The Natural Evolution of SaaS Onboarding
First of all, there are lots of great articles that have been written about the importance of a great onboarding experience. The ties to net retention, time to value, and NPS are crucial. You will undoubtedly go through a few different approaches. As someone who has been on the implementation team, created implementation teams from scratch, and fixed some, I thought that it would help some by writing down some best practices, and explain my “SaaS company onboarding MaturationCurve” ℠.
Stage 1 - Founders
Congrats! If you are at this stage, there should be no shame in your game. You have accomplished one of the hardest things to do as a new product- getting real live actual customers that do not share your last name! Although not sustainable for a prolonged period, you are able to talk to your customers, hear their joys and frustrations, and perhaps add and shape your feature roadmap with the feedback that you are hearing as you support your first batch of customers get launched.
Stage 2 - Intern, junior dev, random barista
At some very near point in time, you (or your board) will come to realize that having your founder being tasked with random change password requests and onboarding phone calls are not the best use of their time. That being said, PLEASE SKIP THIS STAGE. To place the critical task of launching the new customers that your sales team has fought so hard to get into the hands of your receptionist or a person with your same last name is not a strategy that will make you successful. Yes, I have seen it work, but its at about a 20% rate, and usually within 6 months you are running haphazardly into Stage 3.
Stage 3- Onboard-CSM-Supporterer
This is what I lovingly call “Project Pangea” - it’s a nicer name than “Jack of all trades” or “Frankenstein.” That being said, this is a very sustainable model for many customers in the SMB space. If you are on your path to working with Enterprise customers, this will start to break after 1-2 years. Most Series B companies serving those large customers will start seeing the warning signs - longer delayed implementations, stakeholder escalations, higher churn.
If you talked to any of the resources doing this work, they will tell you that a new customer is like “a bomb going off”, and they have to choose between answering critical support tickets, getting new customers launched, and renewing customers. It is a very hard balance, and will cause burnout, churn, and pain if it goes on for too long. If your retention rates start slipping into the lower 90’s, start planning for Stage 4.
Stage 4- Defined Implementation Team
At this stage, your company has really hit its’ stride, and is setting itself up for success by forming groups that can focus on the optimization of the customer journey. The more specialization that roles have, the better they can get at it. If your product has lots of bells and whistles, configuration options, and self-service tools, you really have to invest in implementation teams that can focus on 1 task - getting customers launched in a timely matter, and training them on how to use the platform.
Here are some KPI’s that can really help you optimize this team:
Project length - At this point of your company’s existence, you 100% should know how long it takes to get a customer live. Your sales team should know, and you should be tracking each one of these projects to baseline and make sure that 90-95% of customers are being launched in this timeframe. If you are telling people its a 30 day onboarding, but all launches are 6 months into a 1 year contract, then changes need to be made.
Project Margin - Like the above point, your company should be charging for onboarding unless there is no human interaction needed, and your platform truly is self-service. By Stage 4, you should really have 2-3 different tiers of onboarding, with trackable differences. In order to get your project margin, your team should also be tracking time. This will enable you to know the P&L of the group, and help you with the Finance team when you need the data to ask for more resources.
Billable Utilization - A tried and true tracking metric for Professional Services. I like to use this metric to know when to increase the team. I feel that anywhere from 67-72% is a good number to shoot for. If you have resources that do pre-sales, manage teams, do lots of “special project” work, I tend to aim for a 55-60% rate for them.
Customer Satisfaction score - Make sure that you have a survey tool set up, but that you are asking them about the team and their performance. It is important that any possible issues with the product are not factored into this score. Instead, focus on communications, responsiveness, and empathy.
(shameless plug- contact me if you need help setting up any of the above)
Stage 5 - Specialized Teams
If you are reading this article and are at this stage, I congratulate you again. You work for a company that has found an important niche in the marketplace, and customer organizations are placing extreme value in your platform, and are driving major business decisions and initiatives with it. There are few different directions that you may be seeing the implementation team going in. These are all suggestions based on what I have seen or talked about on my podcast.
Create groups that mirror the regional focus of your sales team
Create groups that focus on the verticals that your company is targeting. Customers and prospects love it when the people that they are onboarding with have industry experience.
Create roles based on needs. Project Managers are table stakes for Enterprise customers. You might need UX or integration specialists. I tend to use contractors for some roles until the need can justify a full-time role for 2-3 months straight.
Key Takeaways
There is no one perfect way to do this. No matter what you read or hear from peers, you have to be able to tailor your teams to the unique nature of your platform.
Specialize earlier than you think you need to
Track KPI’s to baseline your costs and hiring needs
Evaluate your team to see if roles and groups can be aligned to vertical or regions
Never lose focus on customer satisfaction