If you run a subscription-based service, you want more than simply to make a sale: you want people to come back month after month and year after year. This is why B2B SaaS onboarding is so crucial: it can help you strengthen customer satisfaction and, as a result, increase retention.
In this article, we’ll give you eight tips for successfully and seamlessly onboarding your B2B SaaS clients. Let’s jump in!
What is B2B SaaS?
B2B (business-to-business) SaaS refers to software tools that are offered on a subscription basis to businesses as opposed to individual customers. This means businesses can use the software online (hence the name, Software as a Service), as long as they have an internet connection.
The types of services B2B SaaS companies usually offer include things like CRM (customer relationship management), accounting automation software, picture editing, and anything else a business needs to carry out its work efficiently.
Additionally, sales prospecting tools are essential for businesses to efficiently identify and engage potential customers, further streamlining their operational capabilities.
B2B SaaS onboarding is absolutely crucial because it sets the tone for your customers’ whole journey with your software tool. If you can offer a smooth onboarding process, you ensure that users understand your product’s value, its features, and how to use it effectively.
Staying abreast of the latest SaaS marketing trends can further refine this process, tailoring it to meet evolving customer expectations and enhancing user engagement from the outset.
This, in turn, also helps to reduce churn by increasing customers’ satisfaction and engagement with the product.
In short, effective onboarding can lead to greater customer retention rates, and ultimately push business growth for your company.
8 Tips for B2B SaaS Onboarding
Here are our top tips for your B2B SaaS onboarding endeavors.
1. Provide clear and easy-to-follow setup instructions
The first step of your onboarding system is to create a clear and easy-to-follow set of instructions for your clients to set up the software on their devices.
You want this to be comprehensive but not overly time-consuming. Create a step-by-step guide that runs through the setup process using simple language rather than technical jargon. Straightforward steps make things easier to understand but also mean people can complete each phase in their own time.
Consider using visuals such as screenshots, diagrams and photos to show how each step should look and where people find the links or sections you’re describing. Bold colors, arrows, and boxes are also great ways to highlight vital information that users need to pay particular attention to.
Don’t forget to test any guide you create. Ask colleagues, partners, or other stakeholders to do a run-through and use their feedback to improve it.
Finally, incorporate an FAQ section as a closing step. Here, you can include answers to common questions, such as “what is a B2B leads database?”, as well as links to more detailed guides on specific features.
2. Incorporate interactive tutorials
If you have the talent in-house, set up interactive tutorials to help clients with different aspects of your software. Tutorials are known for increasing engagement and helping people retain what they’ve learned.
But here are a few other benefits:
- Hands-on learning: Clients and their team members can complete various online tasks and exercises on the platform and increase retention. So when someone asks them “how do IP phone systems work”, for example, they will know exactly how to show them.
- Personalization: Tutorials can be personalized to the user’s speed and learning style, as well as their actions and interactions with the tutorial.
- Accessibility: You can customize tutorial designs so they’re easier to navigate for people with dyslexia, impaired sight, or other accessibility needs.
- Progress tracking: People can see where their strengths and weaknesses lie, as well as see how far through the tutorial they are, which can motivate them to complete each task.
Work engagement platform Asana uses video tutorials to help new customers get up to speed with the platform and use the product successfully.
Most videos are only a few minutes long, so they’re more digestible and easy for employees to fit in during the workday. Plus, they cover the basics of working with the platform so users can get started immediately.
3. Offer live chat support
Live chat support is a great option for people who need extra assistance in setting up your software.
It offers immediate help to a problem. For example, if someone is trying to set up their QR code attendance tracking feature and the steps in the tutorial aren’t working, your support team can help them get to the bottom of the issue in real-time.
For the customer, this isn’t only convenient, it’s also more personalized as they’ll get help specific to their scenario rather than reading a generic FAQ that doesn’t address their problem.
For your company, it also means your support team can record and track these chats for the future. This way, you can identify common errors and bottlenecks or steps that need to be simplified in the onboarding process.
4. Collect feedback
Collecting feedback allows you to continuously improve the onboarding experience.
Aim to gather feedback at different parts of the onboarding process, so that you not only hear people’s first impressions, but also any challenges they face even after onboarding is complete.
Consider different types of feedback channels, too. As we mentioned, live chat is great for this. But you can also look at in-app questionnaires or use email outreach tools to request feedback directly.
Regardless of the channel you use, make sure to ask a variety of questions. Rating scales and multiple choice questions are great for collecting quantitative data on things like user satisfaction and how well a particular part of the onboarding works.
But open-ended questions give people a chance to voice concerns (or sing your praises) that may help you to uncover issues that a closed set of questions would miss.
