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Onboarding

Part of Customer education for B2B products

Designing education around a customer's next task

Turn a customer's next product task into focused guidance with clear prerequisites, steps, a completion check and a help route.

Desk Onboarding · · 2 min read

Design a learning resource for the next task a customer needs to finish, then work backwards to the knowledge and access required. The person using it should know where to start, what to do and how to recognise a successful result. A feature tour may help with orientation, but it does not answer a specific task question.

Find the task in the customer's workflow

Ask someone who performs the work what they expect to do next. Find out what starts the task, what they already know and where they hesitate. Check with the process owner if completion depends on a customer policy or approval. A sponsor and an everyday user may need different guidance.

Write the task as an action with a visible finish. For a hypothetical approvals product, “submit an eligible decision and confirm it appears in the agreed record” gives a lesson a clearer boundary than “learn approvals”. If the user lacks access, resolve that prerequisite before teaching the procedure.

Build a small task brief

Record the decisions needed to write the resource:

Question / What to establish

Who is it for?
The role and permissions it needs.
When will it be used?
What prompts the task and how often it arises.
What must already be true?
Required data, configuration or customer decisions.
What counts as done?
The result the user can check.
What happens if someone is blocked?
The right help route for an error or missing decision.

Use the brief to remove background that does not help the person act. Keep necessary warnings beside the step they affect. If roles have different permissions or completion conditions, give them separate paths.

Write for use during the task

Name the task in the heading. Tell readers where to begin, then present actions in the order they will perform them. Explain a choice where it occurs.

Finish with a check the reader can perform, such as finding the submitted record. For a likely failure, describe what the person will see and where to go next.

Ask an intended user to work through draft guidance in an appropriate environment. Observe where the wording or assumed prerequisites fail. If the product has different versions or customer configurations, state which path the resource covers and check other paths separately.

Check the next eligible task

After distributing the resource, look for a task the intended person had reason and permission to perform. Did they start, finish and confirm the result? Ask what remained difficult.

A task that did not arise cannot provide a fair completion check; a recorded completion may still need the customer's confirmation that the result was usable.

Revise the step that caused trouble. If users understood the instruction but the product failed, route the fault to its technical owner.

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