Onboarding a new client is a crucial part of the customer experience! Think of it as your first chance to make a good impression on a new client with your business systems and processes.
If onboarding is chaotic and disorganized, it won’t inspire a lot of confidence — and your new client project will start off on the wrong foot. But a great onboarding experience sets the tone for a great relationship. And if you automate client onboarding with Zapier, our go-to integrations tool, you don’t have to worry about doing it all manually.
Watch how we use Zapier for client onboarding in the video below, or keep reading!
First up, we use Zapier to link HoneyBook and Slack.
When a new client books a consulting project in HoneyBook, that triggers an automated message to our team in Slack. In our New Projects Booked channel, we share:
That way, everyone on our team is kept up to date with new clients and new projects. When needed, we can also add details we want the team to be aware of, like a really big project or a project with an extended deadline.
After new client details are shared in Slack, we use Zapier to automatically create all the new folders, documents, and templates that will be needed for the project.
(We use our HoneyBook onboarding process in the video as an example because it’s more built out and robust, but you can set up a similar integration with ClickUp.)
Once a new project is booked in HoneyBook, Zapier extracts the Company Name from the Project Name. It’ll then create the Client Folder in our Google Drive, then all of the necessary subfolders and spreadsheets.
We’ve set up our new client folder template to include:
We also have Zapier automatically create a Dropbox folder for us to store any meetings and media for the client.
This is a huge time saver! It may take a team member half an hour or so to do this manually, but with Zapier, it’s instantaneous. Plus, automating it all keeps the organization and structure of our Google Drive consistent, so we always know where everything is and we can find what we’re looking for.
Here’s one last Zapier hack to save you even more time when automating your client onboarding.
In our HoneyBook Setup Project Portal document, we use brackets (Google calls them smart chips) so that Zapier can pull client information instantly. Under Name, for example, we have {{ClientName}}, rather than their name sans brackets. With this code, Zapier can find and use this information to create all your client folders and documents.
This is just one of several ways Zapier saves you so much time in the end!
Zapier is our favorite integrations tool, and this is just one example of why! It makes client onboarding so much smoother and quicker, thanks to automated file creation and storage, plus automated messaging to our team to keep them in the loop.
If you’re interested in learning more ways Zapier can save you time on other processes, you’ll want to join our upcoming Systems School workshop, Automations with Zapier! It’s happening March 19 from 1:30-3 pm EST.
In this workshop, we’ll talk about what you can accomplish with Zaps, like:
We’ll also cover the difference between Zapier and Make Automations, when to use both, and why. Plus, your workshop admission includes Zapier templates that you can start using ASAP!
Join Automations with Zapier for just $97 and you gain access to the workshop and our must-have Zapier templates. (Systems School members, you already get this workshop for free!)
