Onboard customers

A core tenet of validating your business as part of venture building is transitioning away from one on one, whether that's moving away from hand to hand combat to find early adopters or finding ways of marketing that works to cut through noise. When sales start to become predictable the ability to hand hold customers on using your software in the way that it’s been designed becomes impossible. You therefore must validate a customer’s ability to purchase your product and extract value from it, using a system that’s in place over using a specific individual.

It may be that ‘onboarding’ for your product has to include one on one time with a product specialist (due to complexity) but that one on one time should be part of a broader system and not dependent on a specific individual. Most importantly, the results of onboarding have to be predictable with a goal of shortening the amount of time it takes for a customer to extract value. The results of onboarding should clearly indicate that customers know how to use your product in the correct way and that the path to that goal is frictionless.

Consider self serve software and the impact of good UX on being able to use a product. Good UX is part of onboarding. Consider a Kleenex box where it’s easy to grab a tissue. The architecture of a product is part of onboarding. Even consider the availability of your favorite products and how easily (or not) you can get a hold of them. The accessibility of a product is part of onboarding. As part of building your venture in the early stages, validating the ease of finding, accessing and using your product are critical to future growth.