If you’re faced with the prospect of creating a customer onboarding process, you may be feeling a little overwhelmed. Not only is this area far-reaching in its scope, but it can also be technical. 

The added challenge arises when more and more customers start arriving. How do you scale things up to meet this new demand?

If you’re looking for help, then you’re in the right place. Below, we share our best pieces of advice on how to create a customer onboarding process. We take you through the key considerations and the things to avoid. 

And crucially, we show you the onboarding creation process step by step, one that allows you the flexibility to scale up and adapt if necessary. By the end, you’ll have everything you need to create a solid working plan. 

Let’s begin with the basics.

What is a customer onboarding process and why should you design one?

A customer onboarding process is the system your company uses to welcome every new customer to your organization and service, and to guide them to the moment they reach real value. 

It’s a broad area, covering everything from those very first impressions in welcome emails to initial consultation calls and product demonstrations. The biggest function of this system is that it’s repeatable, meaning you can apply it to 10 customers or 100. The real skill is in delivering a system that brings value to every single one of those customers. 

It’s important to remember that not all companies start with this process in place. For many people, things may be managed on spreadsheets, email threads, and rudimentary or outdated case management systems (CSM). 

If your business is set up like this, you may have run into issues, and that can lead to loss of custom. Multinational firm PwC found in its recent Customer Experience Survey that 52% of consumers stopped using or buying from a brand because they had a negative experience of the service. 29% stopped altogether because of customer experience issues, either online or in-person. You can also head here to read our guide to good onboarding experiences. 

These are huge figures, and you could be seeing them in your business too. Imagine how it would feel to implement a system that boosted customer retention by 29%, and the impact that would have on revenue.

How to create a customer onboarding process

Now that we’ve looked at the importance of having an effective process in place, let’s dive into the nuts and bolts of creating it.

It’s important to remember that the customer onboarding process you create the first time isn’t going to be perfect. The key is to adapt and develop as you go, and that can only be done with feedback and analysis of key metrics, like onboarding completion rate and customer support ticket analysis. 

However, putting together a system that incorporates the below will leave you in a strong position, one that will enable you to improve efficiencies as well as the service received by the customer. 

Not only that, you’ll have lots of data at your disposal to analyze performance, make improvements, and scale your operation. 

Let’s begin with the all-important first step. 

Step 1: Map your onboarding journey and define the stages

The best place to start is with your customer’s path, not what you need to do. Sketch out the stages a customer needs to move through from the moment they make contact. Name each stage. 

A common shape looks something like this: 

1. Kickoff call
2. Customer set-up or implementation
3. Delivery of the first value
4. The customer adopts the product or service
5. Handoff to other teams

These are broad terms, but they give you a structure you can adapt to your own business. If you want a more detailed look at each stage, check out our guide here. 

Step 2: Choose your onboarding model 

An onboarding model refers to the approach you want to take. It’s almost like a spectrum, with one end being a very hands-on style, and the other being very automated and controlled by tech. 

Choosing a model early will help you determine the cost of onboarding, the speed, who’s involved, and what you need. 

These are the core models most companies opt for:

‘High-touch’ or ‘hands-on’ onboarding - as the name suggests, this model is human-centric, with kickoff calls, dedicated support, and regular check-ins. It delivers the most personalized experience and the fastest path to value for complex products, but it’s expensive and hard to scale.

‘Low-touch’ or ‘hands-off’ onboarding - this contrasting model leans on automation and content, with light human involvement. Think guided email sequences, webinars, and self-serve resources, with a person stepping in only when needed.

‘Tech-touch’ onboarding - this model is almost entirely automated and self-serve. The customer is guided by in-app flows, checklists, tutorials, and a knowledge base, with little to no direct human contact. It scales nicely, but it demands real investment in content and product experience upfront.

Hybrid onboarding - the final model combines the above, and it’s where most companies end up. You might run high-touch for enterprise accounts and tech-touch for smaller ones, all under one process. The next step is how you decide which customer gets which.

Step 3: Match models to customer needs

Not all customers are the same. Some may be willing to pay for premium and bespoke services, and if they’re paying a lot for that, they may expect more attention as a result. 

It all comes down to expectations, and that’s where it helps to segment your customers accordingly. Two factors usually decide where they sit: the value of the account and the complexity of getting them live.

A high-value client with higher complexities, such as data integration and migration, usually points to a hands-on approach. But this extra investment is justified. 

Low-value contracts tend to be simpler and that leans more into the automated or hybrid side of things. 

