Overview
This article explores strategies for onboarding existing customers to your website for the first time. This process may involve transferring customers from an existing website or guiding both existing and new customers to a new or current website while ensuring they are correctly linked to the appropriate account (ERP Customer).
NOTE: It may be tempting to send customers a password they can use to access the site for the first time or after a password reset. However, sending passwords (even temporary ones) is never secure. Instead, customers should always set their own passwords using one of the secure processes outlined below.
If you allow customers to create new accounts on the website, the onboarding process becomes even more critical. You want existing customers to be linked to their corresponding accounts synced from the ERP, rather than creating new accounts that generate duplicate customers in the ERP. Having a clear plan and proactively communicating the benefits of connecting to an existing account can significantly help achieve this goal.
CIMcloud Features to Assist with Customer Onboarding
Allow Visitors to Create a New User for Existing Account – This process allows users to enter a billing zip code, account number, and a recent invoice number to automatically link them to their existing account. They can then create a username and password. More information can be found in this article – New Account and Contact Creation
Create Contact – You can create new contacts for an account by using the worker portal “Add Contact” page, or you can upload a spreadsheet with multiple contacts if you are creating a large number of new contacts. Below is a sample upload. It may take up to 5 minutes for the new contacts created by spreadsheet to be able to login as the system encrypts the passwords.
Reset Password – This process sends the user a link in an email based on their username and email address. The link allows the user to reset their password. The user does not need to know the old password, just their username and the email address associated with this contact record. It should be noted that this link has an expiration (defaulted to 2 hours) after which it will not work to reset the password. If you are going to use this process, it is recommended that you send the user to the page to initiate the process versus initiating the process for them since the link is only good for a defined, short period of time.
Request Username – This process allows users to retrieve their username. This is retrieved based on the email address associated to the username. This process will not send a user the username for the House User created by the system (where username equals the account number). If there are multiple users created with the same email address, the system will send just one of the usernames.
Options for Onboarding
Below are some of the processes that have been successfully used to onboard users.
Send an email to the user about the Allow Visitors to Create a New User for Existing Account process. Let them know the information (account number, billing address , and recent invoice number) they will need to create the user linked to their account and where to find it. Let your users know the benefits of the website and the importance of being linked to their existing account. The email can be generated from a customer list and/or services you may be using like Constant Contact or Mailchimp. Include a link to direct them to the Allow Visitors to Create a New User for Existing Account page to initiate the process.
Another option is to create contacts for your customers. Then using an email you generate from a customer list and/or services you may be using like Constant Contact or Mailchimp, you can direct them to the Reset Your Password page. You can let them know their username in the email. If desired, you can use the email address as their username. The password reset email will send to the user based on the username and the email address on the contact. This process can also be used if you have an existing website and want to transfer usernames to the new site. Let your users know the benefits of the website and the importance of being linked to their existing account.
If you are uncomfortable sending your users their username, you can setup users like the previous option but instead of sending users to the Reset Your Password page, you can send them to the Forgot Your Username page. In this case, they will need to retrieve their username and then use the Reset Your Password process.
Security warning: Never send users passwords directly through email.