Transforming the Customer Onboarding Experience with Cloud Capture

Customers expect more from the companies they do business with these days. 

Today’s on-demand e-commerce environment has conditioned customers to expect personalized, user-friendly experiences, no matter how they interact with a business.  

But that’s not the way that the customer onboarding process works at most businesses.  Too often, new customers are confronted with confusing and rigid onboarding processes, repetitive requests for information, mistakes, and delays in getting answers to seemingly straightforward questions.  

The root of the problem is the outdated approach that most businesses take to onboarding customers.  Most businesses rely on antiquated systems that weren’t built to handle today’s volume of data or the multiple ways that customers might prefer to submit documents or data or interact with a business. 

Most businesses use customer onboarding systems that were designed to handle paper forms.  

To meet the needs of today’s demanding customers, businesses must transform their onboarding experience into one that ensures an exceptional experience across all information channels. 

The stakes are high to get the onboarding process right.  One slip in how a business collects, captures, and manages customer data can have an otherwise happy customer looking for the door.  

That’s why more businesses are automating their customer onboarding process with solutions built on cloud-native capture technology.  The technology automatically gathers and categorizes all documents and data submitted by customers, extracts and validates data with a high degree of accuracy, and seamlessly connects with document management platforms and other downstream systems and processes to provide customer service reps with the information they need, fast. 

How to automate the customer onboarding process

Cloud-native capture solutions are becoming indispensable for customer onboarding.  Here are five ways that the technology transforms the way that businesses onboard their new customers. 

1. Personalized experience.  No one likes a “one size fits all” approach to customer service.  But the inflexible systems that most businesses use for customer onboarding force customers to submit documents in a particular format.A customer onboarding solution built with cloud-native capture technology can process documents and data submitted in any format, using any delivery channel, making it easy for businesses to engage with customers in the way they are most comfortable – snail mail, email, mobile device, web form, or fax server.  
2. Faster turnaround.  Few things can strain a new customer relationship as much as a slow onboarding process.  But the systems that most businesses use for customer onboarding require lots of manual processes that bog things down.  Staff must open the mail and sort documents by type, key the data from customer applications and other forms, physically route documents for review, and double-key customer information into a system of record.  All the while, customers might be second-guessing their decision to do business with the company.  Cloud-native capture technology speeds the onboarding process by automatically collecting and categorizing all inbound content, capturing data from documents without the need for manual keying or the chance of typos, and digitally routing content downstream. 
3. Greater accuracy.  Errors and mistakes are inevitable whenever there are manual processes. A single typo can significantly delay the onboarding process, require the customer to waste time confirming information that they already provided, or result in an improperly setup customer account.  It’s also not uncommon for documents to become lost in a paper-based environment.  Cloud-native capture solutions reduce the chance of errors during the customer onboarding process.  The technology uses optical character recognition (OCR) and artificial intelligence (AI)to capture customer data without the need for error-prone manual keying.  And machine learning observes how errors are resolved to deliver better accuracy over time. 
4. Improved responsiveness.Antiquated customer onboarding solutions make it hard for back-office staff to know where things stand in the onboarding process or for call center agents to access information to respond to customer inquiries in a timely manner. Cloud-native capture solutions put smart insights at the fingertips of the people who need them.  All content is aggregated onto a single platform, regardless of the delivery channel.  Data is captured fast.  Data latency is reduced through a seamless connection to a company’s content services solution.  And users can easily search and find content from a single platform.    
5. Enhanced security.  Customers want the peace of mind that their sensitive data is secure.  But customer onboarding platforms built from old legacy systems can open data security cracks.  Using an onboarding solution with cloud-native capture technology ensures that a business will get continuous, automatic updates, to ensure maximum data protection.  

Customers expect more from the businesses they buy from.  

Modernizing the customer onboarding process with cloud-native capture technology can create personalized, user-friendly experiences that build confidence and trust with today’s customers.