REVIEW: Donna Weber — Onboarding Matters: How Successful Companies Transform New Customers Into Loyal Champions
Expert developmental strategist Donna Weber hones her equally dedicated craft as a technical writer with the release of her new book, Onboarding Matters: How Successful Companies Transform New Customers Into Loyal Champions. While not viscerally immersive, Weber is thoroughly assured when it comes to the structure and articulation of expansive, sometimes difficult concepts for the uninitiated reader. She isn’t interested in sacrificing understanding for rapid-fire breakdown of the extensive steps making up what she salutes as ‘the Orchestrated Onboarding framework’, boasting sub-genre underscoring such as ’Design Thinking Principles’. The profundity of the read lies more in the corporate philosophy Weber promotes, specifically the titular concept of ‘Customer Onboarding’ — i.e. the continued, technological evolution of a consumer product staying ahead of competition.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: https://www.donnaweber.com/
It’s an interesting set of ideals, considering that the old moniker for success is being the arguably subjective, proverbial ‘best’. While you could argue in a very general way the ‘best’ slogan still exists, the ingredients lifting it up to relevancy have shifted. Weber argues, consistent with the guts of the ‘Customer Onboarding’ philosophy, that ironically the competition has shifted from being just about the best product to being said product enabling the best customer service. Longevity, she argues, comes from within a company more than it does from reception coming from the outside. In the book, she outlines extensively the series of steps making up the onboarding philosophy, everything laid out like a novel-length, literary version of an MLA or position paper.
“Unfortunately, most companies are overly focused on getting new customers,” Weber writes in the book’s first chapter. “…Bringing customers onboard is the most important part of the customer journey. Yet, despite this being so critical, poor onboarding is the main cause of churn. It’s estimated that more than half of customer churn is related to poor (Customer Onboarding) and poor customer service.”
SUCCESS COACHING: https://successcoaching.co/top-100-customer-success
In the spirit of breaking down the Customer Onboarding process, one of the book’s most critical chapters likely is the eleventh. Entitled Driving Customers to Value, it highlights what Weber argues is the glue holding together the lucrative success and commercial longevity of a corporation and its products. “After (a deal) is signed, the real work begins,” she writes, highlighting in colloquial, conversational prose the entirety of the points articulated in more detail below. “It’s important to engage customers before they start looking elsewhere. (Orchestrated Onboarding) helps you quickly drive your customers to value, so they stick around, now and later. Value is most relevant during the crucial onboarding period when customers have high expectations of your product and you have limited time to meet their expectations.”
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B091BH8SZ1/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_3YYWJ7SWBHWPHHPXE0JP
It’s this kind of intellectual and transactional, step-by-step transparency that helps elevate Onboarding Matters from just another, typical corporate read into something that feels fresh and accessible. Weber counts on the theoretical audience being informed, but not necessarily wholly familiar with the material she presents. The result is something that feels uncommonly generous in spirit, giving informationally but in a manner that is comprehensible, simple, and effective.
Colin Jordan
