If you’re in charge of getting customers up and running—whether you call it onboarding, implementation, or just “making sure people don’t churn”—you know the process is rarely as smooth as sales makes it sound. There’s pressure to deliver value fast, keep everyone in the loop, and not drown in spreadsheets. Baton promises to help with this, but you still need to know how to make it work for your team and your customers.
This guide is for anyone who needs to run onboarding projects in Baton: onboarding managers, CSMs, project leads, or even founders handling things themselves. We’ll cover how to set up projects, manage tasks, keep customers engaged, and avoid the common headaches—without getting lost in the weeds.
Step 1: Get Baton Set Up for Your Team
Before you launch your first onboarding project, make sure Baton is set up for your company. (If you’re just trialing, you can skip some of this, but it’s worth getting the basics right.)
What to do: - Invite your team. Onboarding is rarely a one-person job. Add anyone who’ll need to track progress, assign tasks, or talk to customers. - Connect your tools. Baton can sync with tools like Salesforce, Slack, and Jira. Only connect what you'll actually use—integrations are nice, but too many can confuse things. - Set up templates. If you have a standard onboarding process (and you should), create a project template. This saves time and keeps things consistent.
Pro tip: Don’t over-engineer your setup. Start with just the people and integrations you actually need. You can always expand as you go.
Step 2: Build (or Refine) Your Onboarding Template
Templates are Baton’s secret weapon. A good template means you don’t reinvent the wheel with every new customer.
How to build a solid onboarding template: - List out your real steps. Forget the idealized process on your website. Write down what actually happens, from kickoff to handoff. - Break things into phases. Typical phases: Kickoff, Data Gathering, Configuration, Training, Go-Live. Don’t get too granular; you want clarity, not a 100-step Gantt chart. - Add tasks and owners. For each phase, add tasks with clear descriptions. Assign default owners—these can be changed per project. - Set realistic deadlines. Don’t just copy what sales promised. Use your real-world averages.
What to skip: - Don’t include tasks just to make the project look busy. Every task should move the customer forward. - Avoid over-customizing for edge cases. Capture 80–90% of projects; handle exceptions manually.
What works: Review your template every few months. Onboarding never stays static, and your template shouldn’t either.
Step 3: Create a New Customer Project
Now you’re ready for the real thing. When you land a new customer, here’s how to get their onboarding project started in Baton.
How to do it: 1. Create a project from your template. Baton lets you pick a template when starting a new project—use it. That’s why you made one. 2. Fill in the details. Add customer info: name, contacts, start date, any specifics. Don’t skip this; it’ll save time when things get busy. 3. Assign your team. Make sure the right people are tagged for each task. If you need the customer to do something, assign it to their contact. 4. Adjust as needed. Every customer is a little different. Tweak the project—add or remove tasks, adjust timelines—before you kick things off.
Pro tip: If you’re onboarding in batches (say, quarterly cohorts), use the copy/clone feature to save even more time.
Step 4: Collaborate With Your Customer
The main promise of Baton is that you and your customer can see and update the project together. This sounds great, but only works if you set expectations up front.
What actually helps: - Share the project early. As soon as you’ve set it up, invite your main customer contacts. Walk them through what they’ll see and what’s expected of them. - Assign customer tasks clearly. Flag anything that needs their input, and make deadlines realistic. Vague “please review” tasks just get ignored. - Use comments and @mentions. Baton supports commenting on tasks—use this to nudge, clarify, or answer questions (instead of endless email threads).
What usually doesn’t: - Don’t just dump the customer into Baton with no context. Non-technical customers, especially, can get overwhelmed. A quick walkthrough goes a long way. - Don't overuse notifications. Too many pings, and people just start ignoring them.
Step 5: Track Progress and Keep Things Moving
This is where Baton can save you from the dreaded “what’s the status?” emails.
How to actually manage projects: - Check the dashboard daily. Baton gives you a birds-eye view of all projects—see what’s on track, what’s stuck, and who’s responsible. - Update statuses honestly. Don’t fudge dates or mark things “done” to look good. If a deadline slips, update it and communicate why. - Flag risks early. If a project is veering off-track, use Baton’s status flags and notes. Name the issue, tag the right people, and document what’s needed.
What works: - Having a weekly review of all onboarding projects with your team. Use Baton as your agenda. - Using Baton’s reporting/export features to give leadership real data, not anecdotes.
What to ignore: - Over-customizing dashboards or chasing every field you could fill in. Focus on the basics: task status, owner, and deadlines.
Step 6: Close Out and Learn
Finishing strong matters. A sloppy project end can undo weeks of good work.
How to wrap things up: - Mark all tasks complete. Sounds obvious, but half-done projects clutter up your dashboard and make reporting useless. - Send a summary. Use Baton to export or share a final report—what got done, what’s outstanding, and next steps. - Gather feedback. After go-live, ask the customer what worked and what didn’t. Adjust your template if you hear the same complaints more than once.
Pro tip: Don’t close a project until everyone—internally and at the customer—agrees it’s actually done. Otherwise, you’ll end up reopening things later.
What Baton Does Well (and Where It Falls Short)
If you’re reading this, you probably want more than just the marketing pitch. Here’s the honest take:
What works: - Shared visibility. Everyone knows where things stand, and you spend less time updating spreadsheets or chasing people for updates. - Templates and automation. Huge time-saver if you run similar projects over and over. - Customer collaboration. Cuts down on email and keeps tasks clear—if your customers actually use it (see above).
Where it falls short: - Adoption can be a hurdle. Some customers (and team members) just won’t use another tool. You’ll need to walk them through it. - Overkill for tiny teams. If you’re onboarding one customer a month, a shared doc might still be faster. - Customization has limits. Baton is built for onboarding, not general project management. Don’t expect it to handle every weird workflow.
Keep It Simple and Iterate
Customer onboarding projects can get messy fast. The trick is to keep your Baton setup simple: build a solid template, stay honest about progress, and don’t let features distract you from the basics. Review and adjust as you go—no process is perfect out of the box.
Start small, fix what’s broken, and remember: the goal is to get customers live and happy, not to win an award for fanciest project plan.