Today's topic is how to build the best onboarding process in the world. To do so, we will follow the same structure as the other articles in the series: we will introduce the topic and its relevance; then we will provide details on the application and how BigDataCorp's products and services can help our customers and partners solve their problems; and we will end with examples of challenges and results achieved by our customers in practice.
So, let's get to the main question: what is the best onboarding process in the world?
Objective
The answer is usually the same: the best onboarding process in the world is always a matter of taste and opinion, but there are several that are very good. YouTube, for example, is a service where the customer doesn't even feel like they are going through an onboarding process. The user starts by accessing it for free, watching videos, with a good part of the services working regardless of whether the user has registered or not. Without collecting the minimum information necessary to customize the service for that user, YouTube already starts showing ads. And when the customer realizes, they already like the channel and want to subscribe to it and receive notifications. It is from this moment that the service starts to request some information.
The best onboarding processes are those that the user barely notices, that is, those that generate the least amount of impact, or, in market terms, friction, possible. The more kuwait whatsapp number code invisible the process is to the user, the better. For companies that can give away their products for free, or that can generate revenue without relying on customer registration, setting up a simple onboarding process is very easy. Unfortunately, not all companies have this freedom.
The company's need, then, is to find balance points between the needs of its business, the characteristics of its product or service, and market behavior. It is important to seek solutions for enriching and correcting customer data, monitoring products and markets, automating internal processes with data, and analyzing macroeconomic trends with alternative data.
When we talk about needs, we are talking about both regulatory issues regarding information that needs to be collected and the registration validation processes required to allow the customer access to a given service. It is necessary to look at the characteristics of the product being offered and understand the level of complexity inherent to that product, for example, whether it is digital or not, whether it has more or less risk. And, of course, we are talking about behavior, about the market's expectations related to the product: what do I expect when going through this onboarding process? Knowing all these facets of the process and balancing them is one of the great challenges that all companies face.
Applications
This balance ultimately comes down to three characteristics of any onboarding process: cost, friction, and trust. How much each of these characteristics should be prioritized depends not only on the type of company, product, and market, but also on the timing and strategic goals of the company. There is no single right answer, and today’s answer may not be the right answer tomorrow. No single tool or technology will solve every case.
Let's explore each of these features a little more:
Cost
This point is obvious: how much does the process cost your company? With infinite money, you can build the most sophisticated process in the world, with all sorts of technologies and services to simplify the customer's life and ensure the company's security. Unfortunately, no company has infinite money, and CAC (customer acquisition cost) is a fundamental metric for any business. Spending more on customer acquisition than you receive over the customer's life cycle is a sure way to go bankrupt.
One aspect of cost that is often overlooked is the cost to the customer. We are not talking about inconvenience here (which is the subject of the next characteristic, friction), but real cost. If you require a customer to physically send you a copy of a document to open an account, you are creating a cost (of making the copy, and of notarizing the copy, and of sending it) for the customer, which will certainly lead to churn.
Friction
Closely related to the issue of inconvenience, friction occurs every time a user's flow is interrupted in some way. Imagine that you clicked on an application and the first thing it asks you to do is register. Unlike the example of YouTube, which gives you the possibility to watch any video for free upon first access, the initial registration is a point of friction. In the end, every point of friction leads to the loss of potential users.
A good onboarding process seeks not only to minimize friction, since zero friction is impossible, but to position friction points at the right moment of interaction with the user. Applications such as Mercado Livre or OLX do not require the user to register upon first access. They allow browsing and access to ads, products and offers. In this way, they stimulate engagement and then, at the time of a sensitive operation, ask for the user's information. At this point, the application has already engaged the customer in such a way that their perception of friction is reduced.
On the other hand, friction also helps prevent fraud. Every fraudster likes processes that are completely transparent and automatic, and if there are no challenges for them along the way, that will be great.
Trust
This is the last element that needs to be balanced within the process, and it is the most subjective of all. Would you feel comfortable opening an account with a bank that asks for absolutely no information when registering? Doesn't ask for a CPF, a name, a contact, nothing? Probably not. In different market sectors, there are different expectations of what should be done in a process to convey an image of trust, and meeting these expectations is essential to not scare away potential consumers.
And that's where BigDataCorp comes in. With the most modern data platform in Brazil, we gather hundreds of millions of data points about people, companies and products spread across the internet, which will allow our clients to reduce friction, for example, when filling out registration forms. Asking a potential client to send an excessive number of documents and certificates that prove their existence or revenue, as we discussed in the example above, can lead to the business being abandoned and the loss of a new client. These are documents that can be legally and automatically obtained from the network and data that can be easily recovered by companies specialized in capturing and processing information. And then, your company can make decisions without bothering the client.
The same applies to individuals. It is not necessary for the customer to fill out a tiresome number of pages and registration forms for your company to make a decision, for example, to grant a loan, a credit card or allow a sale. Data acquired by specialized companies can fill out these registrations automatically, even serving to assess the risk of fraud for that customer without generating friction or discomfort.