Working with clients in an agency is often an adventure. In this article, I would like to show you a simple yet powerful tool that can help you make your clients happier and save time in the process. It's about spending less time on "unnecessary" and repetitive tasks and having more time for the really important things. 

I will describe in detail below how this can work with an onboarding funnel. Let's start by looking at the two biggest areas where "friction" often occurs between customers and service providers. 

Typical points of friction between customer and service provider

Area #1: Onboarding new customers

Passwords are sent back and forth, Zoom meetings are held and several phone calls are made until you finally have everything you need from the customer. And even then, you may not be as satisfied with the images, target group descriptions or texts provided by the customer as you would have liked. At least that's how it was for us in some cases after we had acquired new customers for our marketing services. 

What information you need for onboarding depends heavily on your service, of course. As a marketing agency, we needed different things than a pure designer or a video production company. But more on that later. 

Area #2: Working with the customer themselves

Once the onboarding procedure was over, the real work began and of course it didn't always run smoothly. Something that very few people talk about, but which most agencies have certainly experienced: Dissatisfied clients. And sometimes not because the agency delivered poor results, but rather because expectations were not properly clarified. 

By this I mean that questions such as: How is communication organized? How do you work best? What kind of results can I expect as a customer? For example, I was sometimes annoyed that the customer simply called me in between and interrupted my work or wrote to me privately on WhatsApp. 

The customer, in turn, was annoyed that I didn't reply and was unhappy that the change to the website wasn't implemented on the same day, but three days later. A classic communication problem!

I felt like I was working my tail off for my clients, spending long nights working on the redesign of their website (even though it wasn't agreed) and yet the client wasn't always happy with the results or the communication between them and me. 

I did everything the customer wanted me to do, but I still kept losing customers because they weren't happy working with me. 

What I just didn't see:

If the customer has no rules, he simply tests the limits. Often not even maliciously. To avoid disappointment on both sides, it is therefore important to clarify expectations of questions such as: 

• When are you available? And when not? 
• How can you be reached? And which channels are not? 
• When can we expect changes? 
• What exactly does the order include and what does it not include? 
• When can I expect results (e.g. with SEO, PPC etc.)?
• What results can I expect? 
• What does my emotional roller coaster look like? (Explanation below)

Both sides often have different answers to these questions if they are not discussed. 

In principle, these two challenges (i.e. onboarding and working with the customer themselves) can be solved quite easily. You don't need any expensive software solutions, just your existing website and half a day of your time. 

How is this supposed to work? - Through an onboarding tunnel. 

The concept of an onboarding funnel explained 

Ultimately, an onboarding funnel has a fairly simple structure and has two tasks: 

1. request information that you need for your work. 
2. Clarify expectations so that it becomes a good collaboration. 

Here is an example of a page from our onboarding funnel: 

You can see a landing page with a video and text on it. In this case, the video explains how to set up the Facebook Business Manager and add the agency as a partner. And you can just imagine this with more pages, each showing different videos and requiring different information. 

To get from page 1 to page 2, the customer simply clicks on "Continue to next step". This takes the customer to the next video, which again contains a task. Technically quite simple. You can automate quite a lot with Zapier Automations. More on this below. 

Of course, you don't always have to work with a video. Sometimes a form or text is enough. This becomes clear when we look at exactly what content we need from the customer. So the first step is to take care of the information you need to do a good job. 

The content structure of your onboarding funnel

Of course, this is different information for each agency and if an agency has different services, it may even make sense to create a separate onboarding funnel for each service. 

Here is an excerpt of information that a web design agency can use: 

• CI, colors, fonts, 
• Logos / Pictures from Team Dropbox Links, 
• Website and hosting access
• A list of the products offered and a description of the desired target group

A Facebook marketing agency could ask for the following information: 

• Access to the advertising account
• Pictures of the product and team
• Access to Google Analytics and Shopify
• Description of the target group / completion of a corresponding form

Depending on what exactly you offer as a core service and for which service you want to create an onboarding funnel first, you should always first prepare a checklist with all the things you need from the customer. 

While a short note is sufficient for much of this information, stating that the Dropbox link for the logo files should be inserted here, more detailed explanations are required for some things.

Take the target group, for example. How do you define a target group? Work with templates and examples here and show them in the video so that the customer knows what to do. The more help you give them, the more likely you are to get exactly what you need to work. 

After gathering all the information you need for onboarding, you now have the opportunity to make the collaboration a time of friends and positivity - instead of getting bogged down in chaos and losing stressed-out customers, even though you're doing your best. 

We need expectations for two main areas: 

• Communication
• Results

When it comes to communication, you should of course first be clear about how you want it. It is advisable to refrain from using WhatsApp with customers, as it is a very direct, emotional and impulsive form of communication. 

You don't just write emails with one word and you don't record voice messages in emails either. You are not expected to reply to an email within a few minutes or hours and it is much easier to find information, regardless of whether your cell phone is working or not. 

The way emails work is simply much more effective. It's much easier to keep a cool head in an email than via WhatsApp or other direct messaging services. We also don't use Slack with customers. 

You should also make time for yourself to concentrate on your work. While I personally find it hardest to stick to this myself, I notice time and time again that I'm much more productive when I'm not checking my emails every three minutes. 

Communication rules that have worked well for us: 

• The only communication channel is email. WhatsApp and text messages are "ignored" and answered by email. 
• Calls only by prior arrangement. 
• E-mails are not answered until the afternoon. 

Once you have settled this internally, you can continue with the results. 

