Reduce customer pain points and create processes with measurable outcomes
Once you’ve landed the sale, it’s time to bring your customers on board. This process sets the stage for their entire relationship with your product; a smooth experience can improve retention rates and customer satisfaction, while a poor one can leave them looking for a rapid exit.
However, you won’t know where the issues are in the customer onboarding process without collecting the right data. The following customer onboarding metrics can provide you with a window into this process, offering quantifiable information you can use to reduce friction and improve outcomes.
Want to connect new customers to first value faster and more reliably? Check out our guide, The Complete Guide to Customer Onboarding.
7 valuable customer onboarding metrics
The most critical customer onboarding statistics provide a holistic view of how well your onboarding processes connect customers with the value your product or service offers. These metrics don’t exist in a vacuum; rather, they are most effective when compared against one another, providing additional insight into potential areas of improvement.
Pair these customer onboarding stats with our downloadable checklist of best practices to boost your onboarding success and overall retention rate.
1. Onboarding completion rate
You’ve spent a lot of time constructing your onboarding process, but if your customers aren’t completing it, something has gone wrong.
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How to measure: Onboarding completion rate = Customers who complete onboarding / All customers |
The onboarding completion rate metric can tell you a lot about how effective your onboarding process is. A high rate generally means that new customers see enough value in the process to continue moving through it until the end and that there’s little friction passing from step to step. A low completion rate, however, can mean a few things:
- Are there too many steps? An overly complex onboarding process can lead to user fatigue, causing new customers to drop off too early. Try to focus on the most important details while offering more in-depth help in your support center should the customer need it.
- Is onboarding too simplistic? On the opposite end of the spectrum, your onboarding may not offer enough information, causing new customers to drop off and seek that information elsewhere.
- Are there any bottlenecks? If customers tend to stop the onboarding process at the same points, there’s likely something confusing, broken, or frustrating about that step.
You can also examine the completion rate along with other customer onboarding metrics in this list to better understand the big picture. For example, a high onboarding completion rate combined with a low feature adoption rate might mean that your onboarding needs to improve how it explains its core offerings. Compare and contrast metrics to pinpoint areas for improvement and optimization.
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2. Time to complete onboarding
The time it takes for new customers to complete onboarding is another key indicator of effectiveness. The longer the process takes, the more opportunities you have to optimize the onramp.
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How to calculate: Time to complete = Number of hours or days it takes to complete onboarding Average time to complete = Total number of hours or days it takes to complete onboarding / Total number of users |
Onboarding times will differ significantly based on a variety of factors, so take some time to let customers move through the process before you start making adjustments. Their experiences will provide a baseline average that you can use to guide further optimizations.
3. Time to value (TTV)
Time to value represents the amount of time it takes for your customers to get something meaningful (a “first value” action) out of your product or service after completing onboarding.
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How to calculate: TTV = Number of hours or days it takes to complete a first value action Average TTV = Total number of hours or days it takes to complete first value action / Total number of users |
TTV is one of the more difficult customer onboarding metrics to pin down because a meaningful “first value” action will likely differ for every business (or even individual products or services within the same organization). Examine what you want your customers to accomplish after onboarding (like setting up an email campaign, creating a document, or other concrete action), and begin measuring time from when they join to when they complete this action. Lower TTV metrics mean your onboarding process conveys your product's value and gets new customers to experience it effectively.
4. Retention/churn rate
Retention rate represents the number of users who continue to use your product or service after a set period of time. Churn rate takes an opposite approach by measuring the number of users who have stopped using your product.
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How to calculate: Retention rate = (Total customers remaining at end of period - New customers) / Customers at start of period Churn rate = (Number of customers at start of period - Number of customers at end of period) / Total customers at beginning of period |
While numerous factors can influence retention and churn rates, customer onboarding can play an essential role in improving the connection between the customer and your product. Any friction customers experience when trying to derive value from your product can contribute to their overall satisfaction. If you’re finding retention rates are down or churn rates are up, consider examining your onboarding and see if users might be getting a less-than-perfect first impression.
5. Support ticket rate
While not all customers will reach out to your support system to log issues with onboarding, some will if they encounter any roadblocks. Calculating how many support tickets or emails you receive in relation to your customer base can tell you if you have a problem with your onboarding processes.
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How to calculate: Support ticket rate = Total number of support tickets and emails / Total number of customers who complete onboarding |
If you find you’re receiving a high amount of support requests, examine them to determine if certain patterns emerge. If customers are running into problems at the same step or describe similar pain points, revise these steps in your onboarding to smooth out these issues.
6. Feature adoption rate
If you’ve rolled out a new feature to your product, you want to ensure customers are actually using it. However, they may not be aware it’s available, or your onboarding process may not adequately explain the benefits of this feature. This is something the feature adoption rate metric can reveal.
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How to calculate: Feature adoption rate = Total number of customers who access a specific feature / Total number of customers who complete onboarding |
If you find feature adoption is lower than you’d like, consider tweaking your onboarding to better surface and tutorialize its use.
7. Customer effort score (CES)
Surveys are a great way to gain insight into onboarding effectiveness. By averaging customer survey responses, you’ll receive a single customer effort score. This value will tell you how easy or difficult onboarding is to complete.
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How to calculate: Customer effort score = Sum of survey ratings / Total number of survey responses |
You don’t have to barrage customers with a ton of questions to gain valuable insight. Even a single question asking if the experience was helpful can offer actionable data.
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