Feature · Customer Onboarding

The handoff from closed-won to live, with nothing dropped.

Track every new customer through onboarding on project templates built per segment. Internal tasks, customer tasks, timeline milestones, risk flags, and the inherited context from the deal that closed. Marketing attribution rolls forward, the AE handoff is logged, and the CSM owns a live project the day the deal signs.

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What customer onboarding tracking is for

The first 60 days decide the next 36 months.

The deal closes on a Thursday. The handoff happens on a Friday. The customer wants to be live by month-end. From that moment, the business has 60 to 90 days to prove the thing the customer bought actually works. Done well, onboarding sets up renewal, expansion, referral, and reference. Done badly, it sets up a churn conversation in month 10. The job of an onboarding tracking surface is to make every step visible, every owner accountable, and every slipping milestone caught before it quietly rots.

Templates per segment

Enterprise, mid-market, SMB each get a shape.

Build onboarding templates per segment: enterprise with 40 to 60 tasks across 10 to 12 weeks, mid-market with 15 to 25 tasks across 4 to 6 weeks, SMB with 5 to 8 tasks across 1 to 2 weeks. Each template defines phases, milestones, task owners, and expected durations. New customers inherit the right template on closed-won.

Deal-to-project handoff

Closed-won fires the project.

When a deal moves to Closed-Won, a flow creates the onboarding project from the segment template, assigns the CSM, carries over the account and primary contact, logs the handoff from the AE to the CSM, and sends the welcome email. No one has to remember to kick off the project because the project kicks itself off.

Internal and customer tasks

Two columns, two owners.

Every task in the onboarding project is marked internal (Strkr side) or customer (customer side). The customer-side tasks render on a shared view the customer can open; the internal-side tasks stay internal. Both sides see the same timeline with the same milestones.

Milestone timeline

Phase to phase, with gates.

Onboarding runs through named phases: Kickoff, Discovery, Build, Train, Launch, Hypercare. Each phase gates on milestone completion. The CSM can see which phase every onboarding is in across the whole book. The customer can see their own progress on the shared view.

Owner accountability

Every task has one name.

Every task has a single owner (user, role, or named customer contact). Tasks assigned to the customer surface on their shared view with due dates. Tasks assigned internally land on the owner's work queue. Nothing is "the team's job" because "the team's job" is what gets dropped.

Risk flags

Slipping, blocked, at risk.

Each task carries a status and a risk flag. A slipping task (past due, no activity) flags yellow. A blocked task (customer waiting on information) flags red. The project surface aggregates risks per account so the CSM can see the three accounts in trouble this week.

Expected go-live

A date on every project.

Every onboarding project has an expected go-live date derived from the template duration and the kickoff date. Variance from the expected date is tracked. Projects running late surface to the manager's dashboard before the deadline, not after.

Customer success handoff

Onboarding to steady-state CSM.

When onboarding completes (last phase gated through), a flow transitions the account from onboarding-CSM to steady-state-CSM, archives the project, and creates the first quarterly business review task on the renewal date. The transition is a known motion, not a dropped baton.

What makes Strkr customer onboarding different

The product philosophy.

Many customer success teams run onboarding in a project management tool (Asana, ClickUp, Monday, Jira, Trello) that sits beside the CRM. The project tool knows nothing about the deal that closed; the CRM knows nothing about the project running. Strkr runs onboarding as a Projects module tightly bound to the CRM, so the deal context, the account record, and the project tasks live in one place.

Projects module native

A real project tool, not a task list.

Strkr's Projects module is a full project tool: backlog, sprints, epics, issues, releases, roadmap, dependencies. Onboarding projects live in the same module. The CSM has the full project tool's power on an onboarding, not a weak task list bolted onto the account.

Deal context carries forward

The project knows what was sold.

The onboarding project inherits the deal's product selection, contract value, start date, and the AE who closed it. The CSM opens the project and knows exactly what the customer bought, when the contract starts, and who to talk to on the sales side without opening a second record.

One source of truth

Account activity flows both ways.

Activity on the project (task completion, phase transition, customer touch) lands on the account activity feed. Account changes (renewal date, expansion deal) land on the project. The two surfaces talk because they are the same CRM, not two tools stitched by a sync.

Customer-safe view

A link the customer opens.

The onboarding project renders a customer-safe view (customer-side tasks, milestone timeline, phase progress) that the customer executive opens from a shared link. Internal tasks, risk flags, and CSM notes stay internal. The customer sees progress they trust without the internal commentary.

Flow hooks on onboarding

Automate the predictable parts.

onboarding.task.completed, onboarding.phase_entered, onboarding.milestone_slipped, onboarding.customer_task_overdue each is a flow trigger. The CSM focuses on the judgment work; the predictable work (notify, nudge, escalate) runs itself.

Metrics per onboarding

Time to value, time to live, time to adopt.

Every onboarding tracks time-to-first-value, time-to-live, time-to-adopt. The metrics roll up by segment, by CSM, by product line, by month closed. The CS leader sees whether SMB onboardings are speeding up or dragging out across the quarter.

Reusable from template

Improve the template, improve every onboarding.

