Orient New Clients with Technology

Giving a client a login is not the same as getting them to use it. The account goes out, the welcome email arrives, and three weeks later the orders are still coming to you by email — because nobody ever sat with them for fifteen minutes and showed them the calendar.

That is the orientation. Everything below is the detail behind each of those conversations, and what to do when one of them does not stick.

Who this applies to

• Account managers — you own the relationship, so you own whether the client ever actually uses the software you sold them.
• Coordinators — you are the one who ends up re-keying an emailed order at 6am. Orientation is how that stops.
• Administrators — permissions, rate configurations and code tables are yours, and a client cannot be oriented into a half-built record.

What “oriented” actually means

It is worth being concrete about the finish line, because “we onboarded them” usually means “we sent the login”. A client is oriented when they can do these four things without ringing you:

Anything beyond those four is a bonus. Dashboards, ratings and tasks are real features, but a client who can do the four above is self-sufficient, and one who cannot is not oriented no matter how many features you demonstrated.

Before you invite anyone in

A client logging in to a half-finished record has a bad first week, and you get the calls. Check these first:

Steps

Step 1: Decide who at the client needs a login

Not everyone at a client should be in the system, and giving everyone a login is how you end up with six accounts and one user. In practice there are three jobs, and sometimes one person does all three:

Step 2: Get the client record ready

Work down the table in Before you invite anyone in and finish it. This is the step people skip, and it is the step that decides whether week one is calm.

Two things worth doing beyond the checklist:

• Write down what you agreed in a note on the client record. Lead times, who approves timesheets, which sites are in scope. In six months the person who took the call may have left. See Notes & Note Templates.
• Check their sites are set up the way they think about them. Clients describe their world by building, floor or region. If your record does not match how they talk, every order needs a translation.

Step 3: Create the logins

Follow Allow Your Clients to Access the Self-Service Portal. That guide covers the user account panel, what each permission does, and how to check what the person will actually see before they log in.

Two things to do while you are in there, because they are much harder to retrofit:

• Check the permissions match the job you decided in Step 1. An approver who can also confirm crew onto jobs will, eventually, confirm crew onto jobs.
• Look at the account the way they will see it. Confirming access is the fastest way to avoid a “the system is broken” call that turns out to be a hidden menu.

Step 4: Walk the orderer through one real order

Do this live — a call with screens shared, or in person. Not a link to an article. Fifteen minutes here saves a month of email orders.

Use a real order they actually need, not a test one. A test order teaches nothing and somebody has to cancel it afterwards.

1. Have them log in themselves. If the password does not work, you want to know now, not at 5am on a Friday.
2. Go to Workspace > Calendar and click the date they need staff.
3. Fill the order form together. Point out Job Title, Position, Position Count and the schedule — those four are what you will be chasing them about if they get them wrong.
4. Submit it, and then show them the order on the calendar in orange.
5. Tell them what happens next on your side, and roughly when the color will change.

Step 5: Walk the approver through one real timesheet

Do this in the week after their first shift, not on day one. Timesheet approval only makes sense with a real timesheet in front of them.

1. Open Operation > Timesheet with them.
2. Show them the green tick to approve and the red cross to decline.
3. Show them that declining asks for a Note Category and a typed reason. Tell them what you want written there, because a decline with no reason costs you a phone call.
4. Show them bulk approve if they have volume, and tell them plainly that it is for shifts they have already checked.
5. Tell them the deadline you need approvals by, and what happens if they miss it.

Step 6: Agree what still comes to you

Orientation is not all-or-nothing, and pretending it is makes clients avoid the system altogether. Agree explicitly what they do themselves and what they still phone you about.

A reasonable split for most clients in the first month:

Write the split down and send it to them. The value is not the document, it is that both sides now have the same expectation.

Four things to tell them before they find out

These four are the most common surprises. Each one takes a sentence at orientation and costs a support ticket if you skip it.

What your client can see

Worth knowing before you orient anyone, because it is better said by you than discovered by them. Depending on how their access is set, a client user may be able to:

• See crew pay rate alongside bill rate on the job form — which means your margin.
• See crew licenses, credentials and documents through a dashboard.
• Confirm a crew member onto a job outright, not merely request them.
• Edit clock-in and clock-out times when approving a timesheet.
• Assign tasks to people on your team.

