User onboarding is far more important than most people think. The first impression you get when you meet a person in real life is going to have a lasting impact, which is a tendency that holds true when it comes to business. There is a reason why some people are nervous when it comes to meeting someone for the first time. We all have an internal judgement system that is activated when we experience an initial interaction with a person or thing. The reality is, first impressions create a huge impact.
Onboarding is essentially the initial stages that a person experiences when interacting with a new product or service. If you sell a software program, the onboarding portion of the user experience is going to be the customer getting their feet wet with your product. They are not going to know how to use your software at first, so they are going to have to navigate around and attempt to become familiar with your product. The easier you make this experience for them, the better their overall impression is going to be. If your customers run into major problems and become frustrated during the onboarding stage, you have officially made a bad impression. While you may be able to sway the negative bias that these customers develop while going through the onboarding process, your chances of retaining these customers are dramatically diminished. We tend to follow the biases we generate during an initial experience, which is why it is so important for companies to focus on the onboarding process.
One of the best ways to improve the onboarding experience is by getting in the minds of the actual user. This can be accomplished by studying the actual interactions that customers have with your products. There are many user testing companies that can get you the insight you need to refine your products. Your business can essentially develop a prototype that can be tested by various users, which will allow you to see exactly how they are interacting with your product. One of the best things about this is the fact that you get to see the first impression that new users have of your product. You may be unaware of issues that your customers are having during onboarding.
We know that these initial impressions set the foundation that customers have about a particular product or service, so getting this insight is worth its weight in gold. Companies who spend the money to study the user experience during the onboarding process are going to have a higher number of satisfied customers. Often times there are small tweaks that can be made, which can wind up having a major impact on the overall utility that customers have with a product or service. The fewer problems customers experience with your product or service, the greater the chance they are going to remain one of your customers. Utilizing this aspect of evaluation can have a major impact on customer churn. Simply taking the time to really understand how customers are interacting with your product can have a monumental impact on customer retention.
Customer churn starts with the onboarding process, which is why it is so important to make this initial stage as flawless as possible. The more comfortable you can make your customers with your product or service in the early stages, the better chance they are going to stick around. Most customers don't even realize the biases they carry from these early stages of using a product. Evaluating and refining the onboarding process will go a long way to when it comes to decreasing customer churn and increasing revenue.
