Why companies should invest more in customer welcome and customer onboarding?
The cost of customer acquistion in India is easily upwards of INR 1000. Yes, to get one customer even for an online store can cost INR 1000 and more.
Remember the days when you had door to door sales teams selling credit cards. The direct sales agencies would get anything upwards of INR 500 just to sign up the customer. Add to it the new customer sign up processing cost and you are already at INR 1000 plus for a regular credit card relationship.
No wonder that when you walk into your bank, your relationship manager is eager to sell you every other product that the bank can offer. This is to keep their customer acquisition cost low.
What happens when the customer does sign up ? Quite often the same bank or credit card company will move into a highly impersonal mode of communication. The same customer who was wooed is made to hang on to the phone for time on end to get to the right person in the bank to resolve any basic queries and issues.
One way for companies to reduce pressure on their customer service and branch service teams is to take a pro-active approach and have a structured customer onboarding process.
Sure, it will cost money. But nothing close to the cost of customer acquisition.
The tasks for the onboarding unit are:
Connect with all new customers using phone, email and inbound web chat
Take the customer through the key features, frequently asked questions, key benefits and welcome the customer into the brands family
Get them assistance to download the company mobile application, if any
Resolve any issues upfront
Provide contact information for the customer to reach the conpany in future
A few simple action steps as above can have the following positive effects.
Perception of company as a consumer friendly organisation
Lower cost of customer service relating to basic queries
Potentially higher offtake of automated customer service tools eg customer service app
Better utilisation of features and services
Higher long term loyalty
While many of the above may not be thoroughly tested by the company, having a customer onboarding process can also help the company test the effectiveness of their initiatives in this area.
To create and manage an effective customer onboarding program for your customers, you can use the services of companies like Kankei.
To know more about this service please write to info@kankei.com