When you’re in the weeds of creating customer onboarding content, it’s tough to know if you’ll gain their trust in those first minutes, days, and months of using your product. The trick? Collaborate across your marketing, support, and product teams to measure what’s working and where there’s room to improve.
Once your customer starts a free trial or purchases your product, the real work begins. Your onboarding program is just one stop on their journey to becoming brand advocates. That’s why it’s crucial to tune into how they feel, think, and act as they first start accessing your customer education.
You’ll benefit from tracking customer onboarding metrics if:
- New customers drop off early on during the trial period
- Your support team is overloaded with basic questions
- Onboarded customers aren’t actively using your product
Here’s a rundown of four key customer onboarding metrics every customer success manager should have in their toolkit.
Ready to foster success and enhance customer training with your LMS?
4 customer onboarding metrics for CSMs
These metrics give you a look at how well your content supports new customers—and where it might need a little extra polish.
1. Completion rates
You’re likely tracking completion rates, but do you know what they really mean?
Whether reporting on learner success in LMS platforms or manually in spreadsheets, completion rates have been the go-to metric for gauging customer education success. But at the onboarding phase, high or low completion rates can mean different things and need a closer look. For example, high completion rates might show that your content is engaging. However, this doesn’t guarantee customers will continue to use your product.
Let's look at completion rates with a fine-tooth comb to make sure your content and product keep customers coming back.
What is a completion rate?
Completion rates measure the percentage of learners who complete course content. To calculate the completion rate, divide the number of users who completed the learning content by the total number of learners who started it.
Example: If 50 out of 100 learners complete your onboarding video, your completion rate is 50%.
How CS teams find hidden insights in completion rates
Completion isn’t always conversion
Your onboarding content must communicate the value of your product. If your completion rates are high, but the product team reports low usage among customers who finished onboarding, those rates are not a reliable indicator of strong customer engagement. In this case, work with your product team to frontload content for your product's most valuable features.
Identify customers at risk of losing interest
It’s not over 'til it’s over! Even if your content performs well, identifying which customers tend to drop can help you improve loyalty metrics.
Customers who are less engaged can be supported with:
- Personalized or targeted nurture emails
- Tailored onboarding pathways
- Billboard promoting case studies or other relevant resources
Uncover gaps in your onboarding content
If your customers drop off halfway through your onboarding, it’s a perfect time to chat with your marketing team. Marketing can guide you through a content gap analysis to highlight what’s missing from your strategy.
A content gap analysis addresses questions such as:
- Does the onboarding material address the primary pain points and goals your customers have shared?
- Are any sections too complex? Would additional examples, visuals, or simplified language help?
- Could segmenting customers and tailoring content based on their needs close these gaps?
- Have customers provided feedback on confusing or unhelpful parts of onboarding?
Discover more gaps in your onboarding content with these Top 10 customer education pain points & how to solve them
2. Time-to-value (TTV)
Do you know if your customers are getting value from your product fast enough to stay engaged?
We’ve all felt disappointment or confusion trying out a new app, wellness product, or cooking gadget. When customers struggle to see value, loyalty can take a hit, especially for those managing large teams with their own timelines. TTV can help you work towards better customer retention.
What is time-to-value?
Time-to-value measures the time it takes your customer to get value from your product or service.
Here is an overview of how to calculate TTV:
- Define the value milestone: Identify the first moment customers experience a real benefit, such as using a key feature.
- Set a starting point: Mark the start as the first login or contract/user agreement signing.
- Track progress: Use analytics to measure the time from the start point to the value milestone.
- Calculate average TTV: TTV = The defined value milestone - the customer’s start time.
- Monitor for continuous improvement: Track trends to improve onboarding and reduce TTV.
Example of TTV in action
Imagine you work for an AI-powered contact center called Mango Logic. In this role, you define the “value milestone” as the moment customers successfully configure their first automated workflow.
For Mango Logic’s old LMS, TTV was five weeks. With your new LMS and updated content, your director hopes to reduce the time to configure by 20%.
- Start point: When a customer begins onboarding.
- Value milestone: The first time a customer successfully uses an automated workflow to service a customer.
- Calculate TTV: Onboarding takes two weeks, workflow development and approval take one week, and the first use of the workflow happens immediately after launch. This means the total time-to-value is three weeks.
While completion rates require more investigation, a shorter TTV clearly shows if your onboarding process meets business goals. For Mango Logic, reducing TTV by two weeks was a win. Over time, they can continue shortening it using the LMS’s robust analytics and personalization features.
How CS teams use time-to-value
Optimize the onboarding content pipeline
Not all onboarding content benefits every user equally. Optimize your customer education by personalizing the content for different user profiles.
