Bringing customers up-to-speed with your product or service is the final step in the sales cycle – but the first stage in your future customer relationship. It’s when you can finally deliver on the promises made throughout the buyer’s journey.

The problem? Too often, small businesses fail to invest in the onboarding process, resulting in customer frustration as they try to get value from your product. Sooner or later, if customers don’t see any value, they’ll switch to a competitor. Indeed, 75% of users abandon a product if it's too hard to grasp within a week.

Customer onboarding software provides the perfect platform for small businesses to educate customers through tutorials and informative content, answering any questions and providing a warm welcome from your company.

What is customer onboarding software?

Customer onboarding software refers to a platform where businesses streamline the complicated process of introducing new customers to their products or services. The primary goal of client onboarding software is to ensure new users have a smooth transition, learn how to use the product or service correctly, and see its value as quickly as possible.

Common features of such onboarding platforms include automated workflows, educational content hubs, progress tracking, communication tools, and integration capabilities.

Usually, small businesses rely on basic tools like email to handle their onboarding efforts. However, customers rarely even open PDF attachments, nor is email designed to provide the interactive experience clients need to get to grips with a new product or service. That’s where onboarding software comes in. 

What SMB’s should look for in onboarding software

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) should consider the core objectives of their company when choosing onboarding software, including: the number of employees or users involved, the type of product or service, and its complexity. 

Three factors should guide your decision:

1. Intuitive: Easy to use with minimal training, allowing quick staff adaptation.
2. Affordable: Cost-effective with transparent pricing and no hidden fees, suitable for SMB budgets.
3. Scalable: Adapts to growing user or customer numbers, maintaining performance and user experience.

Digital sales rooms (DSRs) offer all of these features in a highly interactive, integrated package. Perhaps the biggest problem for small businesses is the transition from lead to customer. Because DSRs can form the backbone of your marketing and sales, everything customers need to know, from cold outreach to onboarding, is contained in the same virtual space. See this example of a DSR in action.

Best customer onboarding tech stack for small business in 2024

1. trumpet

trumpet is a digital sales room platform that helps small businesses streamline their onboarding process in an interactive, customisable virtual space.

Features:

• Centralised sales content repository
• Real-time customer interaction analytics
• Customisable content sharing and tracking
• Integration with sales and marketing tools

2. HubSpot

HubSpot is a comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) platform that helps businesses manage interactions with customers and potential customers.

Features:

• Contact & deal management
• Email marketing & automation
• Reporting dashboard
• Website integration

3. DocuSign

DocuSign is the leader in electronic signatures, allowing businesses to manage agreements digitally and securely.

Features:

• E-signature collection
• Agreement workflow management
• Integration with various business tools
• Secure and compliant

4. HappyFox

HappyFox is a help desk and customer support software that streamlines customer interactions and support tickets.

Features:

• Multi-channel support
• Ticketing system
• Knowledge base
• Automation and reporting

5. Chargebee

Chargebee is a subscription billing and revenue management platform designed for subscription-based businesses.

Features:

• Recurring billing
• Subscription management
• Revenue analytics
• Integrations with popular payment gateways

6. Intercom

Intercom is a platform that offers a suite of messaging-first tools to connect with customers through various channels.

Features:

• Live chat
• Customer messaging
• Product tours
• Customisable bots

Integration with small business tools

Whatever customer onboarding software you choose to use, integration with other tools should be a key factor in their selection. Integrations allow software to seamlessly transfer information from one platform to another, reducing manual input and human error. 

Such integrations enhance efficiency, streamline workflows, and ensure a cohesive ecosystem where data is consistent and accessible across various applications. Indeed, demographic and buyer information from a CRM can help populate your digital sales room, resulting in increased personalisation. 

That’s particularly important if you’re using your onboarding platform for everything from initial outreach to customer education. 

For example, Peptalk introduced trumpet’s DSRs into their sales, marketing, and custom success teams. Working alongside their other tools, it helped generate €2.7M of value and achieve an average open rate of 75%. 

Support and training for small teams

When selecting customer onboarding software for small teams, prioritise accessible support and comprehensive training. You want to get your team up and running as soon as possible by using the software in their client interactions. The platform should also help save your team time, reducing the onboarding time and automating certain processes.

Volunteero, for instance, knocked 2 months off their sales cycle, seeing their client implementation time plummet from 5 weeks to 3 weeks. “[trumpet] has helped streamline our sales follow-ups and track engagement,” explained Ash Staines, CEO of Volunteero. “In our customer success team, it helps keep all implementation resources in one place and is a vast improvement on the unwieldy email chains.”

Take a close look at this DSR for Octopus Energy to see how a comprehensive DSR can be created quickly.