Why First Impressions Matter When it Comes to Onboarding

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

This statement holds true for both our professional and business lives.

GUIDEcx founder & CEO, Peter Ord, was a guest on an episode of the SaaS District podcast hosted by Akeel Jabber and explains why first impressions matter during the customer onboarding process.

How Engagement Drives Efficiency

Part of creating a great first impression during customer onboarding is showing that your process is organized and efficient. In this podcast, Peter explains one way to maximize efficiency is to define the specific personas that need to be involved in each project.

Once these specific personas are defined, then you hold the stakeholder on the customer side accountable to inviting each of those specific individuals to the project experience. After the stakeholders are in the project, GUIDEcx will then trigger deliverables that are auto-assigned to that specific persona based on how the customers have built the template. 

Next, you can measure engagement per each specific stakeholder such as how many times do they view the project or are they opening emails? Other areas of measurement include tracking the number of tasks that are on-scheduled or overdue. Onboarding engagement metrics can also be analyzed to identify where bottlenecks are in the implementation process and also where the accelerators live. 

Having a clear vision of the status of each task, where the roadblocks are and where projects are moving ahead, provides you with the data to make decisions and changes to improve your efficiency. 

In addition to sharing actionable tips on how to drive efficiency, Peter also provides a candid take on his biggest challenges as the Founder and CEO of GUIDEcx and what resources have been instrumental in his success.

Advice to Early Stage Founders

Two words immediately came to Peter’s mind when Akeel asked him the question about what advice he would have for early stage SaaS Startups: Perseverance and perspective.

These two words are the advice that Peter’s father shared with him on multiple occasions. 

“From a perspective standpoint, it’s never as bad as it seems, it’s also as never good as it seems,” said Peter.

And this is coming from a CEO who has seen a lot of bumps in the road (trademark infringement, pandemic, recession, inflation) since founding GUIDEcx in 2017. 

“That’s life,” Peter said.

This Podcast Covers:

• 00:00 – Intro
• 01:19 – The Founding & Overview Of GUIDEcx
• 07:18 – GUIDEcx Funding & Size Today
• 07:55 – First Steps On Customer Experience & Why It Is Important
• 15:37 – Setting Up The Most Important Metrics & KPIs
• 18:41 – Customer Experience Trends And Technologies To Keep An Eye In 2023
• 23:00 – The 5 Steps To The Early Success of GUIDEcx
• 27:44 – Advice To Scale SaaS Startups
• 31:42 – Peter’s Favorite Activity To Get Into a Flow State
• 32:31 – Peter’s Piece of Advice for His 25 Years Old Self
• 33:21 – Peter’s Biggest Challenges at GUIDEcx
• 35:19 – Instrumental Resources For Peter’s Success
• 36:33 – What Does Success Means for Peter Today
• 37:56 – Get In Touch With Peter