The crew filters offered to a client user include personal characteristics. Whether your agency exposes that to clients at all is a policy decision for your business, and one worth making deliberately rather than by default.

Web or mobile — which to point them at

Both exist and they are not equivalent. Point people at the one that suits the job they do.

If it’s not working

They still email their orders

The single most common outcome of a login that was sent but never taught. Usually one of three causes:

• They never logged in at all. Ask directly. If the welcome email never arrived or the password expired, that is a five-minute fix, not an adoption problem.
• They tried once and something confused them. Ask what they were doing when they gave up. The answer is almost always one specific field.
• It is faster for them to email you. Because you always accept it. That is the real cause more often than anyone admits.

What works: take the next emailed order, ring them, and place it together in the system while they watch. What does not work: replying with a link to a help article.

Only one person ever logs in

Your relationship with that client is now one person deep. If they leave or go on holiday, you are back to email and possibly back to a competitor.

Go back to Step 1 and ask who covers for them. Orient that second person the same way — a live walkthrough on a real order.

They placed an order wrong

Expected in the first few weeks, and worth treating as a training signal rather than an error. Fix the order, then ring and show them the field that went wrong.

If the same field goes wrong across several clients, that is not a client problem. Look at what the field is called and whether the choices in it make sense to somebody outside your agency — those lists are configurable. See Code Tables.

They say they cannot find a job

Nearly always search, not a missing job. Search matches the Job Title or Position and nothing else, so a client searching for a site name or a date finds nothing.

Show them the calendar instead. For a client, the calendar is the reliable way to find an order and search is the exception.

How to know it’s complete

• At least two people at the client have logged in successfully.
• The orderer has placed a real order themselves, unaided.
• The approver has approved a real timesheet themselves, unaided.
• They have said the colors back to you correctly — orange, blue, green.
• You have both agreed, in writing, what they self-serve and what they still call about.
• A note on the client record says who was oriented, when, and what was agreed.

Best practices

• Orient on a real order, never a test one. People remember doing their own work; they forget demonstrations.
• Fifteen minutes live beats a long email. Nobody reads the long email.
• Two people minimum, always. One-person adoption is not adoption.
• Split the training in time. Ordering on day one, timesheet approval after the first shift. Teaching both at once means neither lands.
• Write the agreed split down. It prevents the slow drift back to email.
• Diarise a check at two weeks. Adoption fails quietly, and it fails early.
• Record it on the client record. Who you oriented and what you agreed belongs where the next person will look.

Related articles

• Adding a New Client — Step by Step — the record has to exist and be complete first.
• Add & Maintain Client Contacts — a login needs a contact.
• Allow Your Clients to Access the Self-Service Portal — creating the account itself.
• How to Configure Client Rate Tables — attach one before they place their first order.
• Track Preferred and Not Allowed Crew — get this in before their first shift.
• Managing Company Permissions — what a client user can and cannot see.
• Notes & Note Templates — where what you agreed should live.

FAQ

Q: How long should orienting a new client take?

A: Two short sessions, not one long one. Fifteen minutes on ordering when they are ready to place a real order, and ten minutes on timesheet approval after their first shift.

Q: Should I orient the client before or after their first shift?

A: Both, in two parts. Ordering has to come before, because they cannot place the first order otherwise. Timesheet approval has to come after, because there is nothing to approve until a shift has happened.

Q: What if the client refuses to use the system?

A: Find out what is actually behind it. Sometimes it is one confusing field, sometimes it is that emailing you has always worked. The second is harder, and the only reliable fix is to stop being faster over email than the system is.

Q: Do I need a separate login for every site?

A: No. One person can be given access across sites. How that is set up is covered in the portal access guide.

Q: Can a client see what we charge and what we pay?

A: Depending on permissions, a client user may see pay rate alongside bill rate on the job form. Decide before you create the login, not after.

Q: They approved a timesheet. Is it finished?

A: No. Their approval sets it to Client Approved. Your team still approves after them. Tell every client this at orientation.

Q: Is the mobile app enough on its own?

A: For a supervisor who only needs to raise a quick request, sometimes. For the person who plans the week, no — the mobile order form captures far less than the web one.

Q: What should I record on the client record after orientation?

A: Who was trained, on what date, what you agreed they self-serve, and who covers when they are away. A note with a consistent template makes this searchable later.