Onboarding Your Clients

Congratulations on closing a deal with your client!

Now, it is the time to make your team shine and deliver the project on time, within budget, and with the allocated resources. However, we all know that things do not always go as planned. As is the case when client stakeholders do not complete their tasks on time, communicate project status, cost, and deliverables effectively. What can you do to avoid this from happening, keep track of the people managing the project, and most importantly ensure you reach your client’s goals in a successful way? This blog will give your organization three tips that can help you improve your client onboarding process.

• 65% of businesses rely on emails to share information with clients and internal teams
• 74% of employees regularly lose shared files
• 73% of all teams will work remote by 2028
• 97% organizations see the necessity of effective project management but only 23% use standardized project management methods

1. Get everyone on track by over-communicating

Data shows that about 65% of businesses rely on email communication. Many executives report that employees lose shared files, and emails get sent to someone else's inbox. How can you be sure that your client received your email?

An excellent start to remediate communication failures is to invite all key contacts of the project to a single communication platform, so none is left out and they all clearly understand the reach and implementation of the project. A centralized communication and storage platform will make sure that stakeholders have transparent access to the status reports, updates, and reminders whenever and however they want - when employees work hybrid and remote. Having teams track tasks and share documents in one place allows them to work better together.

Effective internal and external communication will also reassure the commitment to your client’s best interests and goals.

2. Improve collaboration among the team management

The pandemic has changed the work environment, most employees are remote. Studies estimate that 73% of all teams will work remote by 2028. Leaders may have new measures in place to avoid disruption in collaboration. As we mentioned in the previous communication tip, having centralized communication and effective team management will help keep things clean and organized. A recommendation for bringing out the best in employees and facilitating coordination is to create a dashboard that maps project progress. This dashboard will help team members support and bring their best to those working on site, hybrid, and remote. For example, if something changes the anticipated completion of phase 1 of a project, the team leader can plan to attend to the missing work and/or mark a delay on the project by setting clear and realistic expectations to the client.

3. Manage resources efficiently

Your organization needs to align team resources to provide a successful project budgeting as well as completion. When you understand and prioritize your client's needs and vision, you keep your team focused on the task and the project on track. Managing your resources strategically ensures that your roles and tasks assigned are also aligned to the goals and timeline of project. Understanding what the nature and scope of the project, your leadership team can place employees with the right expertise and allocate the budget needed to map a realistic timeline.

Onboarding your client is the first step to the implementation of the project. Integrating a centralized communication platform, creating a dashboard to improve collaboration, tasks, and updates of the team’s work, along with using the best resources to fulfill your customer priorities will delight your clients. After all, you are there to help them, not sell pre-made solutions.