Customer onboarding is one of the most important elements—if not the single most important element—of customer success. And hence needs to be done the perfect way. Here we provide you with everything you need to know about a Customer Onboarding specialist. Let’s dive in.
What is an Onboarding specialist ?
So, who is a Customer Onboarding specialist? The onboarding specialist takes a customer from that very first moment of signup to the moment of “first success” with your service. A client onboarding specialist helps customers to be successful by ensuring they are implementing features and techniques the right way.
With customer onboarding specialists, customers are aware of the various ways they can use your product to satisfy their needs and accomplish goals.
Why do you need a Customer Onboarding Specialist
Never underestimate the importance of good onboarding. Your Customer Success Manager(CSM) can manage customers in a better way with a good onboarding process. A good onboarding process makes it easier for CSMs to handle customer accounts.
Also when onboarding is done well by a dedicated specialist, your customers do not face serious problems because they are already clear on how things work.
Someone who is specialized in this role and has the key factors can help configure things in an easy manner. This is where a good onboarding specialist can make an effective difference.
Suggested Read: Why your SaaS might need an Onboarding Specialist
Why can’t Customer Success Managers handle Onboarding ?
If each of your customer success managers (CSMs) manage one or a few high-paying clients, they build a relationship with the customers and understand their business. In this case, the Customer Success Managers can handle onboarding smoothly.
If you have One too Many Customer Success Managers, Each of these Customer Success Managers manages tens if not hundreds of low-paying customers. In this case, the Customer Success Managers cannot pay dedicated attention to each customer. And here comes the need for a Customer Onboarding specialist.
Important Skills Required for a Customer Onboarding Specialist
Empathy
If you want your customers to be happy and successful, it’s important to understand them and what happiness and success mean to them. For that, you have to step into their shoes.
Patience
There will be times when your customers are angry with you, have complaints, or are simply stuck and need your attention. In times like these, the last thing you want to do is to lose your cool. Be patient.
Communication
If you need to solve a problem or get things done the right way, communication is the key. Good communication is important to convey the right information to your customers and help them understand better.
Continuous Improvement
The Client Onboarding Specialist has onboarded the customers and the customers have begun using your product. But this does not end here. The onboarding specialist needs to make sure the customers are clear with the product and features at every phase.
He/She needs to deliver continuous good support to customers
Customer Onboarding specialist job description
About the job
For the role of a customer onboarding specialist, there are some requisite responsibilities to be taken care of. A customer onboarding specialist makes sure the customers achieve their goals. And for this the specialist needs to:
- Educate them
- Solve technical problems
- Minimize roadblocks
- Improve adoption of services or products
The ideal candidate for customer onboarding specialist is one who has the experience and is passionate about solving customer needs, is good with communication.
Responsibilities of Onboarding specialist
The responsibilities of the onboarding specialist include helping customers to learn everything they need to know about your product or service. Other key responsibilities include:
Help customers with implementation
Client onboarding specialists need to assist users with implementation. for example Some users may not be familiar with some specific features of the product. This can cause trouble, and hence the onboarding specialist needs to help them.
Strengthen communication between stakeholders
As we discussed earlier, good communication is important. Customer onboarding specialists need to enhance and improve communication between stakeholders. This can be done by ensuring all the parties are on the same page.
Set customer expectations
When you set your customer’s expectations, they wouldn’t expect something you didn’t promise them. If false promises are made during customer onboarding, it will leave the customer unhappy.
Solve customer queries
Your customer needs someone who listens to their problems and finds solutions. Keeping track of customer queries is another important responsibility of onboarding specialists.
Act on customer feedback
Take customer feedback seriously. Feedback gives you an overview of how customers feel about your product. This helps in improving your weak areas if any.
Customer Onboarding specialist Interview questions
Some of the frequently asked questions in a customer onboarding specialist interview are below.
- How aregoing to manage different customers at the same time?
- How are you you going to handle customer queries and complaints ?
- While enrolling new customers, what details should you have or ask for?
- What are your methods of onboarding a customer and how is it different from others ?
- Consider a hypothetical situation where you have one critical customer requirement which is a road blocker. Typically, disturbance for them to go live. Assuming this point was not identified during sales or later evaluation period, please provide key pointers to handle this situation.
- What if the customer asks for a feature that is not a part of your product? How will you handle this situation?
Onboarding specialist salary
According to Comparably, the salaries of Onboarding Specialists in the US range from $40,000 to $110,000, with a median salary of $110,000. The middle 50% of Onboarding Specialists make $40,000, with the top 75% making $132,000.