Here are a few ways to personalize content in your LMS:
- Segment your users by influencers and buyers
- Create product-based learning pathways
- Build a self-service ecosystem
Set targeted business goals
Your first measure of TTV serves as a baseline. With a strategic learning system, you can continually reduce TTV.
TTV can support business goals like:
- Improving customer retention, advocacy, and referrals
- Reducing support agent churn
- Increasing customer outcomes and satisfaction scores
- Saving money and time with more efficient processes
- Boosting the lifetime value (LTV) of your product
TTV is a gateway to predictive analytics
When defining your TTV, choose a starting point early enough in customer onboarding to keep them satisfied and engaged. After all, who doesn’t love a few quick early wins with a new product? Your TTV can help you predict your customers' behavior, and by tracking your TTV over time, you can confidently forecast loyalty, usage, and retention.
3. Support call volume
Your completion rates might be high, but is your onboarding content actually effective?
High support call volume for basic features can signal something’s missing. Maybe your content isn’t well placed, doesn’t say enough, or needs a delivery refresh. Consider the customer’s journey and the ripple effect unclear content has on account managers and customer support teams. If your customers struggle to find the information they need in your content, your support team likely is, too.
What is support call volume?
Support call volume measures the total number of calls the support team receives over a period. You can filter it to find insights by team, industry, or product type. Then, calculate it using the formula.
To calculate support call volume, divide the number of active customers by the total number of support calls:
Call volume per customer = Total support calls/number of active customers
How CS teams can use support call volume
Identify gaps in self-service resources
If customers call frequently about the same issues, take a closer look at your onboarding resources. Missing or unclear information often leads to repeated support calls. An AI-powered course builder can help you identify content areas needing improvement.
Track content effectiveness for a new product launch
Use support call volume to measure the success of new product launches or to see if your content audit was successful. For example, let’s say you’ve added new onboarding content for a product launching in January. A spike in calls after launching the new product or service may signal content gaps or areas for improvement.
Define what a “new” customer is
For some products, a new customer is defined by completed onboarding content. But if your customers are still reaching out for support, consider extending the definition of a new customer while you improve your onboarding. As you refine content, call volume should drop, and fewer new customers will encounter these issues.
Stay ahead of the curve with Your LMS customer metrics playbook
4. Support call resolution time
Can you list five ways your customer education saves time for your customers?
Is your team working closely with support to create content that cuts the time it takes to resolve a ticket? Support call resolution time matters for your team. When support reps are slowed down by gaps in onboarding content, they’re left writing customized explanations and clicking through a maze of content.
What is support call resolution time?
Support call resolution time measures the time from when a customer first contacts support until the issue is resolved.
Support call resolution time is calculated by: Resolution time = End time – start time
How CS teams can use support call resolution time
Use support conversations to develop new onboarding content
Although longer resolution times aren’t ideal, they do offer insights. Support interactions give you unfiltered customer feedback and highlight gaps in onboarding content. These conversations can help you demonstrate your self-awareness and proactive approach as a brand.
Let’s look at an example.
Here is a fictional conversation between a customer and support agent, and how customer success teams can respond:
Customer: "Hi! I’m having trouble setting up the CRM integration. I followed the guide, but it’s not syncing properly, and I’m seeing an error message about 'permissions.' I’m not sure what I missed."
Support Agent: "Let’s take a look! That error often appears if the CRM integration permissions weren’t fully granted during setup. Could you confirm if you granted all access when prompted?"
Customer: "I thought I did, but it’s possible I missed something. The steps in the guide are a bit confusing. Is there a way to verify permissions or restart the setup if needed?"
Support Agent: "Sure, I’ll walk you through checking permissions, and we can reset the integration if necessary. We’ll also send a follow-up with a quick tip sheet that covers these common issues."
To reduce support queries about permissions, this customer success team can:
- Create a step-by-step permissions section in the CRM guide
- Create a video tutorial to complement the written guide
- Embed guidance right in the product or service’s workflow
- Promote the guide updates to customers in newsletters or welcome emails
Compare support call resolution time to completion rates
As customer success specialists, we’re experts on the product — but this doesn’t always translate into effective training. If your completion rates are high alongside your support call resolution time, your training likely needs more detail and direction for customers to adopt your product faster.
Be the fuel, not the roadside assistance
Your customers may expect to revisit different sections of the onboarding program while they get comfortable with your product. But poorly executed content or training delivery can leave them waiting for support and spending time submitting detailed tickets. These extra steps can frustrate users, impacting their long-term perception of your product. By calculating and applying customer onboarding metrics, your team can update your content to help customers find and retain this information themselves—saving time for both them and your support team.
