Automating for First Impressions

When it comes to customer onboarding, there’s a lot of truth to that saying about first impressions. 

Missteps in the onboarding process can have a customer looking for the door.  

Conversely, an exceptional onboarding process sets the stage for a strong relationship.  

Customer expectations are being driven by their experiences in applications such as Amazon, Uber, Venmo, and Door Dash.  They’re expecting similar experiences in all their business interactions. 

But that’s not what customers are likely to get in the onboarding process at most businesses.  

The biggest customer onboarding challenges

Most businesses rely on antiquated onboarding systems that were designed to handle paper, not emails, mobile uploads, web forms, and all the other ways that customers interact with businesses.  

As a result, the customer onboarding process at most businesses typically fails in several ways: 

• The onboarding process takes too long. It can take days or weeks for a business to onboard a single customer.  Manually collecting documents sent via different channels and keying data takes time.  Someone must review documents and data and fix any errors or mistakes.  Physically routing customer information to downstream systems and processes is slow.  And it’s not uncommon for documents and data to become lost, misplaced, or overlooked.  
• The process is impersonal.  Many businesses require customers to submit documents in a particular format.  Some businesses force customers to complete lots of different forms – many of them paper-based – with dozens of information fields.  The more details a business requires, the more likely a customer is to abandon the process and buy from someone else.  
• The process is frustrating.  Many businesses require customers to re-enter personal details such as their address or phone number on several forms, rather than pre-populating the data.  
• The process is unclear.  Customers can’t get the answers they want when key data isn’t captured, information is poorly organized, data isn’t timely, and systems are fragmented.  When call center agents can’t readily access details, customers may experience long hold times or be forced to wait on a callback.  Customers might even receive old information.  

This clearly isn’t what customers expect in their interactions with businesses. 

How to modernize customer onboarding

To meet the needs of today’s customers, businesses are rethinking their customer onboarding process and leveraging cloud-native capture technology to deliver a personalized, user-friendly experience.  

Cloud-native capture solutions automatically collect and categorize documents and data submitted via any delivery channel, extract and validate data with a high degree of accuracy, and seamlessly connect to document management or ERP applications, or any other downstream system or process. 

Cloud-native capture technology improves the customer onboarding process in five ways: 

1. Greater convenience.  Consolidating all onboarding content onto one platform makes it easy for businesses to support the breadth of delivery channels that customers might use to submit documents and data.  Customers won’t be forced to submit content in a particular way.   
2. A more personalized experience.  The insights provided by cloud-native capture technology make it possible for businesses to extend the personalized “white-glove service” long associated with high-value customers and transactions to all their customers. 
3. Less chance of errors.  Automating the extraction and validation of onboarding information and seamlessly connecting with existing document management systems and other downstream technologies and process reduces the possibility of errors or lost documents. 
4. Clear understanding of where things stand.  Faster cycle times reduce the need for customers to inquire about where things stand.  And storing all onboarding information on a single platform makes it easy for call center agents to find information when customers call. 
5. Peace of mind.  Delivering an exceptional onboarding experience helps businesses build trust and confidence with new customers, setting the stage for lifelong relationships.    

All this makes it less likely that customers will abandon the process and go elsewhere. 

Businesses only get one chance to make a positive first impression. Modernizing the customer onboarding process with cloud-native capture technology ensures that businesses will deliver an experience that is convenient, fast, accurate, personalized, and secure.

Contact ibml today to begin modernizing your customer onboarding process.