16 Customer Onboarding Best Practices For SaaS

Looking for customer onboarding practices to implement for your product?

This article shows you:

• 16 proven strategies for SaaS.
• Examples show how successful SaaS companies are using these strategies.
• Features to look out for in the right customer onboarding tool.

TL;DR

• Customer onboarding is the process of guiding new users to understand, adopt, and make the most of your product.

A good customer onboarding program helps to:

1. Improve the customer experience.
2. Lower the time to value.
3. Improve product adoption.
4. Increase revenue growth.

16 effective customer onboarding best practices:

• Ensure customers sign up with ease
• Send an automated welcome email
• Replace verification emails with in-app reminders
• Use a welcome survey to understand customer expectations
• Trigger an interactive product walkthrough to drive product adoption
• Provide a customer onboarding checklist to help new users complete key tasks
• Deliver additional value with product demo videos
• Assign a call with a success manager as part of your client onboarding process
• Implement self-service support with an in-app resource center
• Use continuous onboarding to improve retention across the customer journey
• Use gamification to keep customers engaged
• Track user behavior to identify onboarding friction
• Create a personalized onboarding process for new customers
• Collect user feedback to improve customer onboarding experience
• Introduce relevant features for different segments
• Use the right customer onboarding platform

Customer onboarding examples for inspiration:

1. Loom has a library of video tutorials for new users.
2. Grammarly uses a demo document to show users how the tool works.
3. Zendesk uses branched onboarding for better personalization.

• Userpilot can help you implement customer onboarding best practices and deliver a seamless onboarding experience. Book a demo now to try it.

Why is customer onboarding important?

Customer onboarding is the process of guiding new users to understand, adopt, and make the most of your product. It’s the bridge between the sales process and long-term customer retention.

A good customer onboarding process helps to:

• Improve the customer experience: It eliminates doubts and confusion, showing users how your tool works and how to maximize it.
• Lower time to value: One of the primary goals of onboarding is to get users to the Aha! moment. The moment when they suddenly realize your product fits the gap in their workflow. Good onboarding helps to shorten the time to realize this value. It ensures users don’t get frustrated and quit using your tool.
• Improve product adoption: This follows the previous point. Users are more likely to incorporate your tool into their workflows when they understand its capabilities and how it saves them time, energy, money, or a combination of these.
• Increase revenue growth: Engaged and satisfied users will not easily churn, leading to longer customer lifespans and higher recurring revenue. As users become familiar with your product’s core value, they’re more open to exploring advanced features and additional services, giving room for account expansion and a longer customer lifecycle.

16 effective customer onboarding best practices

Ready to create an effective onboarding process for your product? Here are 16 best practices to follow:

1. Facilitate customer sign-up process

Keep your sign-up flow as short as possible. Ask just basic information like name and email. You can gather more data later in the customer journey.

Also, consider implementing SSO to make login easy for users. Here’s an example from ChatGPT:

ChatGPT’s simple login/signup.

2. Send an automated welcome email

Trigger your automated email immediately after the customer signs up for your product (you can even use the sign-up page to redirect them to check their emails).

Your email should address the user by name to keep it personalized. Make the email short, but attach key resources and iterate your product’s value to ensure users stay invested. Have at least one bold CTA in your email so users take the next step immediately.

Miro’s welcome email.

3. Replace verification emails with in-app reminders

Traditionally, email verification has been a standard practice among SaaS companies, but it can introduce friction into the customer onboarding process.

Rather than insist users can’t use your platform without being verified, grant them access and later trigger in-app reminders to verify. This approach improves the user experience and increases onboarding completion.

Design in-app messages to drive user action.

4. Use a welcome survey to understand customer expectations

Trigger onboarding surveys to welcome users to your product and understand why they signed up for your tool. Once you’ve gathered this data, tailor your flows accordingly, ensuring you meet and exceed user expectations.

For example, if you have different use cases depending on a customer’s team size, you can trigger a survey like the one below.

Use the information to segment users and ensure each customer sees the onboarding flows tailored to their team size and needs.

Welcome survey example.

5. Trigger an interactive product walkthrough to drive product adoption

Interactive walkthroughs hold users by the hand and show them step-by-step how to use and derive value from your features.

