81. The 12-month onboarding experience that runs itself (without losing the personal touch)

What if you could automate almost your entire customer onboarding experience... without making it feel automated?In this episode, I'm taking you behind the scenes of a recent Done For You client project where I mapped out a 12-month onboarding experience for an evergreen group program.My client had transitioned from cohort-based launches, where everyone started together, to an evergreen model where students could enrol whenever they were ready.The problem?She was still offering plenty of live support, community access and opportunities to get help, but engagement tended to drop a few months after someone joined.And she couldn't spend her days manually keeping track of where every student was, what they'd completed and who might quietly be falling behind.So we designed a system that could.I'm walking you through the three layers we used to create an onboarding experience that tracks the signals students are sending, delivers timely automated nudges, and deliberately brings my client back into the experience when a human touch actually matters.The result is an onboarding journey that's 95% automated, with the remaining 5% intentionally unscalable.Because scaling your customer experience doesn't have to mean removing yourself from it.What we cover:Why evergreen programs require a different approach to onboardingHow I mapped a 12-month customer onboarding journeyWhy we started with customer research rather than automationsHow to identify the milestones that predict customer successWhat you can track to understand whether customers are engagingWhy automation should support your live customer experience rather than replace itHow to identify the moments where a personal check-in matters most3 questions to help you start mapping your own automated onboarding experienceView the episode transcript here.Where to from here?Grab the 2026 State of the Customer Report FREE right here.Generate 10 tailored-to-you survey questions FREE right here.Join Retention Lab🧪, the community to help you build a signature customer experience that keeps people coming back, gets them talking and grows your business without you having to start from scratch every single month. Join here!Find out how you can get my strategic customer experience brain on your brand here.Check out my favourite CX tools and resources here.😍 Love the show?Hit subscribe or follow so you never miss a new episode.Submit your question so I can answer it in an upcoming episode (or invite the perfect guest expert!).Leave a positive review to help the show get found by more small business owners just like you. To leave a review:👉 Find What Would They Do? on Apple Podcasts👉 Scroll to ‘Ratings & Reviews’👉 Tap on the stars to rate the show before writing a reviewPost a screenshot with your key takeaway on your IG story and tag me @candocontent and #WWTDpod so I can repost your content.