How to Automate Your Client Onboarding Process

Contrary to popular belief, you can automate your client process and still sound like a human.

If you searched every page of our website for the words “automation” or “automating”, it’s likely that more results would come up than there are people in the state of Missouri. We talk about it so much because we’re in love with it! We’re two women with a lot of stuff on our plates, and whenever we can put something on autopilot, we’re all over it in a heartbeat.

One of the key places we believe automation should happen is in your client onboarding process. Wait a second, we see that grimace on your face. Oftentimes, it isn’t thought that “automate” and “client” should be in the same sentence together because automation usually brings images of a robot *beep boop beep*, and no one wants to seem like a depersonalized robot to the people that are going to be giving you their money.

But what if we told you there’s a way you can automate your client onboarding process while, yes, still sounding like a human being? In today’s blog post, we’re going to take a dive into how you can do this in Dubsado so that you’ll have more time on your hands to care for your clients like the human you are.

Lay Your Onboarding Process Out on Paper

It doesn’t have to be literal paper– a Google doc will work, too. The key here is to understand your full onboarding process, every single step of the way. Instead of having to do this by memory (unless you have it memorized to the T), we’d recommend noting what happens the next time you’re onboarding a client. Make note of the common occurrences between your clients, things like:

• Every email that is sent

• Every form or document that is sent (proposal, contract, questionnaire, lead capture form, welcome packet, etc.)

• The way in which you acquire account information from them, if applicable

• Do they need to be set up in a project management system if you aren’t using Dubsado as one? Any other systems?

• Each task that comes up during this process, like editing their proposal or contract

Set Up Your Account and Materials

Since you know everything that you need now, you first need to build the pieces out before you can put them together. So, it’s time to create your:

• Lead capture form

• Contract

• Proposal

• Questionnaires if applicable. These can be awesome as feedback questionnaires or for acquiring account login information from the client if needed.

• Scheduler if you aren’t using Dubsado’s native scheduler

• Canned emails

• Packages

• Project statuses and tagging (click here to learn more about why these are useful and how they work)

With canned emails, we’d have to recommend using smart fields to automatically input information. So, instead of having to type out the client’s name all of the time, you can choose a smart field that will auto-generate it into that spot. There are a total of 62 smart fields at the time of this blog post, so you have tons of ways to make an email personal without having to actually type out certain information.

Put It All Together in a Workflow

So, before you just start creating your workflow, you should first understand the trigger point. Dubsado’s workflows don’t allow you to add a trigger from within the feature, so treat the first step as, literally, the first step once the trigger is fired off. You’re able to apply a workflow to lead capture forms and public proposals, and completion of these forms will be the trigger.

If you’re using customized project statuses, you can also add a default status to the project upon completion.

Now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way, here’s an example of a simple client onboarding workflow:

Important things to note:

• If you need to edit an email before it sends off, be sure to add a Create Todo task before the email step, as shown above. The email step won’t send off until both checkboxes are complete– the black and white one showing that the workflow action is complete, and the smaller one showing that the task has been completed. For extra security, you can also mark the email step to require your approval before completing.

• If you have three actions back to back sending forms (for example, your scheduler, proposal, and then contract) and they don’t need to be edited first, be sure that those steps are not set to send “after all previous actions complete”, otherwise they’ll send all at once. Instead, send the proposal “after appointment has ended” and the contract “after form is complete”.

• There is an option in your proposal settings to automatically include the contract and invoice in an easy, 3-step process for clients to complete at once. Shown above is the method of sending separately, but you can decide to send however works best for you and your process.

All that’s left for you to do now is test the crap out of your workflow! Create a sample client with a throwaway email of yours that you can run through the workflow with to make sure everything functions correctly. If everything works properly, then your workflow is officially ready to start firing off for actual clients. You’ve just saved some major time and energy, so give yourself a pat on the back!

To learn more about what Dubsado can do for you and save 30% on your first month or year, head here.