Client onboarding is not just about getting customers through the door. It’s about ensuring they stay, thrive, and become loyal advocates for your brand.
When you kick off a new client relationship with a good onboarding experience, you set the stage for maximizing client lifetime value (CLV). This metric measures the financial worth of a client to a business throughout the course of the relationship, starting at that initial point of purchase.
With the goal of driving long-term, high-value client relationships, modern SaaS providers are going beyond the status quo in delivering meaningful client experiences — experiences that help maximize client lifetime value in a number of different ways.
Ways to Maximize Client Lifetime Value
Client Retention
While the pursuit of new clients remains critical, nurturing existing relationships often yields greater returns in the long run. Improving client retention by a mere 5% can drive up profits by over 25%. When clients feel valued and supported from the very outset of a partnership, they are more likely to stick around for the long haul.
Cross-Sell and Upsell Opportunities
Existing clients are 50% more likely to try new products than new clients. They’re also 31% more likely to spend more. Having insights into your clients' needs and goals from day-one conversations makes it easier to identify additional products and services that could benefit them.
Marketing Opportunities
Satisfied clients are a company’s best asset. A successful onboarding experience not only fosters loyalty; it also opens up doors for testimonials, referrals, and case studies. Clients referred by other clients have a 16% higher lifetime value and are four times more likely to refer more clients to your brand.
How Do You Deliver a Good Onboarding Experience?
Now that we’ve started to scratch the surface of the relationship between a positive client onboarding experience and maximizing client lifetime value, let’s dive deeper. Below, we’ve highlighted ten best practices for making client onboarding seamless:
- Create a standardized onboarding process backed by collaborative tools
- Track key metrics to identify potential bottlenecks and improve team capacity
- Involve stakeholders early on to build rapport and effectively collaborate
- Simplify collaboration between teams with a centralized communication portal
- Tailor onboarding workflows and communications to support clients’ needs
- Enable clients to track the real-time progress of their onboarding process
- Launch projects with an early adopter program to create brand champions
- Provide clients with ongoing training and resources for continued support
- Conduct post-onboarding surveys to gather feedback on client satisfaction
- Look for opportunities to automate repetitive tasks and refine processes
For more insights on how to successfully onboard new clients, see this resource.
Alongside these strategies, it’s also worth noting the value of being consultative. The onboarding process should be less about checking boxes or following a predefined path and more about enabling solutions that resonate with a client’s vision and goals. The more time you take to understand a client’s business, the more dynamic of a dialogue you can have with them, which helps to pave the way for mutual growth and success.
The Long-Term Benefits of a Positive Onboarding Experience
The benefits of good onboarding extend far beyond the initial setup phase. By accelerating the onboarding process and empowering clients to drive their own projects forward, you can position them for long-term success and maximize their lifetime value to your business.
Setuply’s dedication to providing an exceptional client onboarding experience aligns with these sentiments. Our all-in-one platform allows for a more scalable, streamlined onboarding process where clients have the visibility, resources, and support they need to succeed.
Start your journey toward better client onboarding by requesting a Setuply demo.