How do you automate client onboarding?

A new client signs on Tuesday. On Wednesday the salesperson forwards the email to operations. On Thursday someone asks the client for their logo, their invoicing details and a list of users. The following week finance sets up the account, support creates the logins, and the project lead sends a welcome message that repeats half of what sales already said. The client's first impression of working with you is a fortnight of small requests from people they haven't met.

Nothing in that story is hard. Every step is routine. The time goes into the gaps between the steps, where a task sits in someone's inbox until they get to it. That is what makes onboarding one of the best processes to automate: the steps are known, the order is known, and the trigger is a single event you already record.

Where the time goes

Map your onboarding end to end and put a real time against each step. Sending a document request takes minutes. Creating an account takes minutes. Setting up the project takes an hour. Then add up the days each one waited for someone to pick it up. In almost every business we see, the waiting is many times the work. The client experiences the total.

The signed proposal is the trigger

Everything that always happens after a signature can be started by the signature. The document requests go out to the client, from one address, as one list, with a link to upload. The accounts are created in your systems from the details already on the proposal. The internal tasks are created and assigned, with due dates. The project lead gets a single message that says a new client has started and what's already been done.

The client gets a message within the hour that says who their contact is, what you'll need from them and by when, and what happens once they send it. That message does more for the relationship than anything in the first month, because it means the client never has to wonder whether you've started.

The steps that run on their own

• Document requests. One list, one upload link, a reminder if nothing arrives, and a note to the owner when it does.
• Account and user setup. Created from the proposal's details in your CRM, your billing system and your delivery tools, with the client's users invited.
• Internal tasks. Created in your project tool, assigned by role, due dates set from the start date.
• The welcome message. Sent from the named contact, with the next steps and dates filled in from the plan.
• The first meeting. Proposed from the contact's calendar, with the agenda already written.

Each of these is a step people already do. The system does them in the same hour instead of across two weeks, and it records each one so anyone can see where a client's onboarding stands without asking around.

A worked example

A services firm signs a client for a monthly retainer. The proposal is marked signed in the CRM at ten past two. By quarter past, the client has an email from their account lead listing the four things the firm needs (a logo, invoicing details, a list of users and a point of contact), with one link to upload them and a date. The client's company exists in the billing system with the agreed plan. The project is set up in the delivery tool with the first month's tasks assigned. The account lead has a note saying what's been done and what's outstanding, and a proposed time for the kick-off call sits in the client's inbox.

Two days later the client uploads three of the four items. The system marks them received, reminds the client about the fourth, and tells the account lead. When the last one arrives, the users are invited. The account lead opens the review, checks the setup against the proposal, and sends the message that says everything is ready. The client has had three messages, all from the same person, and has never been asked twice for anything.

Where it goes wrong

• Triggering on a verbal yes. The track starts from the signed proposal in a system, not from a salesperson saying the deal is done. Otherwise clients get welcomed to things they haven't bought.
• Asking for documents twice. If sales already collected something during the proposal, it's on the proposal. The request list should be built from what's missing, not from a fixed template.
• No owner for exceptions. A client who goes quiet, a failed account setup, unusual terms: each needs a named person who's told, or the track stalls silently.
• Automating the welcome and nothing else. A cheerful message followed by the same two weeks of waiting is worse than no message at all.

The one review a person keeps

Before the client is told their setup is complete, a person looks at it. The accounts, the users, the project, the documents received. It takes ten minutes and it catches the things a rule can't: a client who signed for one thing and is clearly expecting another, a missing document that matters, a user list that doesn't match the contract. The review is the moment the relationship is handed to the person who will run it, and it should feel that way.

The same person is where exceptions go. A client who doesn't send documents after the reminder. A proposal with unusual terms. A billing setup that fails. The system brings these to the owner with what's happened so far, and the owner decides. This is the same principle as everywhere else in the work we do: automate around the person, not instead of them. The first post in this series, what should you automate first, explains why.

What the client notices

They notice that they heard from you before they had to ask. They notice that they were asked for everything once, in one place. They notice that the people they meet already know what was agreed. And they notice when the first delivery arrives on the date you said. None of that requires the client to know anything about the system behind it. It feels like a company that has done this before.

What to measure

Two numbers, taken before and after. Onboarding steps completed without delay, which is the measure on Customer Experience: of the steps in the track, how many happened on the day they could have. And the time from signature to first delivery, which is the number the client feels and the one that shortens the path to the second invoice. Add the number of requests you sent the client, which should fall to one.

What to do this week

1. Write down every step between a signed proposal and the first delivery, in order, with who does it.
2. Beside each step, write how long the work takes and how long it usually waits.
3. Mark the steps that always happen the same way. Those are the track.
4. Decide who does the one review and what they check.
5. Take the readings: steps completed without delay and time from signature to first delivery, for your last five clients.

If you bring that list to a call, we'll tell you which steps we'd start from the signature, where we'd keep the review, and what the client's first message should say. Triage of the requests that arrive once the client is live is covered in how to triage support requests automatically.