The Customer Success Leader's Guide to Successful Data Onboarding

Hi, Markus here. Welcome to a free edition of the Customer-Value-Led-Growth Newsletter.

Today’s episode is a guest post by Noelle Festa from Flatfile.

Flatfiles helps companies instantly convert and onboard their customers’ data for a smooth transition.

Eliminate costly, service-heavy data conversion processes, reduce data errors and accelerate time-to-value for your customers.

Customer Onboarding is the most important part of the customer lifecycle because there’s no second chance for a first impression. 

You need to deliver proof of value to verify your customers’ purchase decisions and get their buy-in for playing the long game. 

If you have a product where customers need to provide data before they can use it effectively it becomes more challenging.

Customers who are experiencing massive delays or recurring errors are likely to leave and never return and give it another shot.

Consequently, data onboarding becomes a critical first step in their journey and CS leaders need to address these challenges.

What exactly is data onboarding?

Let’s keep this very brief. Data onboarding, also known as data migration or import refers to the process of uploading your customers’ existing data.

Here are a few examples:

• HR solutions require comprehensive data on employees, benefits, and payroll before they can be effectively used for automating HR processes 

• E-commerce providers need product and pricing details from their merchants and suppliers before they can include these products in their offering 

• Service providers such as cleaning or maintenance services need facilities information and other service requirements before they can send out crews and start billing their clients 

• CRM platforms need customer data such as contact information or customer history before they can be used by a sales team

Coming from various sources like other vendors, legacy databases, or spreadsheets customer data often needs to be brought in shape first.

It requires a capable process of data mapping, review, cleanup, and validation or it becomes a painful experience. 

Typical data issues 

When you are processing your customers’ data you are experiencing 

• Large file size triggering import errors

• Mapping errors when columns don’t contain the expected data

• Converting data from one format to another

• Value issues like numbers in text-only fields

• Missing data of any kind

• Non-digestible formats

Minimizing these errors is critical but can be a difficult and time-consuming process. 

Want to overcome these challenges and streamline your data onboarding process.

CVLG Essentials

💡 Learn: Want to become more proactive? You sure do. Check out these 40 free questions to challenge yourself and improve your performance.

See you again next week.