You know that I literally wrote the book on customer onboarding. You also know that onboarding is the most critical part of the customer journey. But here’s the hard truth: Onboarding doesn’t matter.
At least, not when it’s done the wrong way.
I’ve spent years helping companies refine their onboarding strategies because, when done right, it sets the foundation for product adoption, customer engagement, and long-term success for both you and your customers.
When Onboarding Fails
Unfortunately, too many companies treat onboarding as a one-time event, a technical process focused solely on product setup, implementation, and go-live. Other companies invest heavily in onboarding but fail to measure its impact, leading to wasted resources and frustrated customers. And worst of all, many businesses celebrate an initial milestone—only to leave customers stranded on what I call the “first value cliff,” abandoning them right after they achieve their first success. When onboarding is approached this way, it becomes an expensive exercise in futility rather than a strategic advantage.
If you want onboarding to actually matter, you have to rethink how you approach it. It’s not about the product—it’s about the people using your product. True onboarding success happens when you focus on delivering real, measurable value that keeps customers engaged long after their first win.
Let’s break down the most common onboarding pitfalls:
Focusing only on the product. Many companies make the mistake of centering onboarding around their technology, ensuring the product is implemented, configured, and running. But customers don’t buy software for the sake of using software—they buy it to solve a problem. If onboarding doesn’t help them solve that problem, it’s meaningless.
Not delivering meaningful value. If onboarding is just a checklist of tasks instead of an experience that helps users see real, tangible results, it’s a wasted effort. Customers and their employees need to understand why they should use your product, not just how to use it. Otherwise, they may resist using your product and even feel threatened by its implementation.
Spending too much without a return on your investment. If you invest excessive time, money, and resources into onboarding without a clear return, you’re setting your company up for failure. I work with many companies that spend as much as or even more than what customers spend with them to get to go live, eroding margins and delaying profits. Onboarding should be efficient, scalable, and cost-effective.
Letting customers fall off the “first value cliff.” Many companies focus on getting customers to the first success milestone—then they disappear. If customers don’t continue to see increasing value, they disengage, leading to churn.
How to Make Onboarding Matter
To make onboarding a competitive advantage, you need to shift the focus from your product to your users.
1. Focus on the Users, Not Just the Customer
It’s easy to think of your customer as a company or an account, but it’s the people using your product who determine whether your product is adopted and renewed. Understanding the different personas, their roles using your product, and their needs during onboarding and enablement is essential.
Ask yourself:
Who are the primary users?
What challenges do they face daily?
How does your solution help them do their jobs better?
If onboarding doesn’t directly improve their experience and workflow, adoption will suffer.
2.Align with Their Jobs to Be Done
Your customers don’t wake up excited to “learn a new tool.” They want to get things done faster, easier, and better.
Great onboarding connects product features to outcomes that matter:
Instead of “here’s how to use this feature,” say, “this feature helps you accomplish [specific goal].”
Instead of “click here to configure your settings,” say, “configuring this will save you X hours per week.”
When users see how the product fits into their work and makes an impact, they’re more likely to adopt it fully.
3. Deliver Meaningful and Measurable Results
Onboarding should be outcome-driven. That means defining success in terms of measurable impact, both for your customer and for your business.
To do this, consider:
What success looks like for your customer. Identify the key outcomes they want to achieve and track their progress.
What success looks like for your company. Set key performance indicators such as reduced time-to-value, increased adoption, or improved retention.
Capturing a baseline and measuring progress not only proves value but also gives your team insights to refine and improve the onboarding experience.
4. Create a Value Journey, Not Just First Value
First value is not the finish line—it’s just the beginning. The real goal is ongoing value that keeps customers engaged and growing with your product.
A strong onboarding process:
Introduces deeper, more advanced use cases over time.
Reinforces value through ongoing communication, education, and support.
The more value your customers see, the more likely they are to stick around—and to expand their usage over time.
What Matters to Customers?
If you want onboarding to truly matter, start by focusing on what matters most to your customers. How can you make it easy for them to experience value quickly? Explore ways to track their progress and measure the real impact, then create a long-term journey that drives engagement and retention.
Companies that invest in strategic onboarding build stronger relationships, drive higher retention, and ultimately create customers who don’t just stay—but grow with them. Because at the end of the day, onboarding only matters if it leads to lasting success. Let me know how I can help onboarding matter for your customers.
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.
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