Top Customer Onboarding Tools for Smooth Product Adoption and Faster Time-to-Value

They say you have only seven seconds to make a first impression when meeting new people. But it's also very much true for new users getting to know your product or clients starting to work with your business.

Offering smooth customer onboarding helps you make a good first impression and help your customers adopt your platform and start seeing value asap so your they are more likely to stay with you longer and even become your advocates.

Today, we will talk about how software can help you elevate your customer onboarding and explore some of the popular categories in this space. We will suggest the best client onboarding tool to increase your product adoption and accelerate time-to-value. Let’s get started!

Why do you need onboarding software?

Customer onboarding software is crucial for guiding new clients to quick, tangible value from your product—essential in today’s fast-paced business world. When onboarding is handled well, clients can experience benefits early on, which boosts their confidence in your solution. Effective onboarding software streamlines each stage of this process by automating key touchpoints, monitoring progress, and customizing the experience to meet unique client needs.

The result? Clients not only feel supported and empowered from day one, but they’re also set up for ongoing success. This early positive experience is a powerful driver of long-term loyalty, helping to secure renewals and prevent churn. By investing in customer onboarding software, you’re not just creating a smoother start for clients—you’re building the foundation for lasting partnerships and future growth.

Key features to look for in onboarding tools

Using the dedicated tools can significantly improve your onboarding process, making it smoother, more efficient, and more engaging. But you need to find the right one. There are six main features that you should look for in an onboarding tool that you will select and use.

1. Automation: We have repetitive tasks to eliminate, such as sending welcome emails and notifications, collecting documents, notifying stakeholders to complete their assignments, etc. Automation should be your priority to streamline the process and save you time by eliminating manual, repetitive work.
2. Content sharing (and info collection): You must share many documents with your customers during onboarding. So, you should look for a tool that includes content sharing and information collection to efficiently distribute necessary guides and training materials. This will help everyone be on the same page and quickly access the needed documents.
3. Task management: An effective onboarding process has a multistep process that includes input from your team and customer. Task management contributes to task clarification to address who should perform what and when to deliver it, facilitating inter-group cooperation. It assists teams in managing the work among their members without feeling that the work may slip from any team member’s sight.
4. Progress tracking and dashboards: You need to see the big picture. Visibility on the onboarding journey can help you do this. Identify potential roadblocks early, understand the bottlenecks, and check engagement levels. Based on this big picture, you must make proactive adjustments for a smooth onboarding process.
5. Templates: After a certain number of customers, creating the documents from scratch can be challenging in terms of time and inconsistency. So, having pre-built templates (or ones you can edit and save) will standardize your process and save you time. They also come in handy when you have several onboarding processes depending on the customer type or product level.
6. Integrations: Even if it is everybody’s dream, we don’t use only one tool; we have multiple to deal with daily. And if you try to sync them manually, it will be a disaster. So, your onboarding tool should do the manual labour for you. It should connect your existing tech stacks, such as CRM, helpdesk, and project management tools, to have all customer information in one place.

In-product onboarding tools

In-product onboarding is the most direct and effective way to deliver outstanding customer experience and product adoption. It guides the users through what to do next when they are stuck while using your product, so there is no confusion when using it for the first time. The result? Fewer tickets opened and more independent clients.

1. Userlane

Userlane’s Digital Adoption Platform gives users smooth directions in your application. Userlane creates interactive walkthroughs within your interface and guides users through their tasks. This lowers the training and documentation burdens and sees less use during the first time clients use your product. With Userlane's assistance, users can immediately start making value out of the product, thus improving the usage ratio and reducing the frequency of returns to customer care. Userlane also provides statistics on users’ progress and detects whether they have difficulties completing some particular activity, which can be improved constantly.

• App discovery shows which software applications your team uses, analyzes the usage insights, and makes adoption improvements.
• HEART analysis shows happiness, engagement, adoption, retention, and task success in your digital adoption process.
• Platform reporting gives you actionable insights into user behaviors and content performance.

