion rate:

(Number of users who converted from free to paid during the period) / (total number of trial users during that period)

Customer Effort Score (CES)

Customer Effort Score (CES) measures the ease of completing tasks within the SaaS onboarding process. Lower CES indicates smoother onboarding experiences. This results in higher satisfaction and retention rates. Monitoring CES helps identify pain points and streamline the onboarding journey for improved user engagement.

(the number of customers lost during a period / the number of customers at the start of the period) x 100

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

Calculate the CLTV of users who have completed the onboarding process to understand the long-term value they bring to your business. A higher CLTV indicates that your onboarding process is effective in acquiring and retaining valuable customers.

Onboarding Completion Rate

The onboarding completion rate tracks the percentage of users who finish the entire onboarding process. A high completion rate signifies effective onboarding, leading to increased user engagement and retention. Optimizing the onboarding process based on completion rates enhances user experience and drives long-term success in SaaS.

​(the total number of users who were onboarded during a certain period/the number of customers who finished all onboarding materials.)

Best SaaS Onboarding Examples

There are several companies we use in our daily lives that have one of the smoothest and most intuitive SaaS onboarding processes. Let’s have a look at them.

Trello

Trello is one of the biggest project management tools which is extensively used throughout the world for task collaboration. They have an exemplary SaaS onboarding process as they quickly move the user to their goals. They have a simple yet thorough checklist that is immediately accessible as soon as the user completes the signup process.

As the user signs up and sets their work and tasks, the first task is automatically ticked in the checklist, which instills a sense of accomplishment in the user. This winning feeling increases the users’ chances of sticking around for a longer time on your platform, and that’s where you win.

Slack

Slack is a great example of a platform that offers a super helpful SaaS onboarding experience. As soon as you log in, the platform shows the different features and steps for using and setting up the application. Slack welcomes the user with a 90-minute thorough video that gives you a complete tour of the product. You get insights about how to use channels, compose messages, use various messaging options, address unread messages, and the platform’s entire UI.

Moreover, they use AI to give you a world-class user experience. Slack has a built-in AI chatting option known as Slackbot, which

• Helps you set up your account and first channel
• Tells you about various features
• Send you updates about new features
• Doesn’t make you feel alone by sending you frequent messages, tips, and more throughout your journey on the platform.

Netflix

Netflix offers an amazing SaaS onboarding experience by hooking you in the start only, which makes you stay on their platform longer. They offer easy-to-follow personalization by asking you to pick a few examples of the kind of content you like to watch. The best thing about Netflix is that its developers don’t rely on a one-size-fits-all user onboarding process. They believe in customizing the platform to fulfill everyone’s unique needs.

Moreover, they use straightforward language so that their platform feels human rather than AI, which many platforms rely heavily on to keep the subscription active. Additionally, their setup and UI are easy to navigate and user-friendly.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a huge marketing automation platform that has implemented SaaS customer onboarding best practices to create a smooth and intuitive process. Although they ask for several pieces of information from the user during signup, the task seems simple as they have broken it down into three simple steps. This not only reduces friction but also helps them personalize the experience with each customer’s unique choice and preference.

After the three steps of SaaS onboarding are completed, the user is directed to the dashboard screen, where they are welcomed with a list of topics that take them to the help center articles.

Box

Box is an amazing workflow automation tool that also comes under the list of best SaaS onboarding examples. The process begins by showing the users templates for pre-built departmental workflows and enables them to create workflows with the intuitive no-code builder. They empower the SaaS user to be up and running in no time. The home screen has a simple yet engaging layout with an enticing CTA. This button takes you to the pricing page so that users can see the breakdown of the prices and immediately choose the most appropriate plan.

HubSpot

HubSpot is another prominent example that offers an amazing SaaS onboarding experience to its users. This is an AI-powered customer platform with all the software, integrations, and resources you need to connect your marketing, sales, and customer service. It personalizes the UX based on the user surveys and responses. They also give the SaaS users a Q&A with not more than four multiple questions to know the user better.

Whatfix

Whatfix is a digital adoption and analytics platform that offers an uninterrupted onboarding flow to the users. This platform offers various things to the user to up the experience. Let’s have a look at them.

• They personalize the experience by guiding the user through various embedded techniques.
• Whatfix shakes hands with the user through a customized onboarding experience.
• They then welcome the user through a unique call-to-action that matches the user’s roles.
• They offer the users to learn more about the application through a guided tour.
• Whatfix creates a to do task list for customers so that they can begin their onboarding process. This way, users can self-track their assigned tasks as the list reminds them to complete the tasks at hand.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social management tool that makes the onboarding process easy for SaaS users. They collect data from social media accounts to help users schedule posts and track results, but sometimes users hesitate to share this data. Instead of giving up, Sprout Social talks to users about their concerns. They explain how they’ll use the data, what happens if users say no, and give users a chance to change their minds. This helps keep users engaged and prevents them from leaving.

The main goal of Sprout Social is to help users stick around by guiding them to important steps in using the product. They use pop-up messages to steer users in the right direction if they start to wander off track. By doing this, Sprout Social can keep more users happy and using the product for longer.

To keep users from leaving, Sprout Social looks at how users are using the product and steps in if it looks like they’re having trouble. This helps keep more users happy and using the product for longer.

Zendesk

To get new users excited about your product, you have to show them why it’s valuable. If you don’t, they might lose interest and stop using it. That’s where an onboarding checklist comes in handy. It helps new customers learn about important features faster.

Zendesk does this really well with their SaaS onboarding checklist. It gives new users a simple path to follow and makes the whole process less confusing., by making it like a game and showing progress as a percentage, Zendesk encourages users to keep going through the onboarding flow.

Asana

Asana is a popular project management tool that many people find challenging to use. However, Asana has created a highly user-friendly product setup through its innovative features. They offer self-serve guides to assist users so that their questions can be answered. This guide contains SaaS customer onboarding best practices, guides, and educational resources. This is searchable, and it serves as a centralized resource from where the team can learn about the SaaS onboarding product and experience in detail.

Notion

Notion is a collaboration tool to up your productivity game. It helps your team to write, plan, and organize your work. Notion is another example of a platform that offers the perfect SaaS onboarding. They offer guided tours, which can be accessed from the”Getting Started”” page. This way, the users can learn the essential functions required to start collaborating and creating on the platform.

During the onboarding process in Notion, the users have the option to select the templates that help them in creating the pages, like meeting agendas and budgets. These templates help to increase efficiency and teamwork. They create customized content and a system that perfectly aligns with the team’s business requirements and objectives.

Webflow

Webflow is an amazing tool that lets you help create websites without coding. This tool has amazing onboarding as the process is divided into three steps, each of which focuses on creating different aspects of the website. The platform offers an option to skip the onboarding process entirely for skilled users and get started right away. There are tooltips that can guide you through the product’s basic website-building tasks.

Conclusion

All things considered, SaaS onboarding is the final piece missing from the puzzle, which ensures your customer is in your product and ready to use its full value. This preliminary step is super important as it drives customer and business success over time. Once you have crafted a smooth, intuitive, and uninterrupted onboarding, the rest becomes easy, as all you need to do is ensure that the customer has user-centric and positive experience. Just keep on discouraging users from abandoning your product by surprising and delighting them at every step.

Ready to improve your SaaS Onboarding?

Denovers brings you world-class designers and front-end engineers who will help you create an uninterrupted and user-friendly SaaS onboarding experience. Not only will we create the perfect onboarding experience that will hook the user, but we will also help your customers set up your SaaS product so that they can see the value you’re delivering.