{"id":15794,"date":"2020-06-08T14:42:09","date_gmt":"2020-06-08T14:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/?p=15794"},"modified":"2021-02-09T10:51:04","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T10:51:04","slug":"employee-onboarding-tips-from-customer-success-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/blog\/employee-onboarding-tips-from-customer-success-experts\/","title":{"rendered":"Employee onboarding tips from customer success experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Successful onboarding is a lot like cooking from a recipe, you\u2019ve got the list of ingredients but how much of each you use, the cooking time and presentation depends on your culinary goals. Let\u2019s leave the kitchen and get back to the office. What we\u2019re saying is that there\u2019s so much great advice out there, but you should use it at your discretion to achieve your goals.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if you were to seek out some recipes, you\u2019d use Michellin Star chefs, right? That\u2019s why we\u2019ve asked the experts in customer success to talk us through onboarding<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dan Farley, Vice President, Customer Success at Seenit<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Dan<\/a> explains the three principles to onboarding and training new employees at Seenit<\/a>: Exposure, Process and Empower.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While Exposure means that your start to life at Seenit is in \u201cthe deep end, exposed to customers directly and expected to put yourself out of your comfort zone\u201d, process gives you the tools to thrive through time \u201cspent educating around our internal processes and how we ensure we are a customer-driven engine.\u201d Lastly, new reps are empowered to \u201cset creative challenges\u201d, while Seenit \u201cencourage scrutiny into our current way of working\u201d to gain valuable insights from those onboarding.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Emma Tiegan, Head Of Customer Success & Operations,\u00a0 SmarterQueue<\/h2>\n

If you\u2019re onboarding employees remotely, you might want to take a leaf out of Emma Tiegan<\/a>\u2019s book. With onboarding and training at SmarterQueue<\/a> having always been remote, they\u2019ve created a comprehensive training checklist in Asana, which is filled with educational tasks for every new hire.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe checklist contains detailed instructions with some tasks linked to our dedicated onboarding area in our internal wiki. This is filled with the information every new starter needs, starting with culture and expectations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Lauren Cumming, Head of Customer Success at Fixflo<\/h2>\n

A new joiner\u2019s understanding of the products and processes in place can be key to how quickly they\u2019re settled and contributing, which is something Lauren<\/a> highlighted when speaking to us.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe aim to give everyone a holistic overview of our business strategy and an understanding of how each team works, rapidly grow product knowledge and ensure that our new starters understand our Customer Success strategy, the projects we are working on and the processes that underpin how our team functions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This means that each Fixflo<\/a> joiner is given introductory sessions on topics like the product, industry and customers, alongside tasks and demos to complete, a product checklist and reading from the internal knowledge base.<\/span><\/p>\n

Troy Pratley, Head of Customer Success (EMEA) at Amplience<\/h2>\n

The approach at Amplience<\/a> is to give new joiners the time and tools to become thought leaders, before they\u2019re interacting with customers. Troy<\/a> explains that: \u201cI want my Customer Success Managers (CSMs) to feel comfortable before they engage with customers. I don’t want them to feel that they can\u2019t answer questions when they go to meet customers. Also, it doesn\u2019t really benefit the customer either because they feel they have a CSM who doesn’t know anything.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So, what does this mean for the onboarding experience? Well, this translates to a three to six month settling in period, in which there is no customer engagement for the first two months. Instead, they\u2019ll use a sandbox area to understand the platform, take tests that show how they\u2019re getting on, and talk with stakeholders across the business.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey need to know who to speak to in the business as a whole, and understand the value of the platform. If you can\u2019t describe what the value is as a CSM, you’re not really in a good place.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Violaine Yziquel, EMEA Customer Success Management Team at Box<\/b><\/h2>\n

Do you love structure? If those four words touched your list-loving soul, you\u2019ll love the \u201csuper structured\u201d onboarding process that Box<\/a> implements.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Violaine<\/a> explains that \u201cit starts with two weeks at the headquarters in Redwood City (CA), to get the culture vibes, but also to ensure the same level of knowledge is shared across all teams: product, positioning, core values and role plays. It also allows [us] to create bonds across regions, and Boxers usually keep contact with their BoxCamp mates.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just those two weeks that feel welcoming and well-structured, this continues through their settling in period with the Customer Success Management Team. Violaine adds that \u201cin EMEA there are key people we want them to meet, specific tooling sessions planned, a buddy assigned, weekly reviews of the objectives, so that they feel part of the team from the very beginning.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nuno Paiva das Neves, Head of Customer Success (EMEA) at SafetyCulture<\/h2>\n

When we interviewed Nuno<\/a>, he touched on two aspects of the SafetyCulture<\/a> onboarding process: knowledge and culture. As you can see below, he believes that you need to understand how much they know about the area they\u2019re joining before onboarding, while ensuring they get a flavour for your company culture as they settle in.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think that it\u2019s key that if we\u2019re recruiting people to success roles, I\u2019m very keen to understand what their knowledge is\u00a0 of customer success, as a practice. We\u2019d then provide company-generic onboarding.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the culture side of this particular role is absolutely key. We have a unique and fantastic company culture, and that is one of the aspects we always include. Then everything related specifically to success \u2014 playbooks, customer journals, tools, metrics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Angela Guedes, Head of Customer Engagement at Typeform<\/b><\/h2>\n

While all employees complete a two-day about general practices and customer success, Typeform<\/a>\u2019s Customer Success Managers will have one month of training that applies solely to them. As Angela<\/a> explains, this is designed to provide product knowledge, expose them to customer supports and see the flow of managing customers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe first two weeks include in-depth training on support and product as well as on all product features, integrations that we can do. We then show them the live queue of tickets so they can work with the support team for a bit. This way, CSMs can see the flow of how to deal with customers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

You can find the full interviews with these customer success experts in our blog’s inspiration<\/a> section.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Successful onboarding is a lot like cooking from a recipe, you\u2019ve got the list of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":15806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3116],"tags":[1270,1596],"yst_prominent_words":[23,1525,393,1517,1518,1516,1442,1414,1460,1440,1437,16,1520,1357,1522,1521,207,1523,1519,1524],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15794"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15794"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18973,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15794\/revisions\/18973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15794"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.liquid-themes.com\/hownow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}