Onboarding copy

What onboarding copy is

Onboarding copy is everything a customer is told between paying and being competent: the confirmation screen, the receipt, the setup instructions, the first login or the card in the box, and the handful of messages that arrive over the following week or two. It is written as one piece, because the customer experiences it as one thing even though it comes out of four different systems.

It is not a user guide. A guide is the complete reference for somebody looking up a specific task, and it is where onboarding sends people once they need more. Onboarding copy is the opposite shape: short, sequenced, and concerned only with the first few things, chosen because they decide whether the customer reaches a working state at all.

It is also not a welcome sequence, though the two are often confused. A welcome sequence goes to somebody who joined a list and has bought nothing, and its job is to introduce a business. Onboarding goes to somebody who has paid, and its job is to make sure they succeed with what they bought.

When you need one

Onboarding copy is refund prevention and support-ticket prevention, and both of those are money. A customer who cannot get started asks for their money back, or does not ask and quietly never returns, or writes to you and occupies somebody’s afternoon. All three cost more than the writing.

You need it most when what you sell requires the customer to do something before it works: install it, book the first session, assemble it, enter their data, choose a plan. Anything with a setup step has an onboarding problem whether or not anyone has looked at it.

You do not need this if what you sell is finished on delivery and asks nothing of the buyer. A bag of coffee needs a good receipt and little else. And if your support volume is made of questions that arrive months later rather than in the first week, the answer is knowledge base articles rather than this.

What gets written

The work begins by deciding what a customer must be able to do before they count as onboarded, and then by cutting everything the first fortnight does not need. Most onboarding fails by telling people everything, on day one, in an order that suits the company rather than the customer.

• The first screen and the receipt. What they have bought, what it cost, what happens now, and the one thing to do next. The receipt is the message customers keep and search for later, so it carries more than the amount.
• The first action. One step, written as an instruction, that gets them to something working. Not a tour and not a feature list. Setup instructions are written in the order a person actually performs them, which is rarely the order the product was built in.
• The first fortnight of messages. Usually three or four, each with one job: confirm, get them started, check in, and offer help from a named person. Written so somebody who finished the setup at once does not receive the same nudge as somebody who has not opened it.
• The things they will get wrong. The two or three mistakes your support inbox sees over and over, headed off in advance and phrased so nobody feels stupid.
• The handover. Where to go when they need more: the guide, the help pages, the telephone number, and who to ask for. Onboarding ends on purpose rather than trailing off.

What you get

The onboarding map. One page showing every message and screen in the first fortnight, in order, with what triggers each, what it says, and what takes somebody out of the sequence.

The copy itself. Every screen, email and printed insert written out in full, ready to be pasted into your platform or sent to a printer. Emails come with a subject line and one alternative each.

A cut list. What I have deliberately kept out of the first fortnight, and where each item should live instead. This is often the most useful page in the delivery, because the instinct to tell a new customer everything is strong and it is what breaks most onboarding.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Victoria company sells scheduling software to dental practices for a monthly fee in CAD. New practices sign up, and a good number of them never import their patient list, which is the step that makes the software useful. Those are the practices that cancel in the second month, and the support inbox is full of the same three questions.

The onboarding is rebuilt around one measure: the practice has imported its list and booked one appointment. The confirmation screen drops the feature tour and shows a single instruction with an honest estimate of fifteen minutes. The receipt repeats that instruction and names the person who will telephone. Four emails replace nine: day zero confirms and points at the import, day two is a two-minute recording of the import being done, day five goes only to practices that have not imported and offers to do it for them, and day twelve goes only to those who have. The three recurring support questions are answered inside the day-two email. Nine messages become four, and the cut list sends everything else to the help pages.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What you sell, what a customer has to do before it works, and what your support inbox is full of. No charge.
2. Becoming a new customer. I buy or sign up, do the setup as written, and record every point at which I have to guess. Where the product is physical, I open the box. Two to three working days.
3. The map, agreed first. Before any copy is written you approve the order, the number of messages and the definition of onboarded, which is where the disagreement usually is.
4. The draft copy. Seven to ten working days after the map is agreed.
5. Final delivery. One round of revisions included, then a short call with whoever builds it, prints it or sends it.

Three to four weeks from the first call to final copy is typical.

What it costs

Onboarding copy is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. It depends on how many screens and messages are in scope, whether there is printed material as well as email, and how much of the setup I have to learn first. The pricing page shows the four ways of working so you can see the shape of the quote, and the figure is fixed in writing before anything starts.

What happens next

Three things usually follow. The questions that survive the first fortnight belong somewhere permanent, which is a help centre organised around what customers are trying to do. The customers who now reach a working state are worth asking for their story, and that is customer interviews. And once onboarding ends the relationship needs somewhere to continue, which for most businesses is the newsletter. This piece of work is complete on its own and nothing further is assumed.