When it comes to customer onboarding, creating an equal experience for all is important.

Take this scenario. Client A receives stellar service, but Client B is left to make calls to the onboarding team asking about next steps. Would you consider this a success? Maybe in the case of Client A, but Client B is likely to walk away.  

To help achieve consistency across the board, businesses turn to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). These documents act as a guidebook for employees, informing them of what they must do to achieve that all-important equal standard. 

But it isn’t as simple as it sounds, and sometimes SOPs can stray too far, to the extent that staff feel deprived of all freedom in their roles. 

Below, we explain how to avoid this and talk you through the process of creating an SOP that ensures your customers stick around for the long haul. You can also download our free template to help you get started today. 

What is a customer onboarding standard operating procedure?

A customer onboarding SOP is a document that sets out the steps that have to be taken to take a customer through to their agreed success milestone, for example, successfully using a tool for the first time. Think of it like a much more detailed checklist. 

An SOP sets out the repeatable process that can be followed by all members of your onboarding team. It doesn’t just instruct staff to complete an action, like “send an email”. It should explain who should send it, when, what it should contain, and what should happen next. 

To ensure that customers are retained long-term, the SOP can extend beyond just onboarding. It can factor in the likes of customer health reviews, low-engagement responses, and complaint follow-ups.

Overall, the purpose of an onboarding SOP is to make important customer experiences reliable and measurable, so that processes can be improved. 

The relationship between onboarding and retention

You may wonder where retention comes into play. As we mentioned in the section above, an SOP can extend beyond the onboarding process. And it’s important that it does. 

If you invest all of your time and effort into making sure your customer has a great experience in the first few weeks and months, and then forget about them, there’s a real risk that they could start to drift away after a year or so. 

A situation like this renders all of your hard work at the beginning of the process redundant. It’s like herding sheep into a pen. You may spend weeks and months training sheepdogs to herd, and they do an amazing job getting them into the pen. But it’s all a waste of time if there’s a gap in the pen’s fence, and the sheep escape. 

The requirements of longer term customers may not be as great, but they shouldn’t be ignored. In fact, those simple check-ins are the most cost-effective moves you can make, so they should always be factored into your SOP. 

How to develop an SOP for customer onboarding and retention 

We’ve looked at what an SOP is and how it can help not just create a great experience for all customers, but also help you retain them long into the future. Now let’s look at the nuts and bolts of a standard operating procedure. 

The best method is to work through the customer journey in order, starting with the most important point of all.

1. Define the outcome

Begin by identifying what successful onboarding and retention looks like.

With onboarding, this is usually the point at which the client achieves their first valuable milestone. For example, using your platform to run their own paid advertizing. The moment they launch their first ad could be this milestone. Another example could involve a software customer configuring and completing their first workflow. 

Once you have this, you want to define your retained value. This is what you want the customer to have achieved in, say, 12 months. For example, the software customer may have set up their whole company’s workflows on the platform. 

Without knowing these destinations, it’s hard to guide your customer toward them. When you can see them hitting these points, you know you’ll stand a better chance of keeping your customers in the long run.  

2. Analyze the existing process

One of the most important steps is to look at how things currently work. This isn’t just reviewing stats and numbers. It involves speaking with employees involved in all aspects of the process, from sales to delivery. 

It also involves speaking with clients, reviewing their records, emails, complaints and any meeting notes. 

During this process, some key things to look out for include: 

• Steps employees complete in different ways
• Information requested more than once
• Delays between departments
• Tasks with no clear owner
• Decisions based on undocumented knowledge
• Common customer questions
• Workarounds used by experienced employees
• Points at which customers become inactive or confused
• Promises made during sales that delivery teams do not receive

This process will help you identify clear weaknesses to address first, leaving you with a stronger, cleaner SOP to implement. 

3. Map the customer journey and internal workflow

This next step asks you to take a holistic look at the process. By this, it means looking at the perspective of both the customer and the team completing the internal tasks. 

What this does is help expose the steps in which the customer is left floundering, frustrated or uncertain. It also enables you to pinpoint the reasons why this is happening, and that usually comes from the internal review. 

