Top 5 videos on customer onboarding from Rocketlane

Of all the things that we accomplished in 2022, the amount of content we published is one we are proud of. And we’re talking content in all forms - blogs, e-books, reports, podcasts, and of course, webinars.

We found that good-quality helpful content for folks in these areas was few and far between. In order to make up for this discrepancy, we found it a no-brainer to put out content that could help folks in CS, customer onboarding, implementation, and PS. So, as a company rooted in helping post-sales orgs, we took it upon ourselves to bring together experts and influencers in CS, PS, and customer onboarding. Through both Rocketlane as a brand and the Preflight Community, we brought people on to talk about all the relevant things going on and catch the pulse of the industry, in our podcasts and webinars.

We do get feedback from our audience for these podcasts and webinars and are ecstatic to report that our content has resonated with them and has helped them with their processes. We thought we’d share the top 5 most-loved webinars and podcasts from 2022 to celebrate this!
We hope you get inspired by them and build your organizational activities to be even more efficient in 2023.

1. How to kick ass in your kickoff meetings

‍By Srikrishnan Ganesan, CEO, Rocketlane‍

They say first impressions last, and we agree. Landing the customer is just your ticket to the journey; you’ve got to kick it off in the right way to make sure it’s smooth sailing. Srikrishnan, our CEO, in our most-attended webinar of 2022, explains how to execute the perfect cruise launch - the project kickoff meeting. When executed correctly, project kickoff meetings provide a platform for setting shared objectives, developing alignment on the project's purpose, and generating enthusiasm for future expansions. When executed not-so-correctly, the enthusiasm curdles into disgruntlement, and promises fall short.
Srikrishnan takes us through how kickoff meetings are done at Rocketlane and offers pro tips and tricks to make the whole experience kickass.

Star quote:
“Try to be as professional as you can, show that you’re doing the hard work, ask questions that establish goals and timelines, and lock in the customer.”

Related reading

If consuming information through text is more your style, we’ve authored a two-part series on cracking kickoff meetings! Check them out:

1. The Ultimate Guide to Kickoff Meetings for Customer Onboarding Projects: Planning and Prepping 
2. Pulling Off the Ultimate Kickoff Meeting for A Customer Onboarding Project - Part Two ‍

2. Propel22 - Are you delaying your customer’s success?

By Star Hofer, Chief Customer Officer at PartnerStack‍

Customer onboarding is not a friction-free process. While you may be pumped and ready to go, there might be hesitance and delay from the customer’s side. So how do you prep your customer and get them ready for their onboarding?
Star Hofer, in one of our most-watched sessions from Propel22, the world’s first customer onboarding conference, walked us through the process of preparing customers for onboarding. From starting the prep for onboarding while your customers are in the sales cycle, to a ‘readiness kit’ and celebrating even the small changes that it may bring, the session was chock-full of revelatory takeaways!

Star (total coincidence, we promise) quote:
“There is a clear expectation that is being set, that talking about the process of customer onboarding with the customer, and readying the customer for onboarding are the same thing - but they’re not!”

Here are some blogs we think will help you take your customer onboarding a notch higher and keep your customers from churning:

1. Common reasons why your customers leave during onboarding 
2. A customer-centric framework for onboarding
3. Customer Onboarding Tips Part V: Process Level Enhancements 

3. Onboarding new B2B customers: A fintech perspective‍

By Abhishek Vora, Head of Customer Success at Mosaic.tech‍

Customer onboarding, especially when it comes to B2B teams, can involve a lot of moving parts and dependencies. In this on-demand webinar, exclusively for folks in the fintech space, Abhishek covers how a modern approach to B2B fintech customer onboarding can bring consistency, predictability, and visibility to the process.
Abhishek took us through how customer onboarding is done at Mosaic.tech, and what North Star goals they value for their customer onboarding process. From customer onboarding guardrails and metrics that are critical for fintech companies, to managing ‘garbage data’ and handling customer expectations, the webinar was just the right mix of niche and universally applicable.

