← All Playbooks
Crawl 3–4 weeks
Create a Basic Onboarding Program
Build a repeatable onboarding process that gets new customers to first value within a defined timeframe.
Why This Matters
Onboarding is where you set or break expectations. Crawl-stage teams often treat every new customer differently — whoever happens to be available runs onboarding their own way. This creates inconsistent time-to-value, early churn risk, and no way to identify where the process breaks down. A documented onboarding program is your first real playbook.
Action Plan
- 01 Define 'first value' for your product — the specific outcome that makes a customer say 'this is working'
- 02 Map the current onboarding steps your team follows (even if informal) and identify the typical duration
- 03 Create a standardized onboarding checklist with milestones: kickoff, configuration, training, first value achieved
- 04 Set a Time to First Value (TTFV) target based on your current average (aim to reduce by 20–30%)
- 05 Build a simple onboarding email sequence (3–5 emails) that reinforces key milestones and next steps
- 06 Create a handoff template from Sales to CS that captures deal context, success criteria, and key stakeholders
- 07 Track onboarding completion rate and TTFV for every new customer starting now
Metrics to Watch
Common Pitfalls
- Making onboarding too long — if it takes 90 days to reach first value, customers lose patience and engagement drops
- Focusing on feature training instead of outcome achievement — customers don't care about features, they care about results
- Not having a clear definition of 'done' — onboarding should have a measurable completion criteria, not just fade out