Businesses today are under immense pressure to grow revenue, retain customers, and maximize efficiency. Yet, many companies unknowingly sabotage their profitability and customer relationships by making avoidable mistakes. These missteps—often hidden in plain sight—can erode margins, delay profits, and frustrate customers, even when teams are working hard. If you’re not carefully managing how you onboard, engage, and support your customers, you could be setting yourself up for unnecessary churn and lost revenue.
The good news? These costly mistakes can be fixed with the right strategy and mindset. Below are five common mistakes that businesses make, along with actionable steps to fix them.
5 Mistakes to Stop Now
Here are five common mistakes that high growth companies make, along with actionable steps to fix them.
1. Stop spending more to onboard and engage customers than what they spend with you.
Many customer-facing teams don’t know their product’s average selling price. Even fewer understand what it actually costs to onboard, enable, and engage customers. Do you?
If you don’t have clarity on these numbers, you could be draining your company’s profits without realizing it. The Solution? Track your costs at every stage of the customer journey. Make sure your investment in onboarding and engagement aligns with the revenue generated. If you’re spending more to support customers than they bring in, it’s time to rethink your approach.
👉 Dive deeper: Read my article, You Can’t Afford to Onboard Your Customers: Four Ways to Dramatically Improve Your Profits.
2. Stop treating all your customers the same
Not every customer needs—or wants—the same level of engagement. Some businesses overinvest in small customers while leaving large, high-value customers underserved. Others push every customer into a digital journey when some need hands-on support.
I’m currently working with a company where their smallest customers need guidance to succeed with their complex business to business (B2B) product, while larger customers have the resources to self-serve.
The Solution? Understanding your customer segments and tailoring the journey for each segment is crucial. Identify where personalized support adds value, where automation makes sense, and then create the appropriate services and packages to deliver the value your customers want and need.
👉 Dive deeper: Read my article, What Got You Here Won’t Get You to the Next Level.
3. Stop wasting your customers’ time
Are your customers ghosting you? It’s probably because you’re wasting their time.
I spoke with a company whose customers love their product—but hate the endless meetings with their teams. If your customers are telling you that your product saves them time and money, but all those savings go into meetings with you, that’s a problem.
The Solution? Deliver meaningful value in every customer interaction value. Before every customer touchpoint, ask: Is this meeting essential? Am I adding value? If not, rethink your approach.
👉 Dive deeper: Read my article, Customers Ghosting You? Four Ways to Stop Ghosting Now.
4. Stop giving away your team’s expertise for free
If your customer-facing teams are viewed as a cost center, your ability to control your destiny is limited. Many businesses make the mistake of over-delivering for free—undermining their own value.
The Solution? Charging for services like Customer Onboarding, Customer Education, and Customer Success programs creates accountability and ensures customers get what they need to thrive. It also shifts your team from being an “extra cost” to a revenue driver.
👉 Dive deeper: Read my article, How Do Happy Meals Guarantee Your Success With Customer Onboarding?
5. Stop focusing on your product instead of your users.
Your customers don’t care about your product—they care about their own success.
I recently spoke with two companies struggling because their customers’ employees weren’t adopting the product. Some found the change too stressful. Others felt threatened by the technology. No matter how great your product is, without user adoption, you don’t have a license to renew.
The Solution? Deploying a product isn’t enough—you must drive enablement adoption across all user personas, whether your users are executives, sales reps, shop floor workers, or receptionists. Make it clear what’s in it for them, show them how their work will improve, and provide a simple path to adoption. Otherwise, you’ll be facing churn.
👉 Dive deeper: Read my article, Customers Don’t Want Holes in Their Walls.
The Bottom Line
Don’t leave your success up to chance. Take control of your customer onboarding and success strategy today. If you’re making these mistakes, now is the time to fix them. Margins are tight, customers are impatient, and efficiency is everything. Businesses that take a proactive approach to customer engagement, segmentation, and value delivery set themselves apart from the competition. By optimizing your customer journey, reducing inefficiencies, and charging appropriately for high-value services, you create a more sustainable and profitable business model.
Need a fresh perspective? I offer assessments to help companies optimize their customer journey and drive meaningful improvements. Let’s talk about how to take your customer success to the next level.
DONNA WEBER is the world’s leading expert in customer onboarding. For more than two decades, she has helped high-growth startups and established enterprises turn new and existing customers into loyal champions. Her award-winning book is Onboarding Matters: How Successful Companies Transform New Customers Into Loyal Champions. Learn more at donnaweber.com.