# Customer Onboarding SOP — [Company name]

Template status: [Draft / In review / Approved] · Applies from: [date]

## Purpose

Take a newly signed customer from countersigned contract to a working, adopted
deployment, so that every commitment made during the sales process is delivered
exactly once, on a date the customer agreed to, and nothing is promised twice by
two different people.

## Scope

New customers on the [standard] and [enterprise] plans, from countersignature to
the end of the [30]-day adoption review.

Out of scope: renewals and plan upgrades for existing customers ([Renewal SOP]),
self-serve signups that never speak to a person ([Self-serve activation SOP]),
and trials that did not convert.

## Owner

Accountable: [Customer Success Manager].
Supporting: [Solutions Engineer] for technical setup, [Billing Analyst] for the
first invoice, [Sales Owner] for the commitment handover.

## Trigger

Opportunity moves to **Closed Won** in [CRM] with a countersigned order form
attached to the record.

Secondary trigger: [Sales Owner] files a handover note without a countersigned
document — handled as exception E1, not as a normal start.

## Inputs

| Input | System of record | Required |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Countersigned order form | [Contract store] | Yes |
| Handover note listing every non-standard commitment | [CRM opportunity] | Yes |
| Billing contact, PO number, tax ID | [Billing system] | Yes |
| Named customer admin and their access needs | [CRM contact record] | Yes |
| Data to migrate, with source format and row count | Customer-supplied | If D3 = yes |
| Security review outcome | [Vendor risk register] | If D2 = yes |

## Prerequisites

- A handover note exists and names every non-standard commitment: custom SLA,
  bespoke report, agreed integration date, agreed discount mechanics. No
  handover note, no onboarding start.
- The [Customer Success Manager] has provisioning rights in [workspace tool].
- An onboarding plan template exists for the track chosen in D1.
- The customer has named a sponsor with authority to approve go-live.

## Steps

1. **Read the contract before the kickoff call, not after.** Extract term,
   seat count, agreed start date, notice period and any bespoke clause into the
   onboarding record. Anything in the handover note that is not in the contract
   is not a commitment — raise it with [Sales Owner] the same day.
2. **Choose the onboarding track.** → Decision **D1**.
3. **Check whether a security or procurement review is still open.** →
   Decision **D2**. If open, the technical setup in step 6 may start but no
   production data may be loaded until it closes.
4. **Create the customer record set.** Account in [CRM], billing account in
   [Billing system], onboarding plan from the D1 template, shared channel in
   [comms tool]. Every downstream step writes to these, not to a personal doc.
5. **Send the kickoff invitation within [2] business days of countersignature.**
   Include the plan, the named owners on both sides, and the dates you intend to
   hit. Ask the customer to confirm the sponsor named in the prerequisites.
6. **Provision the workspace and the named admin account.** Apply the seat count
   from the contract, not the seat count discussed on the call.
7. **Decide whether historical data has to move.** → Decision **D3**. If yes,
   run the migration checklist: sample file, field mapping signed off by the
   customer admin, dry run, row-count reconciliation, then the full load.
8. **Run the configuration session.** Work through the customer's actual first
   use case rather than a demo dataset. Record every configuration choice in the
   onboarding record so it can be explained six months later.
9. **Confirm go-live.** → Approval **A1**. Only the customer sponsor can confirm
   the deployment is live; the [Customer Success Manager] records the
   confirmation and the date.
10. **Hand the first invoice to [Billing Analyst]** with the contract start date
    and PO number. Billing never derives the start date from the go-live date
    unless the contract says so.
11. **Hold the [30]-day adoption review.** Compare actual usage against the
    success criteria agreed at kickoff, log open risks, and close the onboarding
    record or escalate to [Head of Customer Success].

## Decisions

| ID | Decision | Criteria | Default |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| D1 | Onboarding track | Contract value ≥ [amount] **or** seat count ≥ [n] **or** any bespoke clause → guided track. Otherwise → standard track. | Standard |
| D2 | Security review required | Customer requested a questionnaire, is in [regulated sector list], or will load [special category] data | No |
| D3 | Data migration required | Customer holds ≥ [n] historical records they expect to see on day one | No |
| D4 | Go-live may proceed with an open item | Open item is cosmetic and has an owner and a date. Any open item touching access, billing or data blocks go-live. | Block |

## Exceptions

- **E1 — Handover note without a countersigned contract.** Do not provision.
  Return to [Sales Owner] and record the date. Provisioning ahead of signature
  is the single most common cause of unbilled usage.
- **E2 — The named customer admin leaves mid-onboarding.** Freeze steps 6–8,
  ask the sponsor to name a replacement in writing, and re-run the access grant.
  Do not transfer credentials between people.
- **E3 — Migration file fails reconciliation.** Row counts or checksums differ
  from the customer's stated figures. Stop the load, return the discrepancy
  report to the customer admin, and restart from the sample file.
- **E4 — Agreed go-live date is going to be missed.** Notify the sponsor before
  the date passes, not after, with a new date and the reason. Log the slip
  against the onboarding record for the quarterly review.
- **E5 — A commitment surfaces that is not in the contract.** Route to
  [Sales Owner] and [Head of Customer Success]. Nobody in delivery may accept a
  new commercial commitment.

## Approvals

| ID | What is approved | Who approves | Why it stays with a person |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A1 | Go-live confirmation | Customer sponsor | It is the customer's statement that the deployment is fit for their use |
| A2 | Any commitment not in the signed contract | [Sales Owner] | Commercial liability |
| A3 | Waiving a step in the plan | [Head of Customer Success] | Keeps the exception visible rather than silent |

## Output

- A configured, accessible deployment matching the contracted seat count.
- A completed onboarding record: plan, configuration decisions, dates hit and
  missed, open risks.
- A first invoice raised against the correct start date and PO.
- A [30]-day adoption review with a documented outcome.

## SLA / KPI

- Kickoff invitation sent within [2] business days of countersignature.
- Go-live within [21] calendar days for the standard track, [45] for guided.
- Percentage of onboardings with zero commitments discovered after kickoff:
  target [95%].
- Percentage reaching the [30]-day review with the agreed success criteria met.

## Audit record

For each onboarding, retain for [contract term + 2 years]: countersigned order
form, handover note, kickoff plan, configuration decisions with dates and
authors, the go-live confirmation and who gave it, all A2 and A3 approvals, and
the adoption review outcome.

> Simulated example data
>
> Account [Northwind Freight] · order form countersigned [2026-03-02] · track
> [guided] (contract value above threshold) · D2 = yes, questionnaire closed
> [2026-03-09] · D3 = yes, [4,120] rows migrated, reconciliation matched on the
> second attempt after exception E3 · go-live approved by sponsor
> [Head of Operations] on [2026-03-24].

## Revision log

| Version | Date | Author | Change |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| v1.0 | 2026-07-24 | [Your name] | initial draft |