Disclosure up front: I built Agency Onboarding OS around this problem, so I have a stake in the answer. I'm asking because I want to know if I'm solving the right thing — not to pitch you.
I've been deep in agency onboarding systems for the past few months — building something around this problem, writing about it, and asking people about it consistently — and I keep hearing the same thing:
"We sort of have a process. It's in my head mostly."
But I want actual data, not just confirmation of my existing assumptions.
Does your agency have a written, documented client onboarding process?
By "written" I mean: someone could follow it without asking you questions. Not necessarily fancy — Notion doc, Google Sheet, Trello board, text file. Just documented somewhere.
What I've seen so far (raw count, not a real study):
I've asked this informally to maybe 40 agency owners and freelancers over the past few months:
- Around 6 had something genuinely documented and actually followed
- Around 15 had something that exists but "it's more of a reference"
- The rest had "a process" that lives in their head or in scattered email templates they've never consolidated
The part I keep getting stuck on in my own building:
Every time I write down "collect client access credentials at onboarding," I immediately realize there are 6 different ways agencies do this and none of them match. So either the documented process is too generic to be useful, or it's so specific that nobody outside your exact stack would use it.
I'm still not sure how to solve that tension.
If you're up for it:
- Solo/small team/mid-size?
- Do you have a written onboarding process? (yes / sort of / no)
- If yes: what format?
- If no: what's the honest reason you haven't written one?
I'll share what I find in a follow-up. Honest answers are more useful than polite ones.
Top comments (0)