There is an often-overlooked superpower that helps you keep your B2B customers: Try to make the onboarding feel as smooth as a B2C onboarding.

Which type of customer is the best customer? You might argue that the best customers pay on time and pay a good price for your product. That’s certainly true. But from my experience as the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, I would argue that the best customers are those who stay with you the longest. That’s the rationale for most SaaS companies, which operate on a recurring-revenue model. The underlying assumption is that it’s cheaper to retain a customer than to gain a new customer.

That’s easier said than done. We all know that entrepreneurial success sounds easy, but it isn’t. So let’s look into some proven tactics from the daily grind trail.

Be Responsive

No matter if a customer has a problem or a feature request, nobody likes to fire messages into the void. And nobody likes to wait forever for a fix or an answer to their question.

As a rule of thumb, you should fix problems and answer questions immediately if the fix or answer is straightforward. If it takes more time to create a ticket than to fix the problem or answer the question, just do it.

And if the fix or answer is more complex, do two things: First, tell the customer that you are on the problem, and when to expect the next update. That’s something you can do in a short email, even if short emails might sound like a platitude. And second, don’t stop at the short email. Dealing with complex issues usually requires talking to each other rather than writing emails and tickets. Everyone who has worked with me knows that I often say, “Pick up the phone.” For some reason, people are still afraid of the phone, even though it’s such a great tool to solve problems.

Be Helpful

Not all customer requests are well-formulated. My favorite is the apparently urgent bug that can be traced back to a misconfiguration of the customer’s IT.

Of course, this example doesn’t mean that all problems are caused by the customer. The majority of problems customers report need to be rectified by the supplier. But examples like the apparently urgent bug influence the sentiment towards a customer, especially when such problems are reported in a demanding or even rude tone.

Show some generosity. If a customer reaches out with a problem, assume they really have a problem. And then it’s your job as a supplier to be helpful in solving the problem. No matter if it’s a simple, straightforward problem, a complex edge case, or a problem you haven’t ever thought about. If you develop an attitude of being helpful, customers will reward you with their loyalty.

The Superpower: Quick and Smooth Onboarding

Now let’s move on to an often-overlooked superpower: A quick and smooth onboarding. If you’re selling a highly technical product, this is easier said than done.

Why is a quick and smooth onboarding so difficult for complex B2B SaaS products? First and foremost, it’s because people are used to the one-click onboarding for B2C SaaS products. Netflix, Facebook, Gmail, and many other tools let you sign up with a single click. Importing content or connecting other tools is just another click away.

Now try a one-click onboarding with a complex, highly configurable technical documentation SaaS tool like Yonder, importing your legacy PDF documents or complex Airbus and Boeing manuals at the click of a switch. It won’t work, even if you try.

But saying it won’t work is too easy. There is room for manoeuvre between the B2C-style one-click onboarding and the legacy B2B-style full project onboarding.

What steps have we taken to simplify the onboarding journey for our new customers?

• When dealing with large enterprises, project governance is very important. You can work as fast as you can on your side, but if the customer’s project team cannot make decisions within a reasonable time, the onboarding will be slow, painful, and eventually fail. We always assign a dedicated onboarding lead to a customer project to provide support with system setup, training, and subject matter expertise. And we ask the customer to name the overall project lead and give him or her full decision authority for the project.
• We developed a standard project plan for both the customer and our team to plan the necessary work packages. This might sound trivial, but often our new customers aren’t aware of all the steps that are necessary to transform legacy technical documents into fully digital documentation.
• Our expertise is often needed for the data migration phase. While it might sound simple to transform a few PDF documents into XML format, it’s anything but: XML is highly structured, and PDF can be very unstructured. Because we’ve seen a myriad of different document types over the last few years and because we have many tools to assist, this is where we can make the largest difference for our customers during the onboarding phase.
• Last but not least, we are very transparent about possible onboarding project risks: Too many stakeholders involved, cultural change during digitization, and extensive feature requests during the onboarding phase. This links back to the first point on project governance — there is no way around a project lead with decision authority to avoid those project risks.

Does this work? Yes, it does. We can onboard a large international airline customer with a complex technical documentation landscape within weeks.

Did we always do well during onboarding? Of course not. Like everything in entrepreneurship, coming up with a solid onboarding process takes time, blood, sweat, and tears.