If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at one-size-fits-all onboarding, you’re in the right place. This guide is for folks who want to make onboarding actually useful for new clients—not just another box to tick. We’ll walk through setting up personalized onboarding workflows in Vitally, a customer success platform. You’ll get the steps, honest tips, and a few landmines to avoid.
Let’s get started.
Why Bother with Personalized Onboarding in the First Place?
Let’s be real: Most onboarding is generic and forgettable. Clients zone out, your team wastes time, and nobody’s impressed. Personalized onboarding, though, shows clients you actually get their needs. It can boost adoption, cut churn, and—most importantly—help your team stop chasing their tails.
Vitally has tools to do this, but don’t expect miracles from software alone. The real work is in planning what matters for your clients.
Step 1: Map Out Your Ideal Onboarding Experience
Before you touch a tool, sketch the big picture. Get clear on:
- Who are your typical new clients? Segment by industry, company size, use case—whatever’s relevant.
- What do they need to do first to get value? (Not what you want, but what helps them.)
- Where do they usually get stuck? Be honest. If you don’t know, ask your CSMs or support folks.
Pro Tips
- Limit yourself to 2–4 client segments to start. More than that, and you’ll drown in complexity.
- Focus on outcomes, not activities. “Set up integration” is an activity. “See first analytics report” is an outcome.
Step 2: Set Up Segments and Custom Fields in Vitally
You can’t personalize anything until Vitally knows who’s who. Start here:
Create Segments
- In Vitally, set up segments based on your onboarding plan: industry, product tier, or whatever you mapped in Step 1.
- Use filters like company size, sign-up source, or custom properties.
Add Custom Fields
- Add fields for onboarding-relevant info: key contacts, technical requirements, goals, etc.
- Don’t go nuts. Only add fields someone will actually use.
Honest Take
A lot of teams overcomplicate this. If you try to track everything, you’ll end up tracking nothing well. Start with the basics, and only get fancier if you see real gaps.
Step 3: Build Your Onboarding Playbooks
In Vitally, “Playbooks” are automated workflows that can assign tasks, send emails, or trigger alerts. Here’s how to make them work for you:
Lay Out Playbook Steps
- For each segment, outline the steps clients actually need to take (see Step 1).
- Assign owners for each step: is it a CSM, a support rep, or the client?
- Set realistic due dates—don’t default to “ASAP” or “within 1 day” for everything.
Set Up Playbooks in Vitally
- Go to Playbooks and create a new one for each key segment.
- Add tasks like “Intro call scheduled,” “Integration started,” or “First milestone achieved.”
- Use conditional logic to adjust steps based on custom fields (e.g., skip technical setup if not needed).
Email and Notification Steps
- If you want, include automated emails. Keep them short and personalized—nobody wants a novel.
- Use tokens to insert client names, goals, or other custom data.
- Set up internal notifications for your team (e.g., “Client has not scheduled kickoff call in 5 days”).
What to Ignore
- Don’t automate everything. Some clients need a real human touch, especially early on.
- Avoid long, branching Playbooks unless you know your team will maintain them. Complexity is your enemy.
Step 4: Personalize the Experience—Without Overkill
Vitally lets you tweak onboarding for each client, but again, don’t go wild.
Tactics That Work
- Use Playbook branching only where it matters (e.g., “Has in-house dev?” → show/hide integration steps).
- Personalize messaging by referencing the client’s goals or use case. Even a simple note like “We know you want to launch by July 1” helps.
- Assign a single owner for each onboarding—clients hate being bounced around.
Tactics That Waste Time
- Over-customizing every single email or task. If you’re spending hours per client, you’re doing it wrong.
- Tracking every possible “engagement” metric. Most are noise.
Step 5: Track Progress and Course-Correct
Once your onboarding Playbooks are running, don’t just “set it and forget it.”
Use Vitally’s Dashboards
- Build dashboards to see who’s stuck, who’s ahead, and who’s not engaging.
- Filter by segment or owner to spot patterns.
Review Regularly
- Every few weeks, pull up a list of clients who didn’t hit key milestones.
- Ask your team—where did clients get confused? Did steps actually help, or were they busywork?
Honest Take
Dashboards are only as good as the data you feed them. Don’t obsess over making them “perfect”—just make sure they help you spot real problems early.
Step 6: Get Feedback and Iterate
No onboarding process survives first contact with real clients. Build in feedback loops.
Quick Ways to Get Feedback
- After onboarding, send a simple survey: “What was helpful? What was confusing?”
- Ask your CSMs: “What steps do you skip or reword every time?”
Tweak, Don’t Overhaul
- If a Playbook step never gets done, cut it or rethink it.
- If clients ask the same question repeatedly, add a quick explainer or resource.
Common Pitfalls to Watch Out For
Some “best practices” just don’t work in real life. Here are traps to dodge:
- Over-automation: If your onboarding feels robotic, clients will tune out.
- Too many segments: More segments = more overhead. Start small.
- Ignoring ownership: Every onboarding should have a single internal owner. Shared responsibility = nobody’s responsibility.
- Not testing: Run through your own workflow as if you’re a new client. You’ll spot the silly stuff fast.
Keep It Simple (and Human)
Personalized onboarding in Vitally isn’t about building the fanciest automation—it’s about helping real people get value, fast. Start simple. Automate only what makes sense. Keep checking in with your team and your clients. Iterate as you go.
You’ll save time, keep clients happy, and avoid building yet another process nobody wants to use.