Top 10 Customer Onboarding Metrics You Should Measure

customer onboarding metrics

Attracting new customers in SaaS is always exciting, but what really matters is ensuring seamless integration with a product and successful customer onboarding.

This critical phase of guiding new users from the first sign-up to becoming proficient users serves as a prime tool for building lasting customer relationships and loyalty, moreover retention. To assess the effectiveness of your onboarding strategies, it’s essential to track the key customer onboarding metrics and continually improve the onboarding experience.

Stay with us to learn which are the crucial 10 customer SaaS onboarding metrics that every SaaS company should measure to gain valuable insight into user behavior and pave the way for successful onboarding.

Customer Onboarding Metrics to Track

Customer onboarding is the time to deliver what was promised in a free trial, and there isn’t much room for any mistakes since you’ve got a single chance to persuade your users that your product can make their lives easier by making their workflows more interesting and sped-up.

A good way to evaluate the effectiveness of your onboarding strategies is to measure the customer onboarding KPIs that show how customers interact with your platform, what impressions they have about it, and whether they’ll continue to use it in the future. These metrics for the onboarding process serve as a guide on how to answer the demands of each customer based on the data. 

The Customer Engagement Rate 

It shows the level of interaction a customer has with your service or product over a certain time. It includes various activities like responses to marketing campaigns, interactions with the product, customer support, etc. If a company has a high customer engagement rate, that indicates that a customer base is healthy and involved, and the users find value in the product, which leads to a positive customer experience, customer retention, and loyalty. Therefore, monitoring customer engagement rates can help you identify opportunities for upselling, motivate brand advocacy, and serve as an early indicator of customer churn.

Feature Adoption Rate 

It measures the degree to which users are adopting a new product, features, or functionalities within it. If the feature adoption rate is high, that indicates that the users are satisfied with the additional feature, and the likelihood of churn is reduced. On the other hand, the low feature adoption rate indicates that the given feature doesn’t align with the current user needs, giving you a chance to improve the feature or introduce another.

User Support Request Rate 

The user support request rate shows the frequency at which users reach out to your customer support team for assistance. It successfully evaluates the platform’s efficiency, the functionality of its user interface, and the benefits of the user training materials. If the rates are high, it means that the users are having difficulties understanding the product functionalities, which prompts the need for improvement. By recognizing the patterns in the support requests, you get valuable insights into the specific area that requires improvement, which allows you to include enhancements to features and develop new ones.

Time Needed to Onboard 

Time to onboard measures the duration of a user becoming fully onboarded, from the initial sign-up to the point of becoming a proficient SaaS user. It serves to assess the efficiency of the onboarding process and to help you understand how quickly users can gain value from your platform.

Time to First Value 

TTFV measures the duration it takes for a new user to understand the first crucial value or benefit from a product after the first sign-up.

Customer Churn Rate

CCR shows the percentage of users who stopped using your services or canceled their subscriptions with your SaaS product.

Customer Effort Score

CES measures the level of effort a customer needs to exert to achieve the given goal or resolve an issue when interacting with a SaaS business. 

Free Trial Conversion Rate 

The free trial conversion rate measures the percentage of users who transition from a free trial to a paid subscription. A high conversion rate indicates that the platform’s value is successfully demonstrated within the free trial version and that the users are ready to commit to a full version of it.

Completion Rate 

This type of rate shows the percentage of users who completed the onboarding process successfully. A high onboarding completion rate proves that the onboarding process was successful for a significant number of users, which could lead to improved customer engagement and satisfaction. 

Customer Satisfaction Feedback Data 

This data includes all the information gathered from customers related to the level of their satisfaction with the product and their overall customer and onboarding experience. 

If you’re looking for a platform to streamline all your customer data and perform customer segmentation, we suggest you give the Akita customer success platform a try.

An animated woman looking at data and metrics on a big screen

Why is Customer Onboarding Important for Every SaaS Business?

Customer onboarding provides a preview of the whole customer journey and experience that one might have with your platform. It’s the first interaction that usually determines how users will perceive your product and whether they can put trust in your brand. 

User onboarding metrics help you understand your audience better by showing you the patterns in trends in their interactions and behaviours. Most importantly, these SaaS onboarding KPIs serve as guidelines for creating effective onboarding strategies that aim to fit every customer’s needs. This is why it’s important to track crucial customer onboarding metrics and evaluate the effectiveness of your overall onboarding process.

