If you’ve ever tried to manually onboard a bunch of customers, you know it’s a mess—emails get lost, follow-ups slip through the cracks, and your “process” is basically a collection of spreadsheets. This guide is for anyone who wants to automate the boring parts of customer onboarding, keep things from falling apart, and actually spend time helping customers, not just chasing them.
We’re going to walk through how to use Common Room to build onboarding workflows that save you time without creating a tangled mess you’ll regret later. I’ll cover what Common Room can (and can’t) do, the real-world steps to set up automation, and some hard-won lessons about what’s worth automating and what’s not.
Why automate onboarding in the first place?
Let’s be honest: Customer onboarding isn’t optional, but it’s rarely anyone’s favorite part of the job. If you’re running customer success, product, or support, you’re expected to:
- Make sure new users actually start using your product
- Answer the same basic questions over and over
- Track who’s where in the process
- Keep the team looped in when things go sideways
Manually, it’s tedious and error-prone. Automating repetitive onboarding steps means:
- Fewer mistakes and missed steps
- Faster time-to-value for customers (they get what they need, sooner)
- More time for you to actually help people, not just send reminders
But be warned: Over-automation can backfire. Customers want to feel like there’s a human behind the software, especially early on. The trick is automating the boring stuff, not all the stuff.
What Common Room actually does (and what it doesn’t)
Common Room is best known for helping teams manage customer engagement across a bunch of channels—Slack, Discord, Twitter, forums, email, and more. It pulls in conversations, helps you see who’s active, and lets you track what’s happening in your user community.
What’s less obvious is that you can use Common Room’s automation features—workflows, rules, and integrations—to handle a good chunk of your onboarding process. This isn’t a magic “onboarding in a box” tool, but if you’re already managing community or customer comms in Common Room, it’s a logical place to automate the stuff you’re already doing.
What works well:
- Tracking customer activity across channels (so you can see who’s engaged or stuck)
- Sending automated messages and nudges when onboarding steps are missed
- Routing key onboarding milestones to the right team member (e.g., “assign CSM when user hits milestone X”)
- Integrating with CRMs, Slack, and email so the right people get notified
What doesn’t:
- Complex, multi-step onboarding checklists (it’s not a project management tool)
- Deep product training or usage tracking (you’ll need analytics for that)
- Custom, per-customer onboarding plans (use a real CSM tool for that)
If your onboarding is mostly about keeping track of communications, automating reminders, and making sure nobody’s forgotten, Common Room is a good fit.
Step 1: Map your onboarding workflow (don’t skip this)
Before you even open Common Room, sketch out your onboarding workflow. Automation won’t fix a messy process. You want to know:
- What are the key onboarding steps? (e.g., “Welcome email,” “Intro call,” “First login,” “Setup complete”)
- Where do customers get stuck?
- Who needs to know about each step? (you, your team, the customer?)
- Which steps are the same for every customer, and which need a human touch?
Pro tip: If you can’t write your onboarding steps on a napkin, it’s too complicated to automate.
Step 2: Set up your sources in Common Room
You can’t automate what you can’t see. Common Room pulls in data from different sources—Slack, Discord, email, forums, and so on. Set up integrations for the channels where your onboarding conversations happen.
- Slack: Most B2B onboarding happens in shared Slack channels. Connect your workspace and make sure you’re pulling in the right channels.
- Email: If you use a shared inbox for onboarding, connect that too.
- CRM: Connect Salesforce or HubSpot if you want to sync onboarding milestones.
- Other: Forums, Discord, or wherever your users hang out.
What to ignore: Don’t bother connecting every channel “just because.” Only sync the ones where onboarding actually takes place. Otherwise, you’ll drown in noise.
Step 3: Define segments for onboarding customers
Segments in Common Room let you group users—think “all new customers signed up in the last 30 days.” This is how you’ll trigger onboarding automations.
- Create a segment for “New Customers” based on sign-up date, CRM field, or whatever makes sense for your workflow.
- Optionally, create sub-segments for different onboarding tiers (e.g., enterprise vs. self-serve).
Pro tip: Start simple. If you don’t have a huge volume, one “New Customers” segment is fine. Get fancier later if you need it.
Step 4: Build automated workflows and rules
Here’s where you actually automate things. In Common Room, workflows are basically “if this, then that” rules. You can set them up to:
- Send a welcome message when someone joins the “New Customers” segment
- Send a reminder if a customer hasn’t posted or replied in your onboarding channel after X days
- Notify the right CSM (Customer Success Manager) when a customer completes a milestone
- Flag users who look stuck or disengaged for manual follow-up
Example workflow:
1. User joins “New Customers” segment.
2. Trigger: No message in Slack #onboarding after 3 days.
3. Action: Send automated DM (“Hey, just checking in—need any help getting started?”) or notify the CSM.
A few honest tips: - Don’t automate everything. Automated check-ins are fine, but don’t try to fake a personal relationship with bots. People can tell. - Beware of “reminder spam.” One or two nudges is enough. More than that, and you’ll annoy people. - Test your workflows with your own team first to make sure the timing and wording feel natural.
Step 5: Connect notifications to your team
Automation is only useful if the right people get looped in. Use Common Room’s integrations to:
- Send Slack notifications to your team when a customer hits an onboarding milestone
- Create tasks in your CRM for manual steps (e.g., “Schedule kickoff call”)
- Email stakeholders if something’s gone off the rails (e.g., “Customer hasn’t logged in after 7 days”)
Don’t try to replace your whole tech stack—just use Common Room to keep the team in the loop about the stuff that matters.
Pitfall to avoid:
If every little thing triggers a notification, people start ignoring all of them. Be picky about what’s truly important.
Step 6: Measure and tweak
Automation isn’t “set it and forget it.” Once you’ve got your onboarding workflow running:
- Check who’s actually completing onboarding. Are people dropping off at certain steps?
- Look at response rates to automated messages. Are they getting replies, or just being ignored?
- Ask your team for feedback—is the automation helping, or just adding noise?
- Adjust timing, wording, and triggers as needed.
You’ll probably get it wrong the first time. That’s normal. Iterate until you find what works for your customers and your team.
Real-world advice: What to automate (and what to skip)
Worth automating:
- Welcome messages and basic reminders
- Notifying the team when milestones are hit (or missed)
- Tracking engagement so nobody slips through the cracks
Not worth automating:
- Anything that requires actual conversation or empathy
- Custom onboarding plans for big accounts (do those by hand)
- Long, multi-step checklists (use a project tool if you need this)
Watch out for:
- Too many notifications—people will tune them out
- “Set and forget” syndrome—automation should make the human touch easier, not replace it
Keep it simple and iterate
Automating onboarding with Common Room can save you a ton of time, but only if you keep things simple. Start with the boring, repetitive stuff. Make sure the right people get looped in when it matters. Don’t try to automate relationships—just use automation to make space for better ones.
You’ll get more value from steady improvement than from chasing some mythical “fully automated onboarding pipeline.” Sketch your process, automate a few steps, see what works, and keep tweaking. That’s how you’ll actually make onboarding better—for you and your customers.