Onboarding can feel like a pretty daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be that way! Here are three quick tips for making the onboarding process fast, fun and effective. Watch the video or read the blog post below!
Get your documentation and processes ready
Prior to onboarding, compile training materials that will help the team understand your brand. This should include any commonly asked questions and an outline of the customer experience. You can also add notes on operational flow to give the team a clear picture of your priorities and output.
But documentation shouldn’t be limited to these training materials. Briefing your team on brand voice and tone will greatly simplify the onboarding process.
Have time
In a perfect world, you would dedicate enough time to training so your new team could learn your product and service inside out and avoid facing live customers with insufficient brand facetime.
In addition to actual training hours, it’s vital that you allocate some time with your internal team. Ideally, your core team should be ready to answer questions, run training sessions, and be available for shadowing during this onboarding time. The more time you can put into this stage, the more you will get out of it later. Take these steps, and you’ll set your new team up for success and actually save time later.
Identify scope
Consider what you want your internal team to manage and what you’d rather outsource to your support partner. Perhaps your internal team will take care of more complicated issues while your external team owns FAQs and product questions. Whatever you decide, define it early on and make sure everyone is on the same page.
By setting these boundaries from the get-go, you will assist the team in learning your business faster and more thoroughly, allowing you to broaden their scope in no time.
The importance of support levers
In a perfect world, you have clearly defined scope, allocated an abundance of time to onboarding, and compiled weeks-worth of training materials and human resources. However, this is not always the case. The beauty of applying the 3-lever strategy is that you don’t need all three at all times. If you’re short on one, you just dial up the other two.
For example, if you have a lot of time and are able to define scope, you may not need all the training materials right away. Use that extra time to more thoroughly work with the team in real-time.
If you don’t have a lot of time, it’s vital that you have all training materials in place and are able to clearly define scope to give your support partner great visibility into your brand and the materials they can rely on as they scale.
Want to only onboard once? With Influx, you hire once then done. Our team manages all of the training, retraining and onboarding for future agents. Interested in more videos just like this - check out the Influx YouTube channel :-)
