How to create a client onboarding process

When someone raises their hand and says ‘Hey, I want to work with you!’ what do you do next?

Do you have a rough idea stored somewhere in the back of your head, some tasks you need to do scribbled down on a bit of paper, or do you wing it every time?

Client onboarding is the process of how you welcome new clients to your business, how you clarify and set expectations around their time with you, making sure you dot your ‘i’ “s’ and cross your ‘t’s’ and allows you to build a strong relationship with your client moving forward.

Whilst some people see this onboarding process as nothing but a series of tedious tasks, by having a systematic approach to this critical part of your business, you are able to reduce your admin time and create better experiences for your customers and for you.

Your onboarding process is just that. Yours.

Every business has an onboarding process that is unique to their particular business. It’s part of what makes you different to your competitors and forms part of your value proposition. It’s also one of those things that to be able to save the time you need to invest some time into setting up your system.

As you create this you will find that there are parts of the process you are going to be able to automate using various tools at your disposal. Now that might sound cold and robotic, but it ensures that every single client receives the exact, same level of service every single time. It ensures that you don’t miss anything and that you have everything you need from your client.

It helps your clients to feel confident in you and your team knowing that you have the systems in place to care for them.

So just how do you create this amazing onboarding system?

Step One

Write down what you need to do to give your customer an extraordinary experience with you.

Think about the things that you know need to be done and that you are probably doing already (even if randomly). Things like contracts and getting paid.

Step Two

Add to this all the other things that you would like to add in.

Think about welcome emails where you can set your expectations, onboarding questionnaires, updates needed to your systems.

Step Three

Put these steps into a logical sequence with every step building on the one prior to it. You may wish to group the steps. For example:

Financial
– Create a deposit invoice
– Send deposit invoice to client
– Create future invoices
– Schedule future invoices
– Deposit paid

Contract
– Draft contract
– PDF contract
– Send to client via DocuSign
– Save copy to Drive

Step Four

Build these out into a USEABLE checklist that is quick and easy for you to roll out for every client.

Pip Meecham

Systems and Operations Specialist & Founder of ProjectBox