Solutions for App Onboarding Using Chatbots

What is app onboarding and is it possible to use chatbots to ease the process? App onboarding helps users understand how to navigate your app and reap the full benefits of your service without the need to constantly call or chat online with a support agent. 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

COMMON STRUGGLES WITH ONBOARDING

THE BENEFITS OF ONBOARDING WITH CHATBOTS

HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY USE CHATBOTS FOR EMPLOYEE ONBOARDING

HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY USE CHATBOTS FOR CUSTOMER ONBOARDING

HOW TO USE CHATBOTS FOR APP ONBOARDING

HOW CHATBOTS MAKE LIFE EASIER BEYOND THE ONBOARDING PROCESS

CONCLUSION

 

 

Surprisingly, chatbot services are no longer just for customers of your typical bank, insurance, or retail website. This digital communication AI are extremely versatile for employee onboarding, customer onboarding, as well as app onboarding.

We’ll dive deep into how both the concept of employee and customer onboarding with chatbots translates into how to better develop a service bot for any app or SaaS. 

Common Struggles in Onboarding

With onboarding, there can be a multitude of questions for the hiring manager, content manager, customer service team, app creators or even retail markets. How do we inform employees about how our business runs? How do we inform customers of our service? How does one guide users to navigate our app?

Employees often leave a job because their onboarding process is brief, confusing, and rarely covers all their questions about the new job. Misunderstanding of the job duties start in the onboarding process and lead to employees leaving soon after training is complete, or it leaves the team or company to fall short of their goals. 

Customers don’t want to sign up for a service or email newsletter they don’t understand. Many small businesses can plummet into the trap of not be clear about what they offer. Customers want updates and the ability to ask questions on their own time. 

Similarly, according to uplandsoftware.com, apps can fail to highlight the main features and easily go overboard with informing new users of every minute digital detail. This means the app onboarding process is not quick enough for the user as they will forget half of the pieces to the puzzle. If this happens, expect the user to be lost in its features and, ultimately, getting rid of the service.

Luckily, we can go into detail of how chatbots are a great solution to these predicaments instead of acting as another hurdle.  

The Benefits of Digital Onboarding with a Chatbot Medium

In onboarding, Chatbots can make the process simpler due to the convenience of this SaaS type, mainly because everything is digital. And when you factor in the possibility of losing employees or customers, you realize the low cost to invest in an onboarding service bot is worth it.

The word ‘bots’ can be scary but rest assured chatbots are customizable and real people on the other end of the internet are eager to help with any concerns. This reduces the time you put into making forms, documents, and whatever else is normally put in place for onboarding. Remember: if someone feels the chatbot is personable and accessible, he or she will stay with the company or app. 

How to Successfully Use Chatbots for Employee Onboarding 

It’s important to make new employees feel like they are an irreplaceable part of the team and have their concerns answered. There are many reasons the onboarding process for employees is vital to any business. In our digital age, we are lucky enough to secure good employees with a great chatbot service. 

According to medium.com, few common questions employees have, but may be too embarrassed to ask in person, include:

• What time do I report for work and leave work?
• What’s the preferred way of communication with my supervisor?
• What are my employee benefits?
• How do I access my benefits?
• What is the dress code?
• When should I be expected to get paid?
• What are the company holidays?
• How many vacation days do I have?

Make sure you can answer these for new employees in a chatbot. It's important to listen to employee feedback of how their onboarding experience went. The onboarding process for employees, if done well and thoroughly, can result in employees staying happy and fulfilled with their jobs. And once you gather feedback from employees on the onboarding experience, you can easily adjust your chatbot to make it go smoother the next time around!

Other ideas to include for the chatbot for employee onboarding are: offering tips for a successful workday or career, hyperlinked forms the employee can fill out and send through the chatbot, or a document that simply checks off their tasks for the week, day, or quarter. Remember: chatbots are useful and can speed up the onboarding process for employees if they are mobile friendly.

How to Successfully Use Chatbots for Customer Onboarding

Customer onboarding is the first step a business can take after making the sale. More than any other type of onboarding, it’s vital for this to be mobile. Think to yourself how many companies have apps or an onboarding approach that you can simply begin on your phone? Ever sign up for a club or delivery service? Insurance company? 

It’s much simpler to lie in bed, waiting for leads to be converting. Whether one can access this on the webpage through a mobile device or downloadable app, it hooks customers because it is convenient. Below are a few great solutions and ideas to implement when creating an automated conversational AI for customers.

