If you are an entrepreneur in business for more than two years and haven’t automated your customer onboarding process or removed inefficiencies in your onboarding process, then what are you doing?
What it seems you’re doing is wasting time, money and creating a whole lot of unnecessary risk for your business. There is no need to fear or complicate the customer onboarding process. All you need is the right ID validation system or identity verification solution and you’re halfway there. But why aren’t you automated yet and onboarding customers? Here are three reasons why you may be avoiding the customer onboarding process.
Customer Onboarding: Budget Limitations
Even if you went the traditional route and did customer onboarding manually, that takes time and can cost you customers and money if the process takes too long. Some companies can’t see the dollar value of customer retention even though it costs less in advertising, paid search and retargeting than a new acquisition. For this reason, some companies forgo customer onboarding.
Customer Onboarding: Not Viewed as a Priority
When you’re running a tight ship or your company is relatively new, you may not be aware that you should be onboarding your customers. In fact, according to Forbes, even some 18% of well-established companies don’t budget for customer onboarding.
Customer Onboarding: No Prior Knowledge
There are companies out there that still believe customer onboarding is just a matter of sending out a welcome email. There is no focus on following up, building loyalty, or even explaining what they do. And although 76% of companies know the importance of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), only 42% can accurately measure it and thereby know how to make it effective.
Customer Onboarding: Five Risks of Inefficiency
First of all, let’s fix the knowledge gap with a quick summary of how customer onboarding works and why you need it.
Customer onboarding involves helping your customer understand how to use your service, company and product offerings while fostering customer relationships and building loyalty. You can do this via different software applications such as emails, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems or through IDMERIT’s suite of identity verification solutions which were developed to make customer onboarding easier.
When you don’t pay attention to your customer onboarding process or don’t even have one, your company is susceptible to compliance and regulatory fines, fraudulent behavior, and potential breaches. Listed below are the top five risks you face when not having a proper onboarding process for your business.
Losing Money
Yeah, those unhappy customers aren’t going to complain. In fact, only 62% in the US reported that they didn’t return after a bad customer experience, 91% are just going to leave and probably bad mouth you with other prospects so you might want to reconsider fixing the inefficiencies in your customer onboarding process. Efficient customer onboarding can increase customer retention and acquisition rates.
A 5% increase in customer retention can potentially increase profits between 25% to 95%, depending on how well you can implement your customer onboarding strategy. Existing customers are 50% more likely to try a new product than new customers. The dollar value of seeking new customers heavily outweighs the risk of removing the inefficiencies in the customer onboarding process.
Wasting Time
When your customer is frustrated by a lengthy processor isn’t even aware of what’s happening or what your product is about then essentially what you’re doing is wasting everybody’s time. (And that leads to losing money too by the way) This is no longer customer onboarding, it’s a hostage situation and both of you are now trapped. Your company is trapped constantly seeking new customers and those customers are probably trapped somewhere in the customer onboarding nightmare you created. Free yourself and your customers by letting us create an identity verification solution that will streamline ID card verification using IDMscan for a faster customer onboarding process.
Age Verification Scams and Identity Fraud
Without a proper ID validation system that can do proper ID card verification, you may end up susceptible to an age verification scam, identity fraud or if you’re in the banking industry, bank fraud. Identity theft losses rose to $56 billion USD in 2020 with $43 billion just from identity scams. Protecting your business from identity scams and fraud is not an option. Opting out of having an automated, secure, ID validation system is not wise. Reduce the risk of scams, keep the kids safe online and protect your business from fraud and scammers by using IDMscan integrated with biometric facial recognition, and team up with IDMrisk and IDMaml as an ID validation system that can scan government-issued IDs in seconds. These products speed up the ID validation process and reduce unnecessary bureaucratic forms.
KYC and AML Non-Compliance
Since you probably messed up basic customer due diligence, it may be safe to say you may not be KYC and AML compliant. Being Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) compliant means you have proper identity verification solutions or id validation systems in place to perform ID card verification. Having KYC and KYB compliance is part of being Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliant and mitigates age verification scams and identity fraud.
When none of these things are in place, you are not only susceptible to security risks, fraud, inefficient onboarding process but you also run the risk of AML non-compliance, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) non-compliance and hefty fines causing you to lose more money than the cost of simply setting up the ID validation system and developing an efficient customer onboarding process. If you doubt the risks, call and set up a meeting with IDMERIT and let us show you the facts on non-compliance and how you can get AML compliant with IDMaml.
