Blaze Reduced Time-to-Launch by 39%

The Challenge

An Industry Of Varied Experience Levels

Blaze provides point-of-sale, inventory management, and compliance solutions specifically tailored for cannabis dispensaries and delivery services.

Since the cannabis industry has recently exploded so rapidly, many people are starting businesses who haven’t been in the industry previously. Blaze’s onboarding process has to support not only industry veterans, but also build foundational knowledge for this rising tide of people who are entering the industry for the first time. 

Luke McLellan is the onboarding manager at Blaze. 

Our primary customers are dispensaries and deliveries businesses in the cannabis industry. We have customers who are getting licensed that don't have any experience in the industry. I've got a crew going