By Tyler Voth and Jon Wood, The Alchemer Onboarding Team
While many enterprise solutions offer professional services for implementation and training on how to use an enterprise product, at Alchemer, we take a different approach. For enterprise customers, Alchemer offers onboarding to help departments dramatically accelerate their speed to results.
How Onboarding with Alchemer is Different
Implementations require a plan, timeline, and project manager. This is because the solution being implemented requires people to think and work in new ways, and it requires costly connections into the customer’s existing systems. The provider, or the consulting team they have outsourced the implementation to, needs time to get the software up and running and reset the way your people work to use the software effectively.
Alchemer Onboarding begins by learning what you want to achieve because the solution is so flexible that it fits how your people work, rather than forcing your teams to adapt to the software. Onboarding is all about figuring out how you work and finding how Alchemer can adapt to deliver your desired results.
Customers appreciate our approach. They tell us they can quickly build a survey and that Alchemer is so much faster and more intuitive than SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics. “I was ready for implementation to be complex or difficult. Jon and Tyler made sure it was neither,” said one customer switching from SurveyMonkey.
No Two Companies Are the Same
Alchemer Onboarding looks different for every customer for a very simple reason: no two customers are the same, nor are their business requirements. We start by understanding how the customer would like to use the Alchemer and for which departments. There is a good chance they need some integrations to pass data between systems. By understanding what they want to do, we can get them up and running quickly, and then shift the focus to figuring out how they would like to use Alchemer and what we can do to optimize their programs.
We help customers find unique, customized paths to reach success. Perhaps we can refine their data flow or improve how they integrate Alchemer into their data flow. Sometimes a simple tweak makes a huge difference. So, we approach onboarding from the perspective of coaching them on what is possible and looping in the correct resources on their end to make it happen.
Consulting and Strategy for Opportunity
We have found repeatedly that customers switching from another platform want to know if Alchemer can do precisely what the previous system did.
Rather than answer yes or no, we ask what they’re trying to accomplish. Frequently, we may find that while Alchemer may not do it exactly that way, there’s an easier way to get the same or better results. This often involves working the way the customer does, not forcing the customer to learn how the software works.
Therein lies the opportunity to create a better solution. A solution that helps the customer flow feedback through to the right people at the right time.
Flexibility in the Details
Alchemer has a level of flexibility that you won’t find in SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics because Alchemer is a single platform for all departments. But that flexibility is often misinterpreted as complexity. The platform is really like a box of building blocks. There’s great freedom in it, but sometimes it helps to have a guide to show you how to build an X-Wing Fighter or that cute carriage Baby Yoda uses. Basically, we’ll give you tips and tricks so you can create the programs you and your business need.
The Onboarding team is that guide. Recently, we onboarded one group that was walking away from dramatic price increases at Qualtrics. We dove in and helped them understand and recreate a very complex build in just two weeks. We went into great detail with them, showing their team how to get into the application and start building right away.
They told us that they’d never had anybody go into the solution with them and give them a tour. We had them screen share so we could walk through the segments in their own environment and help them build surveys.
Most teams can be trained and start building surveys that same day. Another client said, “They made sure our small team was up and running in no time.” And, while Onboarding is about getting the customer up and running, that’s not the end of the story. We aspire to help customer become self-sustaining and inspired to keep building and innovating.
What You Don’t Get
You don’t get a cookie-cutter approach to learning how to use the software. You also don’t get an expensive third-party consultant who walks you through setting up the software, but not much beyond the one module you have purchased.
We do the opposite. We ask what you need to do and where you want to go. Then we tailor our onboarding to your specific use case. We can also map your use case to similar scenarios and challenges other customers have faced. We do this to provide you with the most efficient learning path and help you see what’s possible based on how different customers have used the application to solve similar challenges. It’s about offering insights into other ways in which you can use the software.
Former Qualtrics customers tell us that they can support more people for the same price with Alchemer. Qualtrics was so expensive and decentralized that it was hard to manage. But now they are delivering what their people need, but without the expense.
How to Onboard with Alchemer
The first step is to talk with your account executive or an Alchemer sales professional. They can explain the different levels of onboarding and the other features available with our enterprise platform plans.
The next step is to start asking open-ended questions. What are you really trying to do? Where do you want to be in a year or two? How else could we use this? Don’t limit your thinking because Alchemer can help you go where you want to go and do what you need to do.