Losing Customers
“Your mission statement may be on the wall, but your core values are displayed in the attitudes of your employees.” – Elle Clarke (CEO, Thrive Global) In an inefficient customer onboarding process, there is usually miscommunication and lack of training among staff. Part of the customer onboarding process is to ensure your team knows how and when to assist the customer. Lack of proper customer service training, product knowledge, post-sale support and technical know-how about the onboarding process, causes customers to lose trust in your brand and turn away. Not only that, 55% of them will return the product if they are not taught how to use it properly, costing you money and wasting their time. Save time and avoid the customer onboarding risks by reaching out to us and let us prove how IDMERIT can make the customer onboarding process seamless for you and your customer.
Reducing Customer Onboarding Process Risks
To reduce those customer onboarding risks, there are a few features your customer onboarding process should have to ensure a smooth and successful onboarding process.
Clear Customer and Business Goals
Align your customer goals with your business goals and communicate clearly to ensure both of you want the same outcome and involvement. Paying attention to the level a customer wants to be involved in the custom onboarding process can help determine where to shorten the process or reduce or increase details. Show the value of the process, create customer success milestones and celebrate each step of the customer journey. This will help personalize the experience and generate excitement in your product offering.
No Unnecessary Information
The customer journey must be a delicate balance of holding their hand, but not treating them as if they are lacking brain cells to walk upright. So, it is not necessary to spell out every little detail. Reduce the need to info dump and turn away fewer customers by treating them like the highly functioning adults they are. Provide accessible guides via tap targets and video tutorials that they can opt to read or listen to if necessary. Speed up ID validation by automation using a trusted identity verification service. After all, they were smart enough to choose you, right?
Clear Insights into the Customer’s Journey
The whole point of the customer onboarding process is for you to help your new customer understand your product/service and get acquainted with your customer. It benefits no one and its poor customer service leaves them on their customer journey alone. When you monitor them at each stage of the customer onboarding process, you will be better able to step in and direct them or answer any questions they may have.
Mobile-Friendly Customer Onboarding Application
Having an automated system is great for you, but what about your customer? Can they access what they need on any device? Creating a mobile-friendly app for your company can help speed up the customer onboarding process by integrating it with mobile identity verification software. Being mobile-friendly also means having multiple onboarding options like self-onboarding or live online onboarding. Plus everyone knows mobile apps are the way of the future. Most Gen-Z’s and Millennials won’t adapt to a brand if they are not mobile-friendly. Using IDMERIT’s mobile identity verification software with IDMautofill makes filling out forms via mobile easier and helps your company adapt to mobile trends.
Simplify the Customer Onboarding Process
Please don’t have your new customer jump through hoops or run through a maze to understand what’s happening. Not only will you risk confusing them by creating bottlenecks and silos, but you also risk losing them, especially if you are still attempting to perform customer onboarding manually in this digital age. (Please stop!) Make the process interactive, clear up redundant requests for information, make sure your team is trained and has ready responses and follow the KISS model by keeping it simple, accurate. The simplest thing you can do is get a fully automated customer identity validation system and use mobile identity verification software from IDMERIT.
Make the Customer Onboarding Process Fun
Having someone read through a 60-page guide isn’t very appealing, and as mentioned before wastes time and can end up providing a lot of unnecessary information. 90% of people think businesses can do better with their customer onboarding process. So do better! Make the process fun. Encourage referrals with challenges and use gamification to help them meet milestones and reward them with prizes. Provide welcome packages or swag bags and use fun informative videos they can interact with. Once you make your customers love starting and finishing the journey with you by helping them understand the value of your company and the functionality of your product, you’ve done customer onboarding right.
Closing
Once you’ve created a customer onboarding system that is KYC and AML compliant with an ID validation system and mobile identity verification software to perform ID validation, you can measure your customer onboarding metrics. Pay attention to click rates, open rates, attendance and watch rates for demos and webinars. Measure all your pirate metrics, not just revenue, check activation, retention and referral, in particular, to see how your customer onboarding strategy is working for you.
Did you get all that? If not, don’t worry about it, you should just contact IDMERIT and take the guesswork out of customer onboarding metrics. Let us help you create an efficient onboarding process using IDMdevice to protect you from identity fraud and age verification scams, IDMaml and IDMkyc to keep you KYC and AML compliant and integrated with IDMscan for faster id card verification.
Let us prove how you can have an efficient, mobile-friendly customer onboarding process without the risk through our identity verification solutions. Talk to us today!
