Why is Community onboarding important to businesses right now?

When it comes to onboarding customers to a new product or service, first impressions can be ‘make or break’. Patience is short, and customers increasingly expect immediate value. A complicated onboarding process will drive away 74% of potential customers making sure that your customers can instantly see and feel the value of your product is essential to keeping their interest and preventing your product from becoming yet another solution that doesn’t live up to expectations.  

That’s why today, community onboarding is so important. By creating a community around your brand and your product, you can reduce your product’s time-to-value, offering support and exciting use cases without one-to-one support from your team. Instead, what you offer is much more valuable: genuine peer-to-peer insights that bring your offering to life. Your community can quickly show how others are using your product, how they have overcome teething pains and frustrations, and what they have done to maximize the value of your offering. 

Here, we show you how community onboarding can relieve pressure on your own support teams while also enhancing the value of your product through peer-to-peer support. 

What is Community onboarding? 

A community is a hub where members can connect, share insights, and grow together is an ideal destination for your onboarding process to be focused. By guiding new customers through your community at the start of their journey, they can instantly access a network of perspectives, solutions and support that streamlines their experience. It’s the old adage ‘show, don’t tell’: rather than just explaining how to use your product, you’re giving customers access to a wide network of peers who can demonstrate that process to them, as well as the value they get from it. You’re connecting them to the right knowledge, the right people and the right actions that will enhance their experience with your product or service.   

During the onboarding process, a thriving community is an additional benefit that adds value to your brand. Not only does it give customers a value-added resource that instantly generates trust, but it provides an important social aspect to the process. Customers feel that they are part of something bigger: a community that they can collaborate with, gain support from and share their successes with as they embark on their journey. This social mentality can further encourage customers to stick with your product or service through challenges, exploring the benefits with the support and encouragement of your community.   

How can Community onboarding benefit your business? 

Reduced time to value: By showcasing how others are using your solution and overcoming challenges, new customers can quickly get value from your product or service.  

Deepened brand loyalty: By effectively welcoming members, businesses foster an environment where individuals feel valued, encouraging lasting loyalty and advocacy.  

Organic growth boost: Active and engaged members become brand champions, leading to increased word-of-mouth referrals and organic expansion. You can also reduce time and energy spent on creating onboarding guides in-house, with your community helping you to generate them either by creating, collaborating, or commenting on tutorials.  

Enhanced value delivery: With support and insight from the community, new members can discover new ways to extract value from your product or service throughout the onboarding process. 

Facilitated knowledge sharing: Peer-to-peer knowledge makes a big difference to how customers connect with your community during onboarding, making it easier to overcome obstacles and face challenges without frustration. 

Optimized customer journey: Guiding members through the community can seamlessly transition them through your customer lifecycle, elevating their overall experience and commitment. 

What best practices should you follow to create impactful community onboarding? 

Personalized welcome: Kick-start the journey with a tailored welcome email and video. It offers a warm introduction and sets the tone for future interactions.  

Encourage interaction: Set up dedicated threads for new member introductions. This fosters connections right from the start and creates a sense of belonging, as well as connecting with peers who can help them through the onboarding process.  

Stay engaged: Regularly check in with new members and share exclusive insights about your brand, product, or community. You can also share knowledge at key parts of the onboarding timeline. This keeps up momentum and maintains engagement levels.  

Empower super members: Leverage your most active and influential members to mentor and guide newcomers, adding authenticity and trust to the onboarding process.  

Monitor and adapt: Consistently track community stats and seek feedback. This helps in refining the onboarding experience, ensuring its relevance and impact remain at the forefront. 

What community onboarding use cases support community-led growth? 

During the onboarding process, your community acts as a training resource, a mentor, a troubleshooter and a support network. It allows you to supply a fluid and always-evolving hub for tutorials, Q&As, and how-to guides that allow customers to adopt your product as quickly as possible.  

It’s also a good way to track members’ progress outside of your product itself: rather than just viewing their usage statistics, you can ‘listen’ to their exchanges to see if they are engaging, if they are struggling, if they are getting the full value from the product and if they need 1:1 support. It gives you the opportunity to onboard people as cohorts, working together to support each other, share best practices, elevate value and encourage each other to continue. 

Community onboarding ideas to influence Adoption 

Interactive tutorials: Provide hands-on, community-driven tutorials, facilitating a smoother transition for new customers to grasp your product's core features.    

Product Q&A sessions: Regularly host live sessions where experts address product-related queries, accelerating user confidence and product familiarity.  

User-generated content challenges: Encourage members to share their product experiences or hacks, fostering a collaborative learning environment and promoting deeper product engagement. 

Knowledge-sharing webinars: By hosting expert-led sessions, businesses can demonstrate thought leadership, attracting and nurturing potential leads with valuable insights.  

Exclusive trial offers: Within the community, offer members limited-time trials or demos, seamlessly converting prospects by showcasing product value firsthand.  

Peer testimonials and stories: Encourage satisfied customers to share their success stories, providing authentic and relatable content that resonates with potential leads, nudging them closer to conversion. 

Community onboarding ideas to influence Retention 

Personalized milestone celebrations: Recognize and celebrate user anniversaries or achievements within the community, fostering a sense of belonging and value.   

Exclusive member-only content: Offer advanced guides, webinars, or tools exclusively for community members, driving continued engagement and perceived value.    

Feedback loops: Regularly solicit and act upon community feedback, demonstrating that their voice shapes the brand's evolution, fostering deeper loyalty and commitment. 

Upsell: Replicate an onboarding process when upselling new features or capabilities to existing customers, ensuring they get the full value from the product. 

Community spotlight: Regularly highlight and celebrate active members or top contributors, instilling a sense of pride and encouraging continued advocacy.  

How to choose the right platform to deliver impactful community onboarding  

For your platform to facilitate community onboarding, there are certain features and functions it needs to support. Always define what you want to achieve with your community before you start looking for a platform to deliver it, as it will help you make the right comparisons in your decision-making.   

Five Key Considerations:  

Features and functionality: For community onboarding, your platform needs to be easy to search, intuitive to use, and able to support a breadth of different types of content, from articles and videos to interactive features like live webinars and courses. Registration should be streamlined with your product, to make your community easily accessible. 

Customization flexibility: Your community should feel like an extension of your product to fully integrate the onboarding process. Look out for platforms that allow you to customize your community’s look and feel as well as layout and navigation.  

Integration capabilities: Your community platform should sync with other tools and platforms in your ecosystem. Integration simplifies data management, elevating the experience for both your team and community members.  

Scalability and performance: Your customers’ experience with your product will evolve as your product does. Anticipate future growth. Ensure your chosen platform can handle increasing traffic and volumes of content. 

Security and privacy: Any community platform needs to be secure, or you risk losing ‘ trust not just in the community but in your product. The platform should uphold security standards, such as two-factor authentication and SSL, safeguarding both the integrity of the community and its members' trust. 

Boost value, overcome challenges and create a sense of community spirit in your onboarding process.   

Community onboarding provides a valuable resource to your business and your customers. It delivers a much more intuitive, accessible and versatile onboarding process for those exploring your product or service, while alleviating pressure on your internal teams. It enables your audience to access tailored support and guidance throughout the onboarding process without the need for continuous one-to-one input from your support team, reducing costs for your business and boosting time to value for your customers. The result? A more seamless, value-added onboarding process that improves adoption and retention throughout your customer’s lifecycle.