- Monroe Horn
Slow Onboarding Stunts Business Growth
The automation company, Zapier, recently posted an article about how slow onboarding in client service businesses negatively impacts the bottom line. The article points out that poor onboarding can take up to five times as much effort as a more streamlined process--effort that amounts to lost money.
More important, however, are the client-service implications the article points out. The onboarding process is a new client's first experience with a firm's service. If the process is cumbersome and inefficient it sends a message to the client that your firm is inefficient. This is certainly not the first impression you want to make on someone who has probably just given you a retainer.
The solution to onboarding inefficiency is simple--at least in theory: Automate it.
Any successful automation of client onboarding will have at least these three elements:
It will electronically collect any data from the client that the firm needs to open the client's file. This can be done using electronic forms software either via e-mail or through an online portal.
It will automatically route the information to the appropriate people inside of the firm. If the attorney is not the person doing the work to open the file the data should not have to pass through her Inbox before being processed. Bonus points here if the data is automatically entered into a matter management system without it having to be copied and pasted.
It will automatically track the entire onboarding process and provide actionable alerts if things are taking too long.
While building a system like this may seem daunting, the truth is that there are a number of relatively inexpensive tools that can be used to build an extremely efficient onboarding system that reduces the amount of internal work and results in highly satisfied clients.
If you want to streamline your client onboarding experience, contact TransformITy today.
Read the whole article here.