When the CS leader improves the enterprise template (add a step, remove a step, change a task owner), new onboardings inherit the improved version. In-flight onboardings stay on their original version with an option to migrate. The template is a learning surface.

Permission scope

The project respects CRM permissions.

An AE sees onboardings for their closed accounts. A CSM sees onboardings in their book. A VP sees the whole team. The CRO sees everything. The permission matrix is the CRM's matrix, not a separate project-tool access scheme.

Audit trail

Every edit logged.

Every task state change, every phase transition, every owner reassignment is logged with user and timestamp. Essential for SOC 2 scope customers and essential for the quarterly process review when CS leadership asks "where did that project slip."

The buyer's math

Native onboarding beats project-tool bolt-on.

The common pattern is to run onboarding in Asana or ClickUp or Monday beside the CRM. It works for a quarter. Three deployment pains compound: context never flows, two tools diverge, and the handoff from CSM to AE on expansion is a muddy conversation. Native onboarding solves all three.

Context inheritance

The project knows the deal.

Native onboarding inherits the deal record. Products sold, contract value, close date, AE, decision-maker, implementation sponsor. The CSM reads the deal to open the project with full context. A separate project tool means re-entering the context or linking to the CRM record and trusting a stale cache.

Activity cohesion

One account activity feed.

Customer touches during onboarding (meetings, emails, Slack conversations) land on the account activity feed. In a bolt-on setup, project activity lives in the project tool and account activity lives in the CRM, and the two never fully reconcile. The quarterly review question "what did we do for this customer" has one answer or three.

Expansion motion

The CSM sees expansion signal from the project.

Native onboarding surfaces usage, adoption, and milestone-completion signals that feed the expansion motion. A bolt-on project tool stores activity but does not surface expansion signals to the CRM. Expansion comes from signal; signal comes from the project; native puts both in one place.

Cost

No separate project tool bill.

Asana, ClickUp, Monday, and Jira charge between 10 and 24 dollars per user per month on top of the CRM. For a 10-person CS team that is a four-figure annual check. Native onboarding runs on the Strkr Projects module (included on tiers that unlock Projects) with no separate per-user fee.

Permission alignment

One access matrix.

Native onboarding inherits CRM permissions. A bolt-on tool runs its own permission system that drifts quarterly. A CSM accidentally seeing a different territory's onboarding is a security review finding in a bolt-on setup; on native it is impossible.

Customer-facing link

One shared surface, not two.

A native customer-safe view is a filtered read of the onboarding project. A bolt-on tool means two customer-facing surfaces (the CRM shared view and the project tool client portal) that each have their own branding, auth, and risk of divergence. Native keeps the customer in one place.

Beyond the simple task list

Where onboarding tracking earns its keep.

A checklist on an account is table stakes. The real differentiation shows up when onboarding has to handle enterprise complexity: dependencies, parallel tracks, resource planning, customer-side responsibility management, and the twenty things a growing CS team eventually needs.

Dependencies between tasks

Build phase blocks Train phase.

A task can require one or more upstream tasks to be complete. Build-phase tasks block Train-phase tasks until the gating criteria pass. The project surface shows the critical path; the slipping task that is driving everything else is visible without squinting.

Parallel tracks

Tech onboarding and training onboarding.

Enterprise onboardings often run two tracks in parallel: a technical implementation track owned by Solutions and a user-training track owned by the CSM. Each track has its own phase sequence; both must complete before go-live. The project surface shows both tracks side by side.

Resource planning

Who has capacity next week.

The CS and Implementation managers can see team capacity across all active onboardings: how many hours each person is loaded on this week, which skills are oversubscribed, where the next onboarding should land based on free capacity. Prevents dropping a new onboarding onto an already-overloaded person.

Customer tasks escalation

Customer is late, nudge the sponsor.

A customer task past due by 3 days nudges the customer owner. Past due by 7 days escalates to the customer executive sponsor. Past due by 14 days creates a risk flag on the account and notifies internally. Customer-side slip is often why onboardings extend; making it visible shortens them.

Health signals

On-time, slipping, at risk.

Every onboarding carries a health signal: on-time, slipping, at-risk. Computed from phase progress against expected, risk flag count, and customer-side responsiveness. The CS leader sees the three at-risk onboardings this week and allocates attention.

Review cadence

Weekly check-in template.

The project ships with a weekly check-in template: review phase progress, review risk flags, review customer-side blockers, log the touch. The CSM opens the template once a week per account and the check-in is logged on the account activity feed in a consistent shape.

How CS teams actually run it

Six onboarding patterns in production.

Enterprise CSM

Twelve-week onboarding, 45 tasks, two tracks.

An enterprise CSM runs a 12-week template with 45 tasks across technical and training tracks. Weekly check-ins log on the account feed. The customer executive sponsor opens the shared view every Friday to see progress. The project goes to Hypercare phase in week 10 and transitions to steady-state in week 12.

Mid-market CSM

Five-week template, 18 tasks, single track.