Walkthroughs are effective because they help users learn by taking action. Since the user is actively engaged in the onboarding process, they will get the hang of your key features by the time the interactive walkthrough is over. This increases product adoption and sets the stage for long-term user retention.

Create interactive walkthroughs as part of your customer onboarding strategy.

6. Use a customer onboarding checklist to drive new clients to activation

An onboarding checklist is a curated list of key tasks and actions new users should complete to fully activate and maximize their experience with your product.

The checklist serves as a centralized hub where users can see all the necessary steps for getting started in one place. This approach is crucial because it provides clarity and structure to the customer onboarding process, making it easier for users to navigate through initial setup and usage.

Build checklists and implement other customer onboarding best practices with Userpilot.

7. Deliver additional value with product demo videos

Product demo videos are visual representations showcasing how your product works, its features, and the value it brings to users.

Use the demo videos to convey complex information in small, digestible bits, empowering users to maximize your tool.

To enhance the user experience, consider incorporating tooltips that guide new customers to the location of these videos.

Userpilot has a video library that new users can go over when confused about features.

8. Assign a call with a customer success manager

This may not be possible if you have a large user base. However, you can still segment your high-profile customers and arrange an onboarding call with a dedicated success manager. The goal of this interaction will be to understand the unique needs of new clients and provide a tailored guide through the initial stages of using your product.

Before the meeting, Customer Success can collect user data from the sales team and find ways to make the interaction more personalized.

This approach stands out among others because new clients can ask questions, receive immediate guidance, and build an ongoing relationship with the customer success team, which ultimately contributes to retention.

Design a welcome modal like this as part of your client onboarding process.

9. Implement self-service support with an in-app resource center

Create a robust resource center that customers can visit anytime.

This resource center will serve as a comprehensive repository of key materials that are vital for new customers. It will allow them to learn at their own pace, access relevant resources, and troubleshoot issues independently.

Examples of resources you can cover in the in-app resource center include video tutorials, step-by-step guides, FAQs, and product documentation.

Design a fully customized resource center with Userpilot.

10. Use continuous onboarding to improve customer retention

Continuous onboarding is an approach that goes beyond the initial onboarding phase, providing ongoing guidance to users as your company introduces new features. This ensures a seamless learning experience, helping users stay informed about your product’s evolving capabilities.

Continuous onboarding is one of the few customer onboarding best practices that help users adapt to changes while fostering a sense of engagement and loyalty.

Create modals code-free with Userpilot.

11. Use gamification to keep customers engaged

Well implemented, gamification will keep users hooked to your customer onboarding processes. This time, they aren’t completing the flows just because they want to use your platform; there’s a secondary reason — a desire to interact with your gamification elements.

For instance, an animated magical creature pops on a new user’s screen each time they complete an onboarding milestone in Asana. This gives the users a sense of accomplishment and encourages them to continue using the product, curious about what other creatures will appear next.

Asana uses gamification to boost customer engagement.

Aside from magical creatures, there are several other gamification elements you can use. For instance, you can implement badges, points, levels, progress bars, or social and collaborative features like emoji reactions or gifs to encourage participation.

12. Track user behavior to identify onboarding friction

Implement user path analysis to examine the sequence of actions users take to complete your customer onboarding process.

This analysis will highlight specific points that may cause drop-offs or confusion. By further examining such areas, you can streamline your onboarding flows and ensure a smoother onboarding journey for users, ultimately improving overall customer satisfaction.

Make better onboarding decisions with actionable product analytics.

13. Create a personalized onboarding process for new users

Use the data from your welcome surveys to create a personalized experience.

Segment users based on similar needs and jobs-to-be-done (JTBD), then trigger customized onboarding flows. This approach ensures users are guided through features most relevant to their specific requirements, increasing the likelihood of successful onboarding and long-term satisfaction.

Userpilot can help you do this easily.

After using our platform to collect user data through a welcome survey, you can segment users based on the data collected:

Advanced user segmentation in Userpilot.

Then, create onboarding flows tailored to each segment:

Creating onboarding flows in Userpilot.

14. Collect user feedback to improve customer onboarding experience

Actively seeking user feedback during or after the onboarding process is a valuable practice.