2. UserGuiding

UserGuiding is another interactive onboarding tool, offering product walkthroughs and user guides. One key benefit is that you can design onboarding flows and the associated forms without involving developers in building and maintaining them. UserGuiding enables customization of product tours based on which the application is intelligent enough to adjust its flows according to the user’s activity. It also lets you include tooltips, progress bars, and checklists, which greatly help hold an individual’s attention.

• Creating a knowledge base and resource centers to gather all support resources in one centralized hub.
• In-app surveys are triggered automatically and gather valuable user feedback by asking important questions to take action.
• Tooltips and announcement modals will help you to show detailed information about your features and promote discounts, promotions, and updates.

3. Userflow

Userflow can be considered one of the most powerful and rather simple tools to build particular onboarding flows. You can create and deploy in-product tours and tooltips with a drag-and-drop interface editor. Product tours are personalized to create deep and fully branded onboarding experiences. It is possible to break the users into segments and provide the correct instructions with conditional actions depending on their behavior. Userflow can also be connected with any analytics systems, and it is possible to track how users interact with the onboarding flow and modify it if necessary.

• Personalized product tours can be done to be more friendly and supportive to your customers.
• Checklists and resource centers provide the necessary push for a smoother onboarding experience and ensure that your customers see their full potential.
• Surveys and NPS are built with contextual questions to measure customer satisfaction and user feedback.

Process management tools

Onboarding can involve multiple stakeholders, teams within the company, and specific tasks. As a result, many onboarding managers adopt process management tools help keep everything aligned by recording every step performed during onboarding so nothing is omitted, and every contributor is informed.

4. Process Street

Process Street is an AI-powered process management tool that helps teams share their core processes and transform them into powerful no-code workflows. You can create templates for the standard activities linked to customer acquisition. The tool’s automation capabilities allow you to trigger specific actions based on task completion. In the same way, Process Street enables team cooperation by tracking tasks with no task slipping through the cracks.

• Workflows will help you to automate and track business processes easily.
• You can gather valuable, focused insights with forms and unify data from everywhere together.
• Process analytics will help you make data-based decisions and provide a company-wide workflow snapshot with integrations.

5. Rocketlane

Rocketlane is suited for customer onboarding, implementations, and professional services automation. The platform keeps several teams together and the onboarding process on track if there are multiple parties. Rocketlane helps develop a variety of workflows from within and allocates them to the client. It also has features offering real-time status updates so that teams can check important tasks and upcoming snagging issues before they cause a problem.

• From project creation and execution to monitoring, run your projects efficiently.
• Financial and resource management tools for maximum profitability, balancing workloads with resource allocation and availability with a time-tracking feature.
• You can offer a personalized onboarding process by using dynamic templates and smartfill.

6. TaskRay

TaskRay is a dedicated project/enterprise work management tool that offers tailored solutions for Salesforce customers. It helps you manage projects and resources, automate mundane tasks for project teams, and collaborate with customers and across teams. It is built for Salesforce and its technology, so the tool is easily scalable, flexible, and secure, making Salesforce the single source of truth across the business.

• Use repeatable, scaleable, and shareable templates to create projects and power them up with automation.
• You can complete your projects faster by centralizing all the moving parts of your projects.
• Analytics will show your project performance and profitability in real time.

Info collection & sharing tools

A major part of any onboarding process is collecting customer data and other important information and resources. Luckily, there are tools that assist with making this process more efficient so that clients provide all the necessary information on time and help you manage it and share internally.

7. Content Snare

Content Snare helps you collect customer data easily and in one place without get lost in long emails. The platform makes data collection easy for you and your customers with a confusion-free collection checklist, easy sharing, reminders, and the ability to reuse. You can easily see what your customer will see and create a form with a drag-and-drop editor. Content Snare also collects the forms in one place and works like your CRM so that you can easily find everything you are looking for.