A mid-market CSM runs an 18-task template across 5 weeks. Kickoff on Monday of week 1, Launch milestone on Friday of week 4, Hypercare in week 5. The CSM touches each project twice per week. Thirty active projects at a time is sustainable because the structure keeps the work from compounding.

SMB operations

Self-serve onboarding tracked, not run.

SMB customers self-serve through a 7-day guided onboarding. Strkr tracks the task completion from the product, not from a CSM touch. The onboarding surface flags any SMB customer who stalls so a CS Rep can intervene with one touch. Most SMB onboardings complete without CSM touch; a few get rescued.

Implementation PM

Technical track owner.

For enterprise onboardings with a technical implementation track, an Implementation PM owns the track. The PM runs weekly stand-ups on the technical phase progress, logs blockers, coordinates with Solutions and Engineering, and hands the launched implementation to the CSM for steady state.

CS leader

Weekly book review across all projects.

The CS leader opens the onboarding dashboard every Monday: active projects by phase, projects slipping, projects at-risk, time-to-live trend by segment. The 20-minute review identifies the three projects needing leadership attention and the one template change needed for next quarter.

Revenue operations

Expansion signal from onboarding.

RevOps builds a flow that watches for expansion signals during onboarding: adoption rate above a threshold in week 4, additional business unit identified in Discovery, executive sponsor engagement growing. The signal creates an expansion opportunity on the account for the AE or Account Manager to pursue after go-live.

Customer onboarding on Pro and above, no project-tool fee.

The onboarding Projects module is included on Pro, Scale, and Enterprise. Templates per segment, deal-to-project handoff, customer-safe view, phase gating, risk flags, and expansion signaling included on the seat you already pay for.

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Common questions

What buyers ask about this feature.

What is customer onboarding tracking and why does a CS team need it?

Customer onboarding tracking is the surface a CS team uses to run every new customer from closed-won through live and into Hypercare. It replaces an informal checklist or an ad-hoc Asana project with a structured, template-driven project that inherits deal context, assigns tasks to internal and customer owners, gates on phase milestones, flags risk, and surfaces expansion signals. CS teams need it because the first 60 to 90 days determine renewal, expansion, and reference behavior for the next 36 months, and informal tracking consistently loses details that compound into churn.

How does the handoff from closed-won to onboarding work?

When a deal moves to Closed-Won, a flow fires that creates the onboarding project from the segment template, assigns the CSM, inherits the account and primary contact, carries over the product selection and contract value from the deal, logs the AE-to-CSM handoff, and sends the welcome email to the primary contact. The CSM opens Strkr the morning after the deal closes and the project is already live with full context. No one has to remember to kick off the project.

Can we define different onboarding templates per segment?

Yes. Build a template per segment (enterprise, mid-market, SMB, custom) with its own phase sequence, task list, task owners, expected durations, and milestone gates. The template library is editable at any time. When you improve a template, new onboardings inherit the improvement; in-flight onboardings stay on their original version with an opt-in migration path if you want to apply the change retroactively.

Does the customer see the onboarding project?

Yes, through a customer-safe view. The view renders only customer-side tasks, the milestone timeline, and the phase progress. Internal tasks, CSM notes, risk flags, and expansion signals stay internal. The customer executive sponsor opens the shared link to see their onboarding progress. The link can be regenerated or revoked at any time. The customer-safe view is read-only unless the admin enables task completion from the customer side.

What happens when a customer task slips?

A customer task past its due date triggers a graduated escalation. Day 1 past: a nudge email to the customer owner. Day 3 past: a nudge email with the CSM copied. Day 7 past: escalation email to the customer executive sponsor. Day 14 past: a risk flag on the account visible to the CSM and the CS manager. The escalation ladder is template-driven and the admin can tune it per segment. Customer-side slip is the single most common cause of extended onboardings, and visibility is the only cure.

How does Strkr onboarding compare to using Asana or ClickUp?

Asana and ClickUp are strong general-purpose project tools. The limitation is that each sits beside the CRM and does not know the deal that closed, the account health, or the activity feed. Strkr runs onboarding on the Projects module tightly bound to the CRM, so the project inherits deal context, activity on the project lands on the account feed, and expansion signals flow back to the AE or Account Manager automatically. The depth of project tooling is comparable; the operational cohesion of native onboarding is the differentiator.

Which Strkr tier includes customer onboarding tracking?

The onboarding Projects module is included on Pro at 59 dollars per seat per month, Scale at 119, and Enterprise. Starter at 29 does not include the full Projects module. For teams running fewer than 10 onboardings per month a simple task list on the account record is often sufficient; for teams running larger onboarding volume or enterprise onboardings with multi-phase complexity the Projects module on Pro is the right fit.

Can onboarding events fire a flow?

Yes. onboarding.project_created, onboarding.task_completed, onboarding.phase_entered, onboarding.milestone_slipped, onboarding.customer_task_overdue, onboarding.at_risk_flagged, and onboarding.go_live each are first-class triggers. Build "when onboarding.phase_entered is Launch, send the go-live announcement email, create the 30-day check-in task, and notify the AE in Slack" as a visual flow with no code. The onboarding tracking is a working surface, not just a reporting one.

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