What to do when a company won't provide any onboarding (even though the contract includes it)?
Hello,
This is my first question to the community.
My company hosts an online research community. The platform we use to host the community was supposed to have provided us with onboarding to manage the community and engage the members. Unfortunately, no onboarding has been provided. Whenever I ask for it, my "client success manager" asks me to ask him questions. I explained to him that while this is not the first community I have managed, it is the first time using their platform to do so - and I am working through it to try and determine which questions I should be asking.
Unfortunately, the setup and engagement are not intuitive at all. I described it to him as feeling like I just bought a robot that was advertised as plug n play, but then found myself stranded on an island with said robot in 1000 pieces with only IKEA assembly instructions to guide me (no disrespect to IKEA).
The most I have been given is a link to a customer demo that does not touch on the very vital issue of engagement (not to mention dozens of little issues). From integrating with social media, to best practices in leveraging rewards and incentives - it is not functioning as described and I am not receiving any guidance.
Honestly, I have never been in this position before. I have been in the position of both client and vendor. As a vendor, I lean toward more support rather than less. As a client, I appreciate more rather than less. But regardless of which side I am coming from, I have never received nor given well...nothing. Truly, I am starting to suspect that the platform does not know what "client onboarding" is.
I am curious how others have handled situations like this, or would handle it if you were in my shoes?
I have read several awesome posts in this forum about motivating customers to participate in their onboarding.
But what does one do when the platform vendor won't onboard the customer?
Any advice/help/guidance would be so appreciated!
Thank you!