Cision streamlines onboarding with journeys, success plans, and playbooks.
8 days
faster time to launch
5% increase
in onboarding CSAT scores
100%
visibility into active onboarding journeys (up from 40%)
“We increased team capacity by 17% without adding headcount thanks to standardized processes, automation in ChurnZero, and improved segmentation.”
Cision provides an all-in-one PR and communications platform for media monitoring, analytics and reporting, journalist outreach, social listening and engagement, with press release distribution via PR Newswire. Its CisionOne suite helps teams track coverage, measure impact and reach audiences across channels.
The Challenge
Gain real-time visibility, tighten handoffs, scale consistent onboarding, and manage unresponsive accounts.
Cision serves a diverse customer base with different goals and product combinations, which created several pain points for the customer success and onboarding teams: limited visibility into where each customer was in the onboarding journey; manual, inconsistent handoffs from onboarding to account management and client success; difficulty scaling high-volume onboarding while maintaining service quality; and unresponsive clients whose outreach attempts weren’t being logged consistently.
The Process
Standardize, automate and track.
- Built dynamic onboarding journeys in ChurnZero to track progress, automate key touchpoints, and trigger alerts for delays or low engagement. Journeys are customizable, allowing additional tasks and steps based on each client’s goals.
- Implemented success plans that start at the beginning of onboarding. Implementation consultants document sales goals, onboarding goals, pain points, discussion details and communication styles; plans are marked complete at handoff to the account manager or client success manager.
- Scaled high-volume onboarding using templates, email cadences and guided resources in ChurnZero, adapted by segment and need.
- Deployed an unresponsive playbook that shows the exact step an implementation consultant is on, with required milestones and a log of all outreach.
The Impact
Faster launches, higher satisfaction, full pipeline visibility and more capacity.
- Average time to launch decreased by 8 days, helping customers hit value milestones faster.
- Onboarding CSAT increased by 5%, reflecting better alignment and communication.
- Leadership now has real-time visibility into 100% of active onboarding journeys (up from 40% before automation).
- Team capacity increased by 17% without adding headcount, thanks to standardized processes, automation and better segmentation.