To help address the issues, look to identify the following for each step in the process:

• The event or trigger that begins the step
• The person responsible
• The action the business takes
• Anything the customer must do
• The information or system required
• The expected timescale
• The output produced
• The evidence that the stage is complete
• The next action and its owner

With these two workflows laid out side-by-side, you’ll quickly be able to see any gaps or misalignments.

4. Pick the most important SOPs to create first

While it may seem tempting to create an SOP “bible” that lays out what’s expected for the entire process, the reality is, staff are unlikely to engage with or follow it. 

Instead, it can be helpful to create a collection of smaller SOPs that focus on important parts of the process. But what qualifies? 

The first step is to look at the frequency of the tasks. If it happens often, it could be a prime candidate for an SOP. 

The second consideration is how much variation is involved in a task. If it’s being handled differently by lots of team members, introducing an SOP could bring order to the chaos. 

Risk is also another important thing to consider. It’s vital to weigh up the risk of things going wrong. A customer could walk and leave a negative public review, which could be damaging. The riskier the process, the more important an SOP is. 

If you didn’t want to follow the above, you can also work through it chronologically. Your first onboarding SOP might account for the likes of: 

• Sales-to-onboarding handovers
• Welcome communications
• Customer information collection
• Kickoff meetings
• Account setup
• First-value reviews
• Onboarding completion and handover

Retention SOPs might cover the likes of low engagement, complaints review, cancellation and feedback follow-ups. 

5. Draft SOPs with a consistent template

Linked to the above, it’s important to bring a standard to your various SOP documents. This way, if staff are using several different documents, they can quickly understand the structure and what to look for. 

We’ve included a free SOP template that you can download below. In short, it should include the following sections:

• The purpose
• The scope
• The trigger
• The required inputs from both sides
• Roles and responsibilities
• The procedure 
• Exceptions and escalations
• Feedback measures 

6. Connect onboarding to retention

Arguably the most important part of your SOP is the inclusion of retention. Most people think about onboarding as the most important part of the process, but in the end, if customers later walk away, it feels like using a sieve instead of a bucket. 

One step you can implement to ensure success in the long-term is to create a customer success record. This is a document for the onboarding team to create that’s then shared with those involved in retention. It can include information like:

• The customer’s original objective
• The scope and promises agreed
• Important stakeholders
• The first-value milestone achieved
• Evidence of the result
•  Outstanding risks or dependencies
• Communication preferences
• The next value milestone
• The next review date
• The employee responsible 

By creating this simple document, it ensures a seamless handover and improves future conversations and relationships. 

7. Measure and improve

The only way to know if an SOP is working is to measure the performance. When it comes to onboarding and retention, key information can be gleaned from different sources. 

For example, on the customer-side, it’s important to measure how long it took for them to reach the point of first value, whether they’ve completed all milestones, and if they’ve been asked for repeated information.  

When it comes to retention, it’s vital to look at drop-off or cancellation rates and the dates they arose. Exit questionnaires can shed more light on frustrations. Complaints and reviews can also shed light on things that are going wrong. 

Download a free SOP template

If you’re looking for that extra helping hand with your standard operating procedure, we’re here for you. Below, you can download our template complete with prompts so that you can properly adjust it for your own company. 

Click here to download the Onthen SOP Template

Get more help with customer onboarding and retention

As we’ve seen above, successfully retaining customers begins with your onboarding process. If mistakes are made and a strong relationship isn’t built, there’s a good chance your customers will walk at the first opportunity. 

If you’re looking for more expert help and guidance with your customer onboarding process, Onthen can help. 

Our platform is designed to free up vital time and resources while making the process more efficient and professional. We do this by automating simple, repeated tasks, like filling out forms or asking clients for ID documents or tax forms.  

The best thing about the platform is that it can be tailored to your needs. You may need help with just one part of your onboarding process, like the sign-up stage. 

It’s really simple to get started today. We offer a free trial, which you can take advantage of by clicking here.