How a smooth onboarding process boosts your bottom line

Traditional onboarding methods can bring a whole host of problems for businesses. They delay revenue generation, create operational bottlenecks, increase customer churn, and drive up staffing costs. On top of that, the risk of human error not only slows the process further but also exposes businesses to regulatory non-compliance. Despite these drawbacks, many organisations still cling to manual onboarding processes because of the perceived cost and upheaval any change could cause.

However, this strategy doesn't work for businesses, and it doesn’t work for customers, who now value convenience and experience over outcome. Solving the problems caused by poor onboarding processes is incredibly simple with the right digital solution and requires no significant changes to your business to install.  Good onboarding doesn't have to be this difficult. It can be, and for adopters already is, a vital asset that drives customer acquisition, retention, and revenue. 

Below we will look at what Red Flag Automate does for your onboarding process, and how it increases both your revenue and margins. 

Red Flag Alert Automate

Red Flag Alert Automate is a revolutionary workflow automation tool that seamlessly plugs into your tech stack, and is capable of automating all your legacy software. It can perform any workflow, no matter how complicated. Your customer simply enters their required information into a custom webform, in your branding, and completes a digital AI-powered IDV and AML check directly on their device (if required).

Automate does the rest, quickly, accurately and safely. This typically brings your end-to-end process down to just minutes, including the time taken entering in information and completing the AML and IDV check. This entire journey takes place within your business environment, with your branding throughout, is secure, and building trust from the start of your relationship. Effectively, you can agree on a deal and have your customer onboarded and ready to work within the same interaction. 

Slash your admin burden

Onboarding clients represents one of the biggest contributors to admin at a typical UK business, with each customer taking hours of staff time throughout the process. What’s more, specialist staff with higher per-hour costs are often required at several touch points of the process, such as credit and anti-money laundering staff, which only serves to drive up the overall associated cost that onboarding brings to your business. This time could be better spent by your staff on other activities that drive value at your business. 

By bringing the staff time required down to effectively zero it costs you nothing in staff wages and allows you to focus your staff's time on generating revenue. 

More customer completion

In an increasingly convenient and digital world, we now demand that as standard, and customers are increasingly intolerant of delays and roadblocks. Studies have shown that around 50% of people will drop out of an onboarding process at the first delay and by the third this figure rises to 75%. A driving factor behind such high dropout rates is that customers assume they can easily find a quicker alternative. 

So you aren’t just losing a customer, your competition is gaining one. 

Added to this is that generally you will continue to spend time and money moving your customer through your process and only discover their drop out when you make contact to let them know they are onboarded. Our process can bring your dropout rates to nearly zero, meaning more customers on your books, more money in your accounts and lower your cost of acquisition. 

Increased customer loyalty

We’ve seen how the right onboarding journey leads to more customers but it also creates more loyal customers who will stay longer with your business and provide better lifetime value. This is all thanks to a psychological phenomenon called the Halo Effect. 

This is where our first impression of a person, business or product dictates how we think about it moving forward. It is so powerful that it overrides logic in all but the most extreme cases. What this means in practice is that a customer who has had a fantastic first (onboarding) experience with your company will think of you positively moving forward even if there are future issues or a less favourable outcome. 

Conversely, a customer who has had a bad first experience will think of you negatively even if all then goes smoothly and the outcome is favourable. 

Of these two customers, the one that is most likely to provide repeat custom is the first that had a great onboarding journey but a worse outcome than the other. This is hugely powerful when applied across every new customer you take on and means you will enjoy a better lifetime value, have to spend less finding replacement customers, and have to allocate less resources to dealing with complaints. 

Faster time to revenue 

How long does it take you to onboard a new customer? The chances are it will be a few days or even weeks. This is time you’re spending money on your customer but unable to generate any revenue from them. 

What difference would it make to your cash flow to have them onboarded and ready to go in minutes? Red Flag Alert Automate makes that happen. If you have a great onboarding journey that is quick and convenient then it’s something you should shout about and it’s something that will win you business. You might think that your customers’ greatest need is the ultimate service you will provide them to solve their problems.  

And whilst this is true do not discount that at the time of purchase or submitting an enquiry the speed that the problem can begin to be solved and that this will be simple are extremely powerful needs that go a long way to deciding if a customer will pull the trigger or not. 

Lower the regulatory risk 

Your onboarding process is ultimately there to make sure you take on the right customers who don’t pose a financial or regulatory threat to your business. Red Flag Alert Automate runs all of your credit risk, anti-fraud and regulatory processes, such as AML, with a degree of accuracy that is impossible for a human to match and eliminates human error. 

Our system works with all your existing legacy systems and processes but you can choose to include our market leading data and tools to make your risk processes even more effective; such as the UK’s leading insolvency score, cutting edge anti-fraud checks, and AI powered AML and IDV checks. 

Onboarding is no longer the unwelcome guest it was just a few years ago but is now one of the most powerful processes that most UK businesses aren’t taking advantage of. Our system plugs seamlessly into your business and provides instant access to these benefits and a serious advantage over your competitors.