🚀 How to nail customer onboarding?

3 tactics to deliver exceptional onboarding

🤝 Know the customer

• Map out organizational charts, identify key roles, and gauge familiarity with AI tools 

• Book 15-min pre-calls with key team leads and stakeholders to uncover 2-3 real use cases per role and identify pain points. 

• Understand any unique needs and the workflow by asking:

  • What are you working on right now? 

  • What / who kicked off this project? Is that how requests usually come in? 

  • Who else worked on this? What was their role? 

  • What's the goal of this project? 

  • Once you've completed your part, who do you pass this on to? 

  • How can you tell it's complete?  

  • How do you know it was successful? 

  

🔥 Prepare before onboarding begins

• Send a pre-onboarding checklist (e.g. create user accounts, share demo materials, and provide clarity on what to expect)

• Request users to create accounts before the session—set up a dedicated live support room to assist those who haven’t completed this step

• Prepare training environments to include tailored workflows, real content and deliverables, and role-specific AI prompts to generate desired customer outputs

• Equip internal trainers with team-specific data, relevant materials, and tailored prompts for confident and effective facilitation

⏰ Host breakout sessions for hands-on learning

• Segment by functional teams (Eg. content, sales, product, etc)—learn about each team and how they work 

• Limit each session to 30-45 mins, for 4 people or fewer

• Have users set up their first project, navigate the application, and explore key features that are critical to experiencing value

• Provide live support to guide usage and remove friction in real time

2 traps to avoid

🚨Not driving interactive use

• Passive demos and feature walkthroughs ≠ real product experience

• Direct time with the customer is invaluable—every minute should build a relationship through active use of the product

• Ensure each user completes all core onboarding actions (e.g. first project setup) within the live environment; without hands-on setup and exploration, onboarding is ineffective

🚨Assuming one size fits all

• Different teams = different workflows = different needs

• Generic onboarding leads to shallow understanding and weak adoption

• Map user journeys upfront and tailor demos, breakouts, and learning plans to reflect specific workflows

1 tool to leverage

📖 Best practice on successful onboarding

• Aim for 50%+ of new users active on a core feature within the first week

• If engagement is low, revisit pre-work, content relevance, and call-to-action clarity

• Gather feedback from the champion—or find one—and ask what blocks usage

• Leverage tools like Storytell to structure onboarding flows, populate team-specific content, and centralize training materials in one searchable hub 

Bonus: 1 trend to spark startup ideas

🔨 Autonomous finance is reshaping every layer of financial services in fourth fintech wave

• AI is poised to automate core financial workflows with minimal human input

• Financial services rely heavily on knowledge work—$100B+ annually on outsourced labor and 7M U.S. jobs

• 54% of banking jobs are highly automatable, with global banks planning up to 200,000 job cuts

• High-impact opportunities include:

  • AI financial analysts: Automating research, risk modeling, and compliance in a $100K+/yr job market

  • Onboarding/underwriting: Streamlining $30B+ in manual KYC/AML labor with fraud detection and due diligence AI

  • Voice-based services: Replacing up to 25% of contact center spend with AI-led customer support, disputes, collections, and financial advisory 

  • Agentic payments: New infrastructure to process payments, addressing authentication, authorization, and liability