Whether you have a product-led SaaS or a high-touch SaaS, better onboarding doesn’t start with process it starts with vision.  

Don’t get me wrong, every SaaS needs to deliver a great customer onboarding experience. And that will require a process to ensure it’s executed well. But if you want to improve how you onboard your SaaS users don’t jump straight to process.  

A product-led company that wants to improve user onboarding usually looks for ways the product can do more heavy lifting so that new users have less work to do. Think automation, seamless integrations, usability, in-line help text, setup wizards, etc. There are many ways that product enhancements can, and should, improve user onboarding. 

But when a high-touch SaaS company kicks off an initiative to improve their user onboarding, they often start with the process. It’s a logical place to begin. But it’s not the right place. 

SaaS customer onboarding improvements need to start one level above process, with a vision. 

And the SaaS customer onboarding vision isn’t company specific, it applies to any SaaS no matter the size, shape, industry, ICP or funding level. At the highest level SaaS customer onboarding should be:

• As friction-free as possible
• As low-impact on your customer’s time as possible
• Designed for the customer to get value from your product quickly
• Focused on helping your customer achieve their desired outcome(s)

Everything about onboarding should be considered through the lens of this vision, with continual improvements made to get closer and closer to this ideal state.

Design everything—people, processes and product—with these points in mind. 

The vision applies to low-touch SaaS, high-touch SaaS, enterprise SaaS, SMB SaaS and every other kind of SaaS. Hold your onboarding up against this list and constantly seek to get closer and closer to the ideal.

The vision applies to low-touch SaaS, high-touch SaaS, enterprise SaaS, SMB SaaS and every other kind of SaaS. Hold your onboarding up against this list and constantly seek to get closer and closer to the ideal. 

Then you are ready to design your process, always mapping your process back to your ideal vision and getting as closely aligned as you can. Get your product to assist in helping reach this vision, and fill in the gaps with customer success and process.