• Make sure the customer understands the business value. For example, the chatbot can have a welcoming introduction but jump immediately into offering the business features.
• Understand what you may need from a customer soon. Is it an email? Do you have a list of questions for them? Ensure that they are short answers. 
• If you have many questions for the customer, you may want to give hyperlinks in the automated chat to forms for them to fill and file digitally (and securely).
• Some businesses fail to see issues in their model. Feel free to include a poll or survey customers can take within the chatbot. This gives businesses an edge by seeing customer opinions of their service without reading reviews that are published for the world to see.
• You can use chatbots to enroll customers in new or additional services.
• It is a good idea to also update the chatbot from time to time to make sure the basic customer questions as well as the uncommon questions can be answered automatically.
• Offer a support link or phone number if a customer cannot have their questions answered. And like most chatbots you may have used, there is usually a FAQs offered if a concern cannot be answered right away.

Getting customers secured with a business can take a lot of time and money as the process often includes phone calls and sometimes even paper forms to fill out. In the eyes of the customer, they want the onboarding to go through as smoothly as possible as it is a representation of how the business operates.

High adoption of insurance company services, for example, is the result of quick digital onboarding. Since chatbots are extremely customizable, giving clickable options is just as significant as allowing users to type conversational phrases. This helps aid any frustration a customer may have. 

How to Use Chatbots for App Onboarding

Chatbots seen in apps is common among applications for certain restaurants or ordering services, responding to users in a Facebook chat, or to pushing visitors of a site to check out services or products. In the onboarding process, however, it is crucial to make sure users are comfortable with using the service. Here are a few great things to consider when designing and using a conversation for app onboarding:

• Make the user feel welcome, but in a concise manner. No one wants to read a long welcome letter when he simply needs to figure out how to use an application. He already signed up and is ready to learn, so don’t drag him along.
• Quickly get to the basics you need from the user. Do they need to give their name? Perhaps you can embed a set of multiple choice questions that can trigger a different onboarding experience. For example, one user may need the app for ordering items while another user only needed the app for selling items.
• You’ve read this before, but it should be reiterated: Read the questions and concerns of the users as they write them on the chatbot.
• Don’t be afraid to lead users to a hyperlink of a Youtube video of how to use the app as well. You can give links or even downloadable documents to users in the chatbot.
• Make sure users can interrupt the chatbot during your app’s “tour” with any questions they may have. The chatbot should also be able to go back to the onboarding process after answering questions.
• Don't shy away from using chatbot templates! Whichever software you use, you should be able to find chatbot templates that fit your business model. If you can't find one you like, reach out to your chosen software to see if they can help. 

How a Chatbot Makes Life Easier Beyond the Onboarding Process

The digital adoption of service bots can be a successful solution for nearly any issue, particularly when it comes to customizing a thorough onboarding process. The key to make sure it stays successful lies in the understanding that chatbots are there to help keep the peace and find solutions. Oftentimes, an AI is better at this than a human, wouldn't you agree? Don’t forget to revisit the chatbot model you put in place in case changes need to be made.

A few ways chatbots can sustain your company or website include:

• Service bots give 24/7 customer service, whether this is for employees, users of a SaaS, or other app, relieving the need for as many customer support agents.
• Chatbots can give a customizable number of personable and natural conversation topics that won’t scare users away.
• Most chatbot services give you the ability to continue to update the questions and answers if needed.
• Best of all, some chatbot services also give an all-in-one solution to marketing needs, such as Email and SMS automation to help grow businesses. 
• Remember that every person phrases things differently when asking for a solution. Figure out the many different words or string of words users may type in despite asking the same question. You can ask a chatbot: Where can I buy puppies? Or Where can I buy dogs? They are basically the same question, but a chatbot may not know the answer to one or the other based on the word choice. Make sure there is an upkeep on the words being used in order for the chatbot to offer solutions to any variation of questions

Conclusion  

All these onboarding processes help any business analyze and view the interactions of their customers, users, or employees, which ultimately help the business predict which direction to take when changing or not changing certain aspects the users or employers may like or dislike. With the multitude of choices chatbot services give, a few marketing needs can be fulfilled while also making a clear onboarding process for users. 

Ultimately, the goal is to keep your people in your circle, and chatbots are a great option in alleviating the time, money, and stress of onboarding of any type. With the simplicity of chatbot services, this is an achievable goal that is guaranteed to keep your business flowing smoothly.