Successfully Automate Customer Onboarding in 4 Steps

Step 1: Map Out Your Current Process

Before you can start automating, you need to fully understand the current state of your onboarding process. The easiest way to do this is by mapping it out from start to finish.

Bring your employees in to help with this task. The people who go through the process on a daily basis are undoubtedly the best ones to provide you with all the nitty gritty details.

Ask them to explain the steps they take – no matter how small. Take note of when emails are sent and meetings are held. Inquire about when documents are received and how they’re managed once they’re in your team’s possession. These insights will make identifying process gaps easier.

Step 2: Identify Pain Points

Understanding where you’re falling short is key to optimizing your client onboarding process through automation. With this in mind and your process map handy, work with your team to identify specific pain points. Some common ones include:

High Volume of Manual Tasks

For many, the number of manual tasks is a major pain point. A Zapier survey revealed 94% of employees spend valuable time on repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Open the floor to your employees and ask them if they believe they spend too much time completing mundane work. Make note of the specific tasks they mention, so you can see if they can be streamlined with client onboarding automation.

Inability to Personalize the Client Experience

Although 81% of customers favor organizations that personalize experiences, it’s a problematic area for most onboarding teams. What’s the main source of difficulty, you ask? Lack of easy-to-access insights.

Without client-specific data readily available, it’s nearly impossible for your employees to create a personalized experience for your customers. It’s a good idea to ask your team members how long it takes them to access key pieces of client information and if there’s any data that they can’t access at all.

Poor Turn Times

Turn times are often a pain point for customer onboarding teams. With a ton of manual, time-consuming tasks and data that’s difficult to access, how could timing not be an issue?

The real question you need to answer is: how much of an issue is it, really?

Consider contacting your customers directly to inquire about their satisfaction levels regarding time to value.

Step 3: Get Your Team on Board with Change

Once you have a clear understanding of your current situation, it’s time to get your team on board with transforming your process. This, unfortunately, is often easier said than done.

Workplace change can be incredibly overwhelming and anxiety-inducing, which leads to a great deal of resistance and, ultimately, unsuccessful transformations. Gartner found that only 43% of employees are willing to support organizational change.

To ensure your team supports your initiative, clearly explain the reason for the change. In addition to sharing the overarching organizational advantages of automating customer onboarding, explain how the change will positively impact their workdays.

Step 4: Adopt the Right Solution from the Right Partner

Have your entire team on board? Great! Now, it’s time for potentially the most important step: selecting the right client onboarding automation solution.

Before you even begin to look into potential solutions, create a list of criteria based on your current process pain points and goals. If you’re struggling with manual data entry, for instance, you may want to add “automatic data extraction” and “system updating” to your list. If one of your goals is to increase personalization during the customer onboarding process, you’ll want to make sure your solution updates systems in real time as well. That way, your team will always have access to key pieces of client information.

Have this checklist on-hand when you begin meeting with potential customer onboarding automation partners. And don’t be afraid to ask questions – especially those regarding security. You are trusting them with your valued clients’ information, after all.

Ensure your partner also has intelligent document processing experience in the customer onboarding process and the industry you’re in. That way, you can rest assured that they know the types of documents your team manages on a daily basis.

Your Trusted Client Onboarding Automation Partner

At MetaSource, our clients find peace of mind knowing we will optimize their customer onboarding process and keep their data secure when we do. With facilities that meet SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS standards, over 30 years of experience, and a proven process, we have what it takes to help you reach your goals. In fact, we help organizations accelerate their onboarding cycle times by 60%.

Here’s how our customer onboarding automation solution works:

1. We consolidate all your incoming files – both paper and digital – into a single platform.
2. Leveraging AI-powered recognition technology, documents are instantly classified.
3. Data is automatically extracted from documents and validated.
4. MetaSource identifies payment processing exceptions.
5. Downstream systems are updated with validated information in real-time.
6. Documents are digitally routed to the appropriate people or departments.

Want to learn more about our solution and how we can help your unique organization? Contact us to speak to an expert today.

Not entirely sure if it’s the right time to upgrade your customer onboarding process? Download our guide to find out.