Star quote:
"We live in an age of Instagram reels and TikTok content; of quick value. Consumers are going to want that from B2B businesses too. And customer onboarding is a great way to show quick value."

Here are a few articles you can check out for inspiration on how you can enhance and customize the customer onboarding process in your org:

1. How Rocketlane makes customer onboarding delightful
2. 5 easy ways to improve your customer onboarding process
3. 20+ questions to ask while onboarding your customer

‍4. Using EBRs to build strong customer relationships

By Alisha Hardoon, Manager - Customer Success at Robin‍

EBRs are inevitable, but how do you have them be celebratory and not anxiety-inducing?
The right way to look at them is to view them as opportunities to work together with your customer to identify potential roadblocks and craft a joint success plan. They are occasions to celebrate the wins and assess growth opportunities. In our most popular Implementation Stories session conducted for the Preflight Community, Alisha demonstrated the key mindset to have while going into an EBR, how Robin does their EBRs, and best practices to conduct them.

Star quote:
“EBRs are an opportunity to provide customers with a summary of where they derive value and where there’s room for growth. This can include specific adoption metrics, but it can also mean an opportunity for you to showcase the timely resolution of issues by your best-in-class customer support team.”

While we’re on the subject of EBRs, have you heard of OBRs? Here are a few articles to get you started:

1. QBRs are stupid, and OBRs are smart: Aaron Thompson for Propel22
2. Customer Onboarding Tips Part VII: On hyper-care, OBRs, and Onboarding Enablement Packages 
3. Tips for crafting an effective customer onboarding methodology‍

5. The Launch Station S02 Ep. 02: Winning at pre-to-post-sales‍

By Reshmi Krishna, Senior Manager, Enterprise Solutions Architect, and Sherrod Patching, Vice President CSM at GitLab‍

Nailing the handoff between pre-sales and post-sales org can be quite an ordeal, and the customer might find it difficult to trust the post-sales folks as they’d be quite accustomed to seeing the pre-sales team. How do you ensure that this handoff occurs seamlessly and win over your customer even after they’ve bought your product?
This episode of our podcast, The Launch Station, had two brilliant women in SaaS covering exactly that! In our most engaged-with episode of the season, Reshmi and Sherrod took us through the unique yet exceptionally transparent processes at Gitlab, when it comes to the pre-to-post-sales handoff. From introducing the post-sales team before the sale is made, to the key metrics to keep track of during the entire customer lifecycle, the ladies made for extremely interesting podcast guests!

Star quotes:
“Oftentimes the Solution Architecture team would be brought back in because customers had a relationship with us. The challenge was that we were bringing in the Technical Account Management team too late in the game, instead of leveraging their superpowers and making customers understand that they were advisors too.” - Reshmi Krishna

“The TAM team looks at how to nail core use cases for customers, and get them to agree on the metrics that are going to get them to their desired business outcomes. We would then align on the enablement activities as needed, not just for the champions, but also for the broader org to be equipped and successful.” - Sherrod Patching

Handoffs are extremely crucial. Here are a few articles you can check out while you’re tuning into our podcast:

1. How to create a winning Sales-to-Customer-Success handoff document [Free Template] 
2. Customer Onboarding Tips Part VIII: On cut-over plans, handoff calls, and weekly onboarding standups
3. Tips for a seamless handoff from sales to your customer onboarding team 

We hope you enjoyed our little roundup. It is somewhat our personal mission to make more resources and repositories of information available for people in post-sales orgs and professional services, and we enjoy putting out the content knowing it serves a purpose.
For more video content that’s been tailor-made for implementation, customer onboarding, and customer success folks, check out our Webinars page and our YouTube channel. 

Have feedback or other ideas around improving customer onboarding? Feel free to write to us at care@rocketlane.com.  

​​Do you have any thoughts and tips you want to share? We’d love to have you join the Preflight Community and share them with our members!