Getting new customers onboarded isn’t just a routine task, it’s a critical moment that sets the tone for your entire relationship. The onboarding phase shapes whether customers find value quickly, build trust, and stick around for the long haul. However, many onboarding experiences fail because they focus too much on product delivery and not enough on understanding the customer’s unique needs, goals, and potential challenges.
To shift onboarding from a transactional handoff to a strategic partnership, it’s essential to ask the right questions early on. These questions uncover insights that let you customize the journey, proactively solve problems, and build alignment across teams.
In this story, we’ll break down three essential questions every onboarding call should include, and explore how these questions can transform your onboarding outcomes.
Why Onboarding Calls Are More Important Than Ever
In subscription models and SaaS businesses, customer retention drives growth. The cost to acquire a new customer can be 5 to 25 times higher than retaining one. That means onboarding is not just a “nice to have”, it’s mission-critical.
An effective onboarding call achieves more than just setup and training. It clarifies expectations, uncovers hidden risks, and builds rapport. Done well, it reduces friction and accelerates time-to-value, boosting adoption and customer satisfaction.
Unfortunately, many onboarding calls fall short. Teams rush through scripts, overlook deeper discovery, or treat the call as a product demo. The result? Customers get lost, disengage, and churn.
Question 1: “What does success look like for you in the first 30, 60, and 90 days?”
This question is the foundation of a customer-centric onboarding approach. Instead of assuming you know what success means, you invite the customer to define it in their own terms.
What goals do they want to hit in the short term? Are they looking to onboard 50 users? Reduce manual processes? See measurable ROI? These specifics give your team a target to aim for and metrics to measure against.
Without this clarity, onboarding becomes a generic process with unclear outcomes. Goals provide a roadmap, prioritize resources, and align expectations.
How to use the answers: Document these success milestones and revisit them in future check-ins. Align your onboarding tasks and training around these goals. Share progress regularly to keep momentum.
Question 2: “What challenges or obstacles do you foresee that might slow down your progress?”
Every onboarding journey encounters roadblocks. Some customers have technical integration concerns, others face internal resistance or resource shortages. By proactively asking about potential challenges, you surface issues before they cause delays.
This builds trust and signals that you’re invested in helping customers succeed. It also lets you tailor your support, whether that means extra technical assistance, customized training, or managing stakeholder expectations.
How to use the answers: Develop mitigation plans for identified challenges. Assign specialists or resources early. Offer additional content or training focused on known pain points. Schedule more frequent check-ins if needed.
Question 3: “Who else will be involved in this project, and how can we best collaborate with them?”
Onboarding involves more than the primary contact. Teams usually include decision-makers, technical leads, end-users, and sometimes external partners. Each stakeholder may have different needs and communication preferences.
Understanding who’s involved helps prevent communication breakdowns, ensures everyone gets the information they need, and aligns your team’s engagement style.
How to use the answers: Build a stakeholder map. Tailor communication cadence and channels for each group. Set expectations on updates, meetings, and training sessions.
Turning Questions into a Customer Success Playbook
Asking these questions is only the first step. The real impact comes from turning the insights into action.
- Create a Shared Success Plan: Capture goals, challenges, and team roles in a living document accessible to your team and the customer.
- Tailor Onboarding Content: Customize training and resources based on customer needs and obstacles.
- Set Milestones and Follow-ups: Schedule regular check-ins aligned with customer timelines and goals.
- Engage Stakeholders: Include key players in demos, training, and progress reviews.
This approach transforms onboarding from a checklist to a personalized, strategic experience, reducing churn and accelerating adoption.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
- Treating onboarding as a one-way product demo
- Skipping or rushing discovery questions
- Assuming all customers have identical needs
- Failing to document and act on insights
- Neglecting communication with the wider stakeholder group
Avoiding these ensures you don’t lose the opportunity to build a strong foundation for customer success.
How Insight7 Unlocks Next-Level Onboarding
Insight7’s evaluation platform is built to supercharge this customer-centric onboarding approach.
Here’s how:
- Automated Call Summaries and Highlighting: Insight7 automatically captures key moments in onboarding calls, goals discussed, potential challenges raised, stakeholder mentions, making it easier to document and revisit crucial insights. No more manual note-taking or missed details.
- Centralized Success Plans: Your team can build shared success plans within Insight7, linking call insights directly to action items and follow-ups. This living document keeps everyone aligned and accountable.
- Stakeholder Mapping and Communication Tracking: Insight7 allows you to log stakeholders, preferred communication channels, and engagement history. This creates a 360-degree view of collaboration dynamics, ensuring no one falls through the cracks.
- Proactive Risk Alerts: Using AI-driven analysis, Insight7 can detect hesitation or objection signals during calls, alerting your team to potential onboarding risks early, so you can intervene before problems escalate.
- Data Driven Coaching: With detailed call evaluations and scoring, managers can coach onboarding reps to improve discovery questioning and customer engagement—refining the process continuously.
By integrating these capabilities, Insight7 transforms onboarding calls from basic check-ins into strategic, insight-rich conversations. This leads to faster time-to-value for customers, stronger relationships, and ultimately, reduced churn.
Final Thought
Onboarding calls are a critical moment to set the tone for success. The questions you ask—and how you act on the answers, can mean the difference between a frustrated, lost customer and a loyal advocate.
By asking what success means, uncovering obstacles early, and mapping collaboration, your team gains the insights needed to personalize and accelerate onboarding.
Coupled with tools like Insight7, you get the automation and analytics needed to capture these insights reliably, coach your team effectively, and keep every customer on track.
In today’s competitive landscape, onboarding isn’t just a task , it’s a strategic advantage.