Here is an example of the presentation of expectations in relation to the results: 

Very important: Prepare the customer for what they should expect and when in the worst-case scenario. The lower you set the expectation, the better it is for you, because the customer will then be pleasantly surprised. The examples not only show the results, but also the emotional journey, i.e. how the customer feels during the process. 

If, after a few weeks, the customer becomes impatient that the results are taking a long time to come, they won't write you an angry email, but will simply know that they are now in the second step of the process. Since you simply set the expectations in advance, it's not a bad thing that there are no results at the beginning. 

And if we're honest, that's the case with most services. With Facebook ads, you first have to test what is successful and what is not. If you already knew as a marketer, you probably wouldn't have an agency, but this online store yourself. 

And in other areas, such as SEO, it simply takes a certain amount of time (usually up to a year) before you see any of the effort that has been put in. With websites, videos, designs and marketing strategies, the time is often somewhat shorter, but here too, the right expectations are important. 

The technical structure

Let's now look together at what tools we need to make the whole thing work technically. 

Basically, we need a landing page that contains a headline, a video, a text (for example with a link to a form) and a button to take you to the next landing page. 

It is recommended to build a landing page first and then simply copy it, depending on how many steps are required in the funnel. A landing page is one step in the funnel. 

Example: The steps in the onboarding funnel

1. Landing page: The onboarding process explained
   • Here you can explain what will happen to the customer in the next 20 - 45 minutes. How he gets to the next video and why you do it this way and not in person (the customer saves time because he can do it at his own pace and gets everything explained much more precisely than on the phone, for example).
2. Landing page: CI / Colors / Text
   • Here you can link a form that your customer should fill out. In the video, you click on the form yourself and explain how to process the individual points. 
3. Landing page: Target group / content
   • Here too, you can work with a form and explain the content. You could also work with worksheets and show examples of good target groups.
4. Landing page: Expectations
   • Here you explain how the collaboration works, what the customer's emotional journey is, how communication works and when you are and are not available. You can also argue that phone calls are only ever possible by prior arrangement so that you can work in a focused way to deliver the best possible results for the client. You'll be surprised how many people will be happy about this approach.
   • You can also tell us whether there is reporting and if so, in what form. Note: With PPC services in particular, the result you achieve (i.e. generating leads or sales in the online store) is relatively easy to recognize. Reporting is often not necessary. An agency colleague friend of mine once dared to experiment and simply omitted reporting for his clients. As he delivered good results, there was not a single complaint.
     
     Reporting is usually not read anyway, especially at small companies. Sounds crazy, but it's true. I invite you to give it a try and invest the time you save in optimizing your results and the quality of your service. 
5. Landing page: Add to Business Manger
   • Here you will learn how to add your agency to Facebook Business Manager and how to set it up if you haven't already done so. 
6. Landing page: Final words and link to the appointment scheduling tool to arrange a kickoff meeting.
   • During this kick-off call, you can go through the customer's questions together and start working together. This phone call should last around 20 minutes and not two hours, as would perhaps be the case without an onboarding funnel. 

This is just an example - the funnel can be longer or shorter for you. For example, if you use Slack as a communication tool, you can ask for an email address during onboarding to invite the customer to Slack.

Once the customer has completed onboarding, you can use the "Zapier" tool to automate a lot of things that were previously done manually. 

For example, you can automate: 

• Create a Google Drive folder for the customer, which is shared directly with their email address. 
• Have an Asana project created where important customer information is imported. 
• Have a Slack message sent out to your developer that a new customer is onboarding, including the link to their Google Drive folder where all the information is located. 

The easiest way for me to show you what the technical setup can look like is with a screen transmission. So here is a video of me guiding you through the process: 

The technical possibilities are vast. It is important not to make it too complicated - especially at the beginning. This is because the hurdle of actually implementing the process can be very high at the beginning. 

Start with the expectations and ask for the most important information and then improve over time instead of wanting to start with the perfect onboarding funnel straight away. 

What if I have too many different customers? 

As an agency, you may have a large number of different clients and projects. In this case, it makes sense to create several onboarding funnels and start with the most important or most frequently sold services.

However, this can also hide a bigger problem: an overly complicated business structure. Serving dozens of target groups and many different projects from a wide range of industries and offering many services can make it considerably more difficult for you to scale your agency. 

So if you're now thinking that the onboarding funnel concept is basically exciting, but not feasible for you because you offer a vendor's tray - without a real focus on a service or a customer base - then it's probably not the onboarding process that's important at the moment, but the focus of your service. 

Conclusion: Personal contact vs. automation?

Ultimately, the question remains: Can I expect my customers to go through an automated onboarding process? After all, they want to work with me, not with a machine. My answer to this is "yes" and "no". First and foremost, customers always want the result. They don't really care how they get it. Of course, the personal relationship is very important, but an onboarding funnel gives you more time for that. This is because the onboarding funnel primarily takes time away from routine tasks. The human element remains. 

A customer recently told us this: 

"Feedback from the first customer with a new onboarding form in which we asked for all accesses, data and questions about the target group etc. - based on Alex's idea: "That's a great onboarding form!" - Our experience: The customer uploaded all brand assets etc. to the Google Drive folder independently and sent us the completed form without any problems. That saved a lot of emails and phone calls. Simply brilliant the procedure!"

So with this in mind: get to work and save time in the project business for meaningful things in future and spend more valuable time with your team, your employees or yourself. If you have any further questions, please write to me at [email protected] or comment below this post. I would be delighted to have helped you with this!