This feedback provides insights into areas where the onboarding experience may fall short or could be improved. By understanding user perspectives, you can make informed adjustments to enhance the onboarding journey.

This iterative approach not only improves the onboarding experience for future users but also demonstrates a commitment to continuous improvement and customer-centricity.

CSAT survey designed with Userpilot.

15. Introduce relevant features for different segments

Since you have data on user JTBDs, expectations, and onboarding engagement, analyze that data and determine what relevant features to introduce.

For instance, if the data shows a user isn’t engaging with a specific feature important to their use case, it’s possible they didn’t know the feature exists or don’t know how to use it.

Segment this user and trigger in-app messages or an email, showing them the value of that feature and how to use it.

16. Use the right customer onboarding platform

An onboarding platform is a tool that helps you facilitate the onboarding process, providing features to create personalized and interactive product walkthroughs, among other things.

There are many onboarding platforms on the market today. When choosing a suitable tool for onboarding clients, look for these features:

• Onboarding flows
• Resource Center
• Feedback surveys
• Data Analytics
• Segmentation

Userpilot ticks the list. Give it a try!

Customer onboarding examples for inspiration

Would you like to see examples of companies implementing some of these customer onboarding best practices?

Here are three examples for you:

Loom’s getting started videos

Loom has short, comprehensive video guides that help new customers learn at their own pace.

The videos are engaging, and the library is regularly updated as the platform adds new features.

Loom’s library of video tutorials.

Grammarly’s demo document

As a vital part of its onboarding flow, Grammarly shares a demo document with new users.

This document contains errors that Grammarly has highlighted, and the platform guides news users in correcting the mistakes. This way, Grammarly’s new users learn to quickly master the tool, leaving the tutorial confident about the product’s functionalities.

Grammarly’s user onboarding.

Zendesks’s personalized onboarding

Zendesk personalizes its product walkthroughs based on three user personas — consumers, businesses, and employees.

The first onboarding screen prompts users to choose what best describes them. Once users pick a persona, they get a tailored walkthrough, showing parts of the tool most relevant to their use case. You should implement this strategy if your product caters to a wide audience.

Zendesk’s branched onboarding.

How to deliver a seamless onboarding experience with Userpilot

Userpilot is a product growth platform used by product teams to design and improve their customer onboarding.

Key Userpilot features you’ll find useful for onboarding:

• Interactive product walkthroughs: Userpilot grants you access to multiple UI patterns for creating interactive walkthroughs that educate and keep users engaged through the onboarding process.
• Customized flows: You can customize your flows to your brand’s style, color, and logo, giving it a native look. Our platform also lets you decide the pages and triggers for each onboarding flow, creating a seamless process.

Onboarding flows built in Userpilot.

• Onboarding checklists: Create onboarding checklists to show users the important onboarding tasks they need to complete. Userpilot also lets you add progress bars to your checklists so users have a sense of accomplishment for each task they cross off.

Building onboarding checklists in Userpilot.

• In-app resource center: Build a fully customized resource center and add all the elements you think new and existing users will find useful.

Build a self-service resource center for better in-app support.

• User segmentation: With Userpilot’s advanced segmentation, you can divide users into different groups based on various factors and trigger super personalized flows.

Customer segmentation in Userpilot.

• User feedback: From CSAT to CES and NPS surveys, Userpilot lets you collect qualitative and quantitative user feedback to improve. More importantly, we have plug-and-play survey templates to save you time.

Start collecting user feedback for your SaaS.

• A/B testing: Not sure what flows will work better? Use our platform to implement A/B or multivariate tests and see what resonates more with your audience.

A/B testing in Userpilot.

• Funnel analysis: This feature lets you analyze the different steps users take through your onboarding process. It helps you pinpoint and address areas of friction.

Funnel analysis result generated in Userpilot.

Conclusion

There’s no one-size-fits-all onboarding formula, but hopefully, this article has given you a customer onboarding template and framework to work with.

As you roll out your onboarding flows, continue testing to see what your audience responds to the most. Dig into your analytics to analyze user behavior during and after onboarding, then implement iterative changes.

But of course, the first step is to act on the customer onboarding best practices we’ve discussed. Book a demo now to see how Userpilot makes it easier for you.