To not miss an important step in onboarding, read the steps to go through of onboarding.

Conclusion

By monitoring crucial customer onboarding metrics, you are getting a framework for assessing and optimizing the onboarding process. From evaluating customer engagement and overall satisfaction to identifying the weak spots of your platform or a new feature. Onboarding metrics in SaaS allow you to align onboarding processes with customer expectations, set up your onboarding process for success, and improve customer retention and loyalty. 

With customer success platforms like Akita, you can centralize all your customer data into a single hub, share relevant information in real-time with everyone on the team, include automated triggers for certain actions, and work on your onboarding process.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you measure customer onboarding success?

Measuring customer onboarding success involves tracking crucial customer onboarding metrics and assessing the effectiveness of the onboarding process in achieving its goals.

How do you scale customer onboarding?

This is a good one! First of all, make sure to automate all the onboarding workflows you can. Make sure to include self-service resources to empower users to resolve the issues by themselves; never forget that personalization goes a long way in onboarding; and finally, make sure to leverage customer data to understand onboarding patterns and optimize strategies.

What strategies can improve customer satisfaction during onboarding?

By communicating transparently with your customers, offering proactive support and personalized experiences, and addressing user needs. Make sure to “listen” to your customers carefully by analyzing their feedback and adapting the onboarding processes to fit their unique requirements.

Related Articles

Best customer segmentation software Best Customer Segmentation Software to Utilize in 2024

Understanding customers at scale has come a long way. Back in the day, companies used simple attributes to carve up their customer base in some way to apply different resources to support and/or expand those customers. Boy was it blunt though! Generally, it never got far beyond segmenting your account list by their spending or […]

Read more
best customer success software Best Customer Success Software for Your CS Department in 2024

If you are reading this, you are faced with a real challenge. Either you already manage a customer success function and your existing toolset is not fit for purpose, or you have decided to start a customer success department and want to implement the right software as a solid foundation for your Customer Success Managers […]

Read more
top customer retention software Top Customer Retention Software to Reduce Churn in 2024

Figuring out the right customer retention management software to help manage your Customer Retention goals can be tricky. It really comes down to what your specific goals are, what type of market you serve, the customer data you retain and where that data resides. There are some specific types of tools you should consider. Customer […]

Read more
customer onboarding statistics 15 Customer Onboarding Statistics and Trends in 2024 to Note

In the SaaS world today, each lead you turn into a customer is a call for celebration. Still, to ensure them a smooth journey and success with your product, it is crucial to first help them understand how they can use your product or service effectively to get all the benefits they offer in the […]

Read more
how to become a customer success manager How to Become a Customer Success Manager: All You Need to Know

Nowadays, it seems that acquiring each new customer calls for celebration. Yet, their choosing you over competition is merely the beginning of a beautiful friendship, as retaining them is equally, or usually even more, difficult. 

Read more
Voice of the customer best practices Voice of the Customer Best Practices and Tips in 2024

When we aim to understand someone or something, the first step is to listen or observe carefully. The same rule applies for customers.  If you wish to truly meet your customers and understand their concerns and goals, you must not only solicit and gather their feedback but also act on it. This is precisely what […]

Read more
what is product discovery What Is Product Discovery: Definition, Benefits and How to Do it?

Developing, launching and promoting a new product or feature is not only time and energy-consuming but also expensive. This is why frustration is inevitable if the new feature of a product goes unnoticed or unused.  To avoid that, companies must first understand market trends and customer needs to be able to create products that address […]

Read more
What is customer stickiness What is Customer Stickiness: How to Measure & Increase it?

Although customer churn and retention are the most important metrics that help you assess the overall health of your business, they often fail to explain why customers leave or stay with you. This is precisely where customer stickiness can help you. To answer the question “What is customer stickiness?” with ultimate precision, we must thoroughly […]

Read more
Customer success books Best Customer Success Books You Should Read in 2024

Customer success is the backbone of a successful SaaS business. The way your CS team manages and nurtures customer relationships often determines the size and quality of your customer base and, therefore, affects revenue and growth.  A smart customer success manager knows very well that customer success is a dynamic and ever-changing field where continuous […]

Read more