What is customer onboarding?
Onboarding is the structured process of introducing new users or customers to a product and helping them achieve initial value as quickly as possible. Effective onboarding includes account setup, guided product tours, milestone celebrations, in-app prompts and human assistance for higher-touch products.
Customer onboarding is a primary driver of activation rate, time-to-value and downstream retention. Subscription businesses track onboarding metrics — completion rate, time-to-first-value — as leading indicators of churn risk.