GuideCX: Engage Your Customers in a Transparent Client Onboarding Process

The Silicon Review

Today’s consumer is accustomed to receiving automated updates on everything from the location on their packages, flights, and even pizza delivery orders. That expectation has moved into the B2B world. Customers expect a better experience during customer onboarding instead of a generic project plan in a spreadsheet or requiring them to set up a username and password for another system to track progress.

GuideCX gives customers an experience much more like tracking a package than managing a spreadsheet of tasks. Its automated assignment flows and Intelligent Forecasting Algorithm allow teams to get the information they need even without logging in.

Founded in 2017, GuideCX takes it to the next level by providing the internal teams with analytics and dashboards aimed at helping improve a client’s onboarding experience. There has never been a tool that is client-facing and purpose-built for implementation and onboarding specialists and teams—now there is.

GuideCX software provides automation for task assignments, due dates, reminders, status updates, and forecasts. Its analytics delivers impactful insights around team performance, project duration, and what areas need attention. “Our team has seen more approaches to onboarding than anyone else and leverages that experience to provide industry-leading consultation,” said Peter Ord, Founder and CEO of GuideCX. Ultimately, these benefits help:

Decrease meeting times by 86%
Quadruple team capacity bandwidth
Decrease the client implementation and onboarding time by an average of 49%—with that percentage still increasing today

The Origin Story

The idea of a client onboarding software came from one of Peter Ord’s biggest frustrations. At his previous company, too often, he would watch the sale of a software end at the signing of the contract without successful implementation. In those failure-to-launch cases, Ord noticed three consistent themes:

The customer team did not feel they were on the same page with what needed to happen and when it needed to happen.
The internal team did not have a purpose-built solution to help them manage those expectations.
Too much manual work was done to update stakeholders and responsible parties. In those cases, customers churned, leaving with an unhappy experience.

Ord recognized that this was a huge problem, especially in the SaaS industry. He thought of an intuitive, collaborative software where companies could engage their customers more easily during the SaaS onboarding process and ensure that their product or service was successfully implemented. This was the beginning of GuideCX.

Not many people know that Peter Ord majored in construction management in college and grew up framing houses with his father. He learned early on how important it is to have each step of a home build done in order and how the mismanagement of one step could lead to major delays in others.

That observation has fueled his perspective on creating a great experience for his customers over the last two decades he has spent in SaaS. GuideCX represents a culmination of his vision to help teams know what needs to happen when and the consequence of delays in each step and make that understanding clear and easy for everyone to digest.

“We view innovation through a lens of opportunity to try something new when we observe something needs to change—a mindset based on opportunity, rather than discouragement when challenges arise,” said Peter Ord. This started with Peter seeing that the world of customer onboarding needed to change, and he has continued to improve each part of the GuideCX team. “We are proud of our innovative and excited team members.”

Customers First

GuideCX is the first client onboarding software. Many people today use project management tools for new client onboarding, but it’s not built to be client-facing. A client onboarding tool is meant to be client-facing and customer-centric.

Other client onboarding tools in the market right now don’t have the history GuideCX has or the advanced features. “Our complex automation systems, including the Intelligent Forecasting Algorithm and the Project Team Builder, are industry game-changers. These, along with Time Tracking, Resource Management, and our Navigator Reporting Engine, are unique in the field,” explained Ord.

The Draper, UT-headquartered company is continuously coming up with new features to relieve stress from client onboarding specialists and project managers, make the onboarding process more intuitive and collaborative, and make it better and faster. “Overall, the road ahead looks sunny, but we’re sure it will include an unexpected forecast. Luckily, we’re all great guides and are prepared to navigate our journey.”

The company recently raised $25 million in its Series B funding round. The round was led by Meritech Capital Partners. Other participants of the round included new investors and existing investors: Album VC, Prelude, Sorenson Capital, Epic Ventures, and Orchard Ventures, among others.

“What excites us most about GuideCX is their management team’s focus on enabling faster and higher satisfaction customer onboarding,” said Paul Madera, co-founder and general partner of Meritech. “During our conversations with GuideCX users, we consistently heard that GuideCX is best-in-class at improved implementations of new programs with better visibility, understanding, and coordination. We are convinced this is a very large market opportunity, and GuideCX is the leader.”

With the fresh funds, GuideCX intends to increase automation. “We want to automate more of the workflows so clients can have more time with customers and create a more efficient client onboarding process,” mentioned Mr. Ord. The company will also add 100+ managed integrated partners to GuideCX. This will help its customers leverage GuideCX in new and innovative ways. The funding will be further used to expand the GuideCX team to serve the clients better.