Keep in mind that B2B clients may prefer to give anonymous responses, so give them that option. This is also likely to result in more honest answers.
Once you receive data, analyze it for trends and common pain points to make future improvements.
5. Create a knowledge base for self-service
Creating a space for self-service learning is a great way to reuse resources and help people to move at their own pace with the onboarding journey, particularly if it’s a steep learning curve.
Our knowledge hub, for example, includes a Quick Start Guide to get users up and running in minutes. But we also know users may need more support with integrations, so a dedicated section outlines the steps they need to connect different systems.
You can fill your knowledge base with articles about open enrollment periods, for example. You can also have tutorials, FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and best practices. These will help when it comes to addressing frequent user queries and challenges. Think of it as a comprehensive platform encyclopedia.
Some other things your knowledge base could include are:
- Forum chat: This encourages users to help each other out and share tips and tricks. It’s an excellent way of fostering community engagement and learning.
- Filters: Categorizing articles and allowing people to filter them makes it quick and easy to find relevant content. You could even add Save or Bookmark functions so people can return to articles they found particularly useful.
- Visual aids: Visual elements such as screenshots, videos, and diagrams are particularly engaging ways of helping people understand technical terms like “audience sync” more profoundly.
Make sure to keep your knowledge base up-to-date, including articles about any recent patches, security updates, or new platform features. This ensures that users have access to the most accurate and current information throughout the onboarding process and beyond.
6. Offer webinars and training sessions
As a complement to self-service guides, webinars, and training sessions allow you to offer in-depth support as well as in-person engagement that helps gather instant feedback.
These methods are more interactive, easier to customize, and offer scalability, but also ensure users can become product experts.
Take Paylocity. The HR and payroll SaaS provider offers training courses to help customers become “Super Users.” The courses accommodate different skill levels and give people the option of learning from trainers in pre-recorded videos or using the in-depth catalog to learn at their own pace.
Live webinars and training sessions also mean users can ask questions, take part in group talks, and engage with the platform with assistance in real time. As they take place virtually, you can reach a wider audience and record the session to use in the future.
You can present and demonstrate the key features of your system and go through best practices together. At the end, you can host Q&A sessions so that clients can get clarification and personalized guidance.
These don’t have to be led by your in-house team, either. Why not invite industry experts and product specialists to lead the webinars? They can interact with new clients, offer customized guidance for people with different knowledge levels or roles, and tailor the webinar content accordingly.
It’s also a great way to show off the merits of your SaaS product by letting someone else show off the features and benefits on your behalf.
7. Gamify the onboarding process
Turning anything into a game instantly makes it more fun. You can find lots of ways to add some gamification into your process to encourage people to complete the onboarding process. This is particularly useful if your onboarding is a bit lengthy.
To maintain engagement, implement a system where users can track their progress and even earn points and badges as they progress through the training.
Instead of traditional, static tutorials, consider using more dynamic and interactive elements like quizzes, challenges, and even simulations. Throw in some sound effects and graphics to help teach users how to use your software.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a game without a bit of competition. Adding competitive elements can take your clients’ learning motivation to the next level. If a larger team or company is being onboarded at the same time, consider a leaderboard so users can compete with their colleagues (or even other companies).
8. Segment users based on their needs and preferences
The main benefit of segmenting users on the basis of needs and preferences is that you can offer a more targeted onboarding experience. Not everyone will need the exact same knowledge of your system. If there are different features aimed at different roles, tailor your onboarding for those roles.
For example, let’s say you’re onboarding a team for your HR software. Chances are the HR department will be the ones using the platform on a daily basis, and will need to leverage just about every feature you offer. They may need to know how to integrate it with other platforms like recruitment software or create KPI reports ahead of performance reviews.
But it may be that accountants also need to use the software to issue payroll or employees can access the software to view the recognition and rewards dashboards. While they still need to understand how the software works, they won’t need as in-depth an onboarding experience as HR personnel.
With that in mind, consider splitting up clients by the following criteria:
- Demographics: Industry, company size, job role, and location
- Behavior: Engagement level, which features they use, and how quickly they complete onboarding levels and tasks
- Preferences: How they like to communicate and learn, e.g., video tutorials, webinars, written information, apps, etc.
Final thoughts
Onboarding your clients well to your B2B SaaS product is vital for continued subscriptions and repeat customers. By ensuring that your customers are getting the most out of your service and guaranteeing stellar customer service, you can help your reputation as a SaaS provider, and increase sales over time.
Onboarding is a continual process, and seeking and incorporating feedback from users is key to its success. And don’t forget to make it fun!
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