Customer onboarding in the software solution business – How provider activities create customer outcomes

Abstract

Even though software solutions are developed with a strong customer focus, customers often encounter challenges and frustrations when learning to use them effectively. To overcome these challenges, software solution providers have started implementing customer success management (CSM) as a new business function responsible for ensuring that customers’ goals are actually achieved when using the purchased solution. A key element of CSM is customer onboarding, the process of familiarizing a customer with a firm’s solution offering at the beginning of the usage phase. To date, there is only limited empirical knowledge about the specific activities involved in customer onboarding and their outcomes for the customers. We conduct an exploratory qualitative study involving 32 professionals actively engaged in CSM and customer onboarding across different firms and develop a conceptual model comprising six research propositions that identify the type and scope of customer onboarding activities and specify their effects on customer firms’ readiness to use a solution, their solution usage, and their perceived solution success. Moreover, we provide managerial implications and avenues for future research.