A good rule to remember is this: spend your human resources where it matters. Look toward automation to handle the rest. 

Step 4: Assign ownership and cross-functional roles 

Onboarding is never the job of one person. It usually stretches across different teams, and if the transition and handoff between them aren’t effective, customers may get lost in the space in between. 

The best way to avoid this happening is to assign members of the team clear roles and responsibilities. You can tie this into existing job roles. For example:

• Customer success managers or onboarding specialists act as the customer's main guide
• Implementation or technical teams handle configuration, integrations, and data migration
• Product and education teams build the training and documentation
• Support catches early questions and keeps confidence high

From the customer’s perspective, they need to know the point of contact for each team, as well as a fallback if they can’t get in touch with that person. It’d be like leading them into a room, leaving them there and locking them in. 

In short, a process that builds strong transitions and handoffs is one that will impress a customer as well as keep them happy. 

Step 5: Build playbooks and standardise the workflow 

This step builds upon the others and helps you turn all of these ideas into a workable process.

The best place to start is with playbooks for your team. Think of it as a guide to help them navigate their customers through the process. It can include tasks, who is responsible for what, and templates. The playbook essentially tells your staff everything they need to know about onboarding that customer. 

Alongside this is standardizing the process. This helps keep things consistent and ensures that all customers get the same positive experience. The goal is simple: any capable person on your team should be able to onboard a customer to the same standard.

Step 6: Build the feedback loop 

This is perhaps the most important stage of all—the way to track whether your process is working. If you do not seek feedback, you’ll never know what works, what doesn’t and what could be improved. 

There are certain key metrics to measure, which will help you assess effectiveness: 

• Time to first value
• Onboarding completion rate
• Support ticket requests
• Cancellations within 90 days

Each of these things helps tell you what parts of the process work and what don’t. Review the figures and feedback regularly and objectively, and take constructive action as soon as you can. 

How automation can help with the creation process

With your onboarding process laid out before you, one of the most important things to think about is which steps can be automated. 

Nowadays, technology can handle lots of basic tasks, like sending email reminders to clients to ask them to upload documents or complete questionnaires. By designing a system that incorporates this, you can free up vital staff time, allowing them to focus on delivering the best value for clients. 

However, automation only works if the setup is right. The last thing you want to have to do is go back and repeat tasks a computer was meant to do. That’s why it’s important to use tools and onboarding software like Onthen. Platforms like this can integrate into existing systems, and once set up, works efficiently and reliably. To learn more, head here. 

How to scale your onboarding process as you grow

A good customer onboarding process isn’t finished when you launch it. Your process should grow and evolve as your customer base grows. 

This journey is important. By being hands-on at first, you can see what the challenges are in the process for both you and your customer. You’ll also see where the inefficiencies lie and what opportunities there are for the likes of automation. 

As work increases, you can gradually move off the likes of shared spreadsheets and onto proper case management systems and platforms, like Onthen. At this stage, the initial process may begin to look very different to how it was at first, but that’s a good thing—provided the system works.  

The purpose is to do more of the same, just faster and for more people. It’s all about letting the process absorb growth without the experience degrading, so your hundredth customer lands as well as your fifth. 

Common onboarding process design mistakes

We’ve reviewed best practices so far, but let’s take a look at what not to do. This way, you’ll have a more complete insight into the process. 

A crucial thing to remember is that most onboarding processes fail in their design, not their delivery. The common mistakes below are some of the most damaging:

• Having no real process - Relying on individual heroics and a shared spreadsheet feels fine until volume climbs, at which point accounts start slipping, staff become stressed, and every customer gets a different experience.
• Running one process for every customer - Skipping bespoke customer needs means either drowning small accounts in high-touch attention they do not need or leaving high-paying accounts to fend for themselves.
• Leaving ownership vague - When onboarding belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one. Without a named owner per customer and clear roles across teams, work falls into the gaps between departments, which can lead to a negative experience.
• Buying tools before designing the process - A tool-first approach locks you into someone else's assumptions about how onboarding should work. Design the process, then choose software that fits what you need
• Building no feedback loop - A process you never review cannot improve and slowly rots. Review feedback regularly and take prompt and effective action when you can.

It’s vital to reiterate that an onboarding process for your customers evolves and changes over time. Just because you spend a lot of time devising it doesn’t mean it must remain a rigid system. 

Take customer feedback onboard—even if it hurts your soul. It’ll help you shape something that will, in the end, increase revenue.