Customer Onboarding + Pro Services

Ava Armacost

For those who have Customer Onboarding Engineers and Professional Services Consultants:

I am very interested in hearing about how your organization approaches assigning resources to new customers. For customers who purchase PS, do they also receive a Customer Onboarding Manager/Engineer at the same time? Do you find that customers mainly benefit from a Customer Onboarding resource when PS is not involved? Or does it depend on the customer and their individual needs? I'm only thinking about in-house PS delivery for this scenario.

We are trying to fill in the gap between CSEs assigned to strategic accounts for the entire customer journey and digital CSEs who support a more hands-off approach. The initial thought is to provide a subset of our digital customers with a hands-on Customer Onboarding Engineer who will be resourced to them for the first 90 days.

Thank you!

Brian O'Keeffe

https://gaingrowretain.com/discussion/10790/customer-onboarding-pro-services

Create one onboarding experience for all customers, and when they purchase professional services or have an onboarding manager, that experience includes direct points of contact or live interactions. Example: Map out the onboarding experience for your customers. Then, assign each to its sector; in my example, it would be with professional services, a CSM, or strictly digital. Then, assign a signature and point of contact (professional services, sign that series, CSM sign that series, DE, sign with your DE signature) and include an option to opt out. Then, they align the services or the CSM very carefully. Hence, they know that the deal closes, the onboarding phase begins after X amount of time [window to adjust as needed], the automated campaign begins, and all accounts follow the same path and demarcations. If you try to apply it just to your small SMB accounts, you have two different and divergent (and potentially out of control) customer experiences. Ideally, no one is opted out, but we all know there will be cases where it is needed. (Company A purchases but goes live and rolls out in nine months while a small subset configures, designs, etc...) 

Brian Aherne

I agree with Brian. Try to create as much as possible a consistent experience for you customers, while at the same time realising that customisation is valuable. The key is understanding the impact that the customer needs.
Customize your offering where possible to meet their requirements. Try to avoid providing a list of services that are not required especially with enterprise customers. Keep your offering simple so expectations are easy to meet and everyone is getting value.
Recently we have moved more to selling projects rather than the product, in this case PSC are key, but CS pick up once that phase is is complete to build upsell.
Simplicity is key, customers don't want to end up in a prolonged implementation so project management should be managed where possible by the customer.