I’m Naren, head of onboarding and solutions at Joveo. Stepping into this world taught me that the best customer experiences happen when complexity becomes invisible.

When people ask what drew me into this space, I give them the honest answer: probably nothing. My stint in finance wasn’t working out. Numbers and I had a mutual dislike. But the experience was still valuable because of the people I met.

When I came to Joveo, this entire world was new to me. I knew people advertised jobs online, of course, but I had no idea about the mechanics behind the scenes. I didn’t know people would pay for clicks or how complex the technology stack really was. That’s been the best part of this journey – every day has been a learning experience.

When 70% of Relationships Fail At The Start

I’m the biggest believer that the best experiences are always implicit. They don’t need to be overstated or explicit. That’s our philosophy and approach to onboarding.

Here’s a data point that should worry every SaaS company: 70% of business relationships and poor net promoter scores all start with onboarding. When you don’t have the right experiences, when you don’t take a hands-on approach, that’s a recipe for failure.

Success or failure starts at onboarding. Get that implementation right, and you should have smooth sailing ahead.

Taking the burden off customers

We operate in an extremely complex environment, but the beauty is that we simplify this as much as possible for our customers. We put our arms around the entire process and manage it for them.

This means integrating with their tech stack – whether that’s an applicant tracking system or their CRM. We take the lead and set everything up for success. But more importantly, we handle the overall strategy. We’re here to impact customers through cost savings, positive ROI, and solving their actual problems.

The strategy element is key to making sure we have the right solutions that address real problems. It’s a constant evolution and collaboration where we work with customers to discover solutions together over time.

I look at onboarding as those first few steps that set both Joveo and the customer up for a really smooth journey ahead.

Becoming An Extension Of Their Team

One thing I tell my team is that we look at ourselves as an extension of our customers’ teams. Sometimes we’ll station ourselves in the customer’s office for a couple of weeks. We speak to recruiters, recruitment marketers, operations people.

One of the most rewarding aspects is talking to employees who have nothing to do with recruiting or HR technology – just to understand what it’s like to work at that company, what makes people stick around, what their experiences are. Every element of what we do informs our onboarding strategy.

We make it collaborative. We never take the approach of “We got you onboard, here you go, that’s it.” Our customer success team is part of those discovery sessions where we understand problems deeply. Customers never feel like they’re being switched between different teams. Everyone interacting with them understands their problems thoroughly.

Speed and Seamless Experience

Two priorities drive everything we do in onboarding evolution.

First is speed. When we work with hiring managers or recruitment marketers, time is critical. Hiring is always a problem that needed to be solved yesterday. It’s never something you can take your time with. We want onboarding to happen in just two to three days.

With Joveo being more tech-focused, it helps us be scalable and gives us the ability to do this at speed.

Second is continuously enhancing the onboarding experience. This means deploying strategies that help customers realize ROI faster, or bringing different approaches we can use over time. We provide them a glide path that shows what to expect, what our backup strategies are, how we’re A/B testing different elements.

It’s constantly evolving, but our main focus stays the same: deliver the outcomes we signed up for.

Collaboration and Transparency Win

The biggest advice I’d give companies trying to improve their implementation process: be collaborative and transparent.

A lot of onboardings fail because everyone takes a very structured project approach. But it’s important to understand that implementation is a journey – a collaborative journey. You need to work lockstep with your customer, keep them informed about what’s happening, and transparently let them know if things aren’t going in the right direction.

This transparency is the foundation and building block for everything we do at Joveo.

The Future is Automated But Still Human

The future of implementation comes down to one word: automation.

We tend to think onboardings in the SaaS world have to be complex, with thousands of moving parts. They can be complex, but there’s still so much you can automate and take off the user’s plate.

Make it as simple as possible for the end user. The more you can automate the mechanics, the more you can focus on what really matters – understanding their business and solving their problems.

But automation doesn’t replace the human element. It amplifies it. When we remove the tedious setup work, we can spend more time in our customers’ offices, talking to their teams, and understanding what makes their people stick around. That’s where the real value gets created.

Curious what the rest of our leaders have to say? Explore the full series on YouTube.

Video Transcript

Jennifer: Here with Naren, you are responsible for onboarding and solutions. You’re focused on ensuring seamless implementation in education and client readiness. It’s very important. Within Joveo, you played a major role in developing our strategy and shaping our customer experience. So we’re gonna talk a little bit about the strategy behind onboarding, delivering, and just overall results and customer success. What does that look like? So you started in finance before pivoting into HR Tech. What drew you into the space and what keeps you passionate about it?

Naren: That’s a great question. To give you the honest answer, I’d probably say nothing. Because, you know, my stint at finance, I keep telling people was, it wasn’t something that was working out and numbers didn’t like me. I did not like numbers as well. But, you know, the experience was still really good. The kind of people I met was really good. And when I came into Joveo, this, you know, entire world that existed here was something that was new to me. And I think that was the best part. I did not know, you know, people advertise jobs online. Of course, I knew people advertise jobs online, but I did not know the mechanics of that behind the scenes. I did not know people would pay for clicks or things like that as well, which I think been the best part of this journey where every day has been a learning. And, yeah.

Jennifer: Great. Onboarding and solutioning is a critical stage. What does a successful client implementation and experience look like?

Naren: Yeah, that’s a good question, too. So I’m the biggest believer that the best of experiences are always implicit. They don’t necessarily have to be overstated or explicit. And, you know, that’s essentially our philosophy and our approach to onboarding is to make sure that we’re taking an extremely hands-on approach, especially our customers and the people who we work with, they’re all running a million miles an hour. So we take that on, we, you know, put our arms around it, manage the entire process for them. There are elements such as, you know, integrating with their tech stack. It could be an applicant tracking system. It could be their CRM that we will essentially, you know, take the lead on and make sure that we’re setting all of those up for success. The second aspect of it is of course the overall strategy. At the end of the day, we’re here to impact our customers in a way of, you know, cost savings, in a way of making sure they see positive ROI. And most importantly, we’re solving their problems. So, you know, the strategy element is very, very key to make sure that we’re having the right solutions that address these problems. And it’s a constant evolution and collaboration as well, where, you know, we also work with our customers and you know, collaborate with them to make sure at the end of the day, it is something that we discover together over time. And I look at onboarding as that first step in the journey or those few first steps, which kind of sets you know, both Joveo and the customer up for you know, a really nice journey that’s ahead as well.

Jennifer: Yeah, I love that. I always said success or failure starts at onboarding. You get that onboarding and implementation right, should be some smooth sailing, right?

Naren: Oh yeah. And there’ve been so many you know, data points that point out to that 70% of business relationships or poor net promoter scores all start with onboarding. When you don’t have the right experiences, when you don’t have you know, a very hands-on approach, that’s recipe for failure.

Jennifer: Yeah, definitely. Joveo operates in a complex tech environment. How do you ensure new clients not only adopt the platform, but how do they experience and get true value out of it?

Naren: So one of the things that I keep telling you know, my team and even honestly anybody else who asks me you know, what I do or what are the challenges of what our team does, the first thing that I always tell them is that, like you rightly said, we do operate in an extremely complex environment, but I think the beauty of this is that we simplify this as much as we can for our customers at the end of the day. I think, like I was mentioning, I was how implicit we can make it, is to really you know, take the burden off them, make sure that you know, we simplify it as much as possible, whether it could be you know, from how much value they’re realizing over time of using you know Joveo, or it could be with any kind of complex integration that we do. The idea is to definitely make it a lot more implicit, you know where Joveo can really take the forefront of that. And most times it becomes a very collaborative exercise, right. We look at ourselves as an extension of our customers’ teams, so it could be that we station ourselves in the customer’s office for a couple of weeks, right. We speak to a lot of team members to understand real challenges. It could be recruiters, it could be recruitment marketers, it could also be people on the operation side. And one of the most rewarding aspects of it is probably speaking to you know other employees who have nothing to do with recruiting or HR technology, but just to get a sense of what it is to work at a particular employer, or you know what it is to essentially, you know what makes them stick, or what their experiences are. Every element of what we do informs you know our onboarding strategy right in that sense, and yeah, that’s what it is.

Jennifer: Your team plays a cross-functional role, working between product, customer success, and operations. I think there might be more to that, Naren. Just a few things, right? How do you make sure you’re collaborating effectively across teams?

Naren: Yeah, that’s probably, you know a very, very critical element of what we do, because you know we’re essentially, the onboarding you know part of this is, of course, the fulcrum of the entire thing, but of course, it’s not the only piece, right? We’re bringing all these pieces together. So collaboration is very important, and it need not just be collaboration with our own internal teams, right? Of course, we collaborate with technology, which is a very big part of it. We’re primarily a technology company that’s focused on technology, but it could also be finance teams, right, to set up the right kind of invoicing, right? Because that’s a very big part of what we do, is take out the burden of having to deal with multiple vendors, having to deal with multiple job boards, right? So it could be on the finance side of things as well. Or of course, like you rightly mentioned, customer success. Our onboarding approach is, like I was talking about, is very hands-on, but also intended to be very seamless. So it is not a model where we say, “Hey, we got you onboard on the platform. Here you go,” and that’s all it is, right? It’s never that approach. We always have our customer success team that are part of those discovery sessions, that are part of those you know sessions where we understand problems a lot more so that it becomes a lot more seamless for the customer. They never have to feel that, “Hey, you know I’m being switched over to different teams,” right? Everybody who is interacting with them or who works with them eventually understands their problems very deeply. The second angle of this is, of course, collaborating and working with multiple stakeholders on the customer side as well, right? This could be, again, working with their technology teams. This could be working with their finance teams, right? So depending on the kind of problems that we’re trying to solve, right, I think collaboration is a very, very important aspect of it, and it is very important to ensure that we’re all staying at the same page or on the same page at the end of the day as well. And you know throughout the entire onboarding process, we make sure that we keep regrouping with the customer, seeking feedback about this, and always keep measuring to, you know, how much are we positively impacting the problems that we’re setting out to solve.

Jennifer: Great. What are your priorities for evolving Joveo’s onboarding and solutions? Yeah, that’s a, that’s a really good question. So, you know, the primary aspect of this, I’d probably say two priorities. It’s just not, it’s hard to pinpoint and say just one element. The first aspect of this is speed. A lot of times, you know, when we work with hiring managers or recruitment marketers, time is of the essence, right? Hiring is always a problem that needed to have been solved yesterday, right? It is never something that you could take your own time and then do, so time is definitely one of the, time and speed are one of the major aspects that we really want to focus on as to, you know, how can we make onboarding extremely seamless in terms of time as well, where it takes just a matter of two to three days to get everything set up, right? And I think that’s the journey we’re on in and, you know, with Joveo being a lot more tech-focused, right, it just helps us be a lot more scalable and a lot more, you know, it lends itself to, you know, the ability to essentially do that at speed, right? So speed is definitely one of the areas of focus. The second is to, you know, continuously enhance the onboarding experience, which, you know, again, could be from an angle of making sure that, you know, the strategies that we deploy, you know, are helping the customer realize, you know, their ROI much faster, right? Or it could be, you know, coming down to the table, coming to the table of the customers with, you know, different strategies that we could deploy over a period of time, where we could provide them a glide path that tells them saying that, you know, here’s what you can expect over a period of time. What is our backup strategy? You know, are we A/B testing different elements and such as that? So I think that’s a constantly evolving aspect of this, right, but yeah, that’s always been our main focus, right, to deliver the kind of outcomes that we signed up to.

Jennifer: Yeah, I love that. If you can do it with speed, outcomes, get to onboarding faster, it’s great. What advice would you give companies trying to improve their implementation process in a SaaS environment?

Naren: The biggest is probably, you know, be as collaborative and be as transparent. You know, a lot of onboardings and implementations, you know, go for a toss because, you know, everybody’s taking a very, you know, structured project approach to it, right? But, you know, it’s very important to understand that it’s a journey. And it is a very collaborative journey. It’s very important to work lockstep with your customer and make them understand, you know, what’s going on, you know, and are we on track, you know, and, you know, transparently let them know if things aren’t going in the right direction, right? So I think this is essentially the foundation or the building block for transparency, right? And that’s what Joveo is all about as well. So yeah, I’d probably say collaboration and transparency are extremely key to make sure that we’re having successful onboardings at the end of the day as well.

Jennifer: Great. And so before we get into our rapid fire, how can people connect with you?

Naren: You can reach out to me on LinkedIn, you know, and I’m just a phone call away. My number’s there on LinkedIn. My email’s there on LinkedIn. I’m always open to connect, learning new things about, you know, the world of onboarding or our own recruitment marketing ecosystem.

Jennifer: Yeah, so. Great, you live dangerously. Your number’s on LinkedIn, all right. See you, Naren. All right, rapid fire, Q&A, Chennai street food or Toronto coffee?

Naren: Chennai street food. I’m not a coffee person, but, you know, Chennai street food any day.

Jennifer: All right, I’ll have to go. You’ll have to take me. Oh yeah. A tech tool you can’t live without.

Naren: That’s a hard question, especially in today’s evolving world. Probably the one that’s closest for me personally is Rocketlane. That’s what we use for our onboarding. And, you know, it has helped us a lot in streamlining the entire process, making sure that we’re working with the customer very seamlessly as well. So probably say Rocketlane.

Jennifer: All right, perfect. It is a great tool. We’re using it for a lot of things. Most satisfying onboarding experience you’ve delivered. Most satisfying. It’s gratifying. What was that?

Naren: It’s probably one of the first few onboardings that we did and probably the, in fact, the first one when we first branched out our, you know, within Joveo, a separate you know, team for onboarding is, you know, we worked with a very large ride sharing company and essentially that meant a lot of moving parts, right? And we were also you know working to discover our process, but also at the same time wanted to make sure it was the smoothest and more seamless experience for our customer. So yeah, that’s probably what I would say was gratifying because one of the reasons that, you know, we also started our partnership with them was because of our technology and our ability to really help them scale, to get deeper integrations and so on as well. So it was a very collaborative experience where the two of us were evolving in lockstep. So yeah, it’s probably that.

Jennifer: Great. And last question, one word to describe the future of implementation.

Naren: Why does it always have to be one word?

Jennifer: Well, you could elaborate on the word once you say it.

Naren: Yeah, I’d probably say automation is what it is. You know, in, you know, let’s say the, that there are so many fields where, you know, onboarding is so, there’s so much room for automation or they’ve already automated so much, right? Where, you know, it could be even from, you know, a simple mobile phone that you’re buying, right? And then, you know, it takes you a matter of minutes to essentially, you know, get onboarded, right? It does not always have to be, you know, complex onboarding. So I think it’s all about, you know, automating it, making it as simple as possible for the end user or the customer, right? And then the more you can do that, the more you can enhance their experience as well. I like that answer. I remember trading in the phone and then spending hours at the store to transfer data, all that stuff. Now you receive it, download it and it’s done.

Jennifer: Yeah, yeah.

Naren: And we always tend to think, you know, onboardings in the SaaS world have to be complex. They have to have a thousand moving parts. They can, but there’s still so much you can automate out there and still so much you can take off the users’ plate as well.

Jennifer: Great. Thank you for spending time with me, Naren. I appreciate it.

Naren: Thank you, Jen. Always a pleasure speaking to you. Bye.