• Ready-made templates can be customizable and will save time.
• Automated reminders will follow the to-dos even if you forget them and ensure you’ve collected all the information.
• Custom branding will create a personalized environment for a better user experience.

8. Jotform

Jotform is an online form builder with 10,000+ ready-made templates, 200+ integrations with third-party apps, and advanced design features to customize your forms. It can also turn your forms into flows for effortless execution, progress tracking, and task assignments. You can use Jotform to collect your customers' data and integrate your other tools to collect online payments and generate reports.

• Connect your daily apps to flow your data without any manual labor and the possibility of losing your data.
• With many customization opportunities, it is possible to fulfill all your needs and branding.
• The tool is mainly focused on form building, so it is really easy to use and free of distractions.

9. Docsend

Docsend is a Dropbox tool that helps you securely share and control the content that drives your business forward. Without being lost in long email threads with many attachments, you can share your content with links, get instant feedback, update new versions without sending them again each time, secure your content to get copied, and get analytics about who viewed and how long. You can also get eSignature and create one-click NDAs with Docsend.

• Document analytics will help you understand your content's effect by showing how you spent time and who viewed it with their email information.
• Adding dynamic watermarking secures your sensitive documents.
• Virtual data rooms to pitch, analyze, and close deals without any other tool.

Mutual Action Plan software

Mutual Action Plans assists in defining and managing expectations between your team and the customer throughout the project. MAP software enables you to set objectives, create roadmaps, and set deadlines to ensure the involved parties are fully aware of expectations in job assignments and their time frame.

10. OnRamp

OnRamp is a collaborative onboarding management platform for minimizing a gap that is likely to exist between your team and your customers toward the end of onboarding. It enables bothparties to set measurable timelines, goals, and objectives and share them on both sides until the onboarding process is complete. OnRamp helps to maximize accountability while minimizing misunderstandings between the two parties — about the tasks, goals, and deadlines.

• Create process automation to avoid manual processes' inefficiencies.
• Control your daily onboarding tasks, organize your work, and have comprehensive insights to avoid project delays.
• Track onboarding analytics to increase time to value and efficiency and understand bottlenecks.

11. EverAfter

EverAfter concentrates on creating specific action plans with your clients, linking the onboarding of the different tasks with organizational performance objectives. It ensures that this action plan and the corresponding customer deadlines are clear and provides insights into internal workings. EverAfter also assists in strengthening client relations since all the team members are informed of what needs to be done from the beginning.

• You will give your customers a personalized start to accelerate the impact and focus on an action-driven approach.
• Achieve a holistic view of customers’ journeys, automate the mundane, and merge crucial data into one interface.
• With journey orchestration, create a fully automated experience and humanize your digital interactions.

All-in-one CS platforms

Considering the many roles and responsibilities of a CS team, many teams already have a dedicated CSM system in place. SO why not use it for onboarding as well? Multiple CS platforms cover customer success, onboarding, and relationship management in a single solution to increase your efficiency and make your life easier.

12. Client Success

ClientSuccess is a customer success management platform that helps companies manage, retain, and grow their existing customer base. It consolidates the customer health scoring, onboarding, and engagement data in one place, making communication and insights about your customers clear for all teams and stakeholders. ClientSuccess has many integrations to increase the effectiveness of cross-functional cooperation and ensure proactive actions to minimize churn risks and increase renewals.

• You can have a big-picture view with insights such as satisfaction status, product pulse, customer sentiment, and more.
• Streamline your processes with tasks auto-assignments and tasks, reporting, and dashboards to always be current.
• Center your team and customers for consistently positive results in your onboarding process with a collaborative customer portal.

13. Catalyst

Catalyst provides a customer growth platform to grow your customer revenue by improving visibility into each account. You can monitor customer health and guarantee they use and benefit from your product. Being fully connected to your company’s CRM and other business features, Catalyst provides teams with the tools to monitor user experience and satisfaction from the first moments. On the customer side, it offers deep information about customer attitudes and behaviors, which gives the teams the means to act on signs of customer disengagement.

• Identify actions for upselling growth opportunities by understanding product usage and standardizing best practices.
• Leverage automation to get accurate reporting and never miss any necessary workflow steps.
• Reduce churn by taking the right actions at the right time and going from reactive to proactive.

14. Planhat

Planhat gathers all information about a customer, all communication with the client, and all onboarding processes in one unified interface. Its great integration capabilities allow various departments, such as sales, customer success, and product, to be aligned toward the customer's onboarding. Using Planhat, you can understand user health, customer interactions, and whether each onboarding project is on task. Planhat also allows determining where a client is inside the onboarding funnel and addressing all possible challenges.

• Unite your customer journey to see the big picture and give your customers what they need.
• Initiate communication sequences and automate your routine tasks to improve efficiency and consistency.
• Use technology for your benefit by using text assistant to simplify and summarise email threads, access the universal filter, and discuss in real-time with mentions and reactions.

Flowla Onboard: The only client onboarding software you’ll need

As you can see, there are many great tools that can help you build a smooth and effective onboarding process for your customers. They all have their benefits as well as limitations, so when it comes to choosing the best one, you need to know exactly what you need. Flowla Onboard covers most of the aspects of the onboarding process, allowing you to build an enjoyable experience for your customers and empower your CS team.

Flowla Onboard offers an intuitive way of designing the onboarding flow that will suit a specific customer. Combining powerful content management features and solid action planning capabilities, it helps the customer move through each step of the onboarding process with ease.

Here's how it works:

1. Automatically create flow links by mapping your existing workflow and data to create a personalized flow.
2. One magic link for each customer that gathers all product resources and action plans.
3. Get weekly AI summaries and know exactly what requires your attention by tracking all internal and external activity.

Flowla Onboard’s biggest strength is that it can streamline much of the routine work your onboarding manager deals with, while still allowing for high-touch onboarding experience for your customers. This means your customers can get up to speed faster without necessarily having to run to your CS team for assistance all the time.

Flowla Onboard is made to handle all possible complexity with Gantt charts, action plans, data collection, and CRM sync.

How to choose the right onboarding tool

Choosing an onboarding tool is a strategic investment. We’ve discussed its importance, key features to consider, and some popular tools. But is this enough to make the right choice? Since every company has different needs, evaluating your options based on your current and future needs is crucial.

Here are the four main things to consider when choosing the right onboarding tool:

1. Define your onboarding goals: What is your priority? What will you focus on during your onboarding? You should start by defining your goals for the process. You need to think about whether your goal is to minimize routine and perform repetitive tasks, introduce more interaction among colleagues, or track each client’s progress. It is beneficial to define these goals to understand what tools are available regarding the goals you are trying to achieve.
2. Consider scalability: Everyone aims for a bigger, right? So, your tools should also follow your lead. When you expand, it should grow, too. While selecting the right onboarding tool, search for the ability to handle an increased customer base, support more complex workflows, and give advanced reporting as you onboard more customers.
3. Look at ease of use: An onboarding tool has to be smooth and easy to use. You should consider the interface, the onboarding process, and ease of use. It should have a user-friendly interface so that a newcomer can easily understand the product, and you should easily use it to manage your onboarding process. Don’t forget that a steep learning curve can discourage the customer and limit the effectiveness of your product.
4. Check for integrations: The data is the most important thing to ensure continuity and understand what happens during onboarding. Ensure your new onboarding tool is integrated with your CRM, project management software, mail, and any other tool you use. It is important that the tool has lots of integrations, but the most important thing is that it has integration with YOUR tools.

But most importantly, check for customer reviews on platforms like G2 and take a few options for a spin before you commit. For example, you can request a risk-free POC project where we will personally help you implement your existing processes within Flowla to ensure smooth roll-out to your team and customers.

Get in touch with us to learn more and start your journey with Flowla today.