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Strategies to Handle Customer Disengagement During Onboarding
Why customer silence during onboarding is your most expensive red flag and the soft skills to fix it fast
Clare Knight
June 12, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
This week, I have a bumper bundle of useful assets for you to truly level up your customer onboarding program.
Download it for free for access to a handoff checklist, a kickoff meeting agenda, a step-by-step onboarding playbook, and first value delivery framework.
Radio silence.
That’s not what you want to hear from customers during onboarding.
Customer disengagement during onboarding is one of the strongest predictors of churn.
Yet, I’ve seen teams treat silence as a neutral state rather than an emergency signal!
Let’s remove the static and tune up our empathy. ↓
🧪 The Project: Silent Customer Recovery
Adjust your onboarding team's ability to detect customer disengagement early and reignite meaningful conversations without appearing desperate.
Step 1: Create a detection plan
Find a way to recognise the warning signs before complete radio silence sets in.
Identify signals such as:
- Response times increase from hours to days
- Meeting attendance drops from 100% to sporadic
- Enthusiasm markers disappear from communication
Decide what the thresholds are, for example:
- No response to two consecutive emails
- Missed scheduled call without rescheduling
- Zero engagement with training materials for 5+ days
Make this specific to your onboarding program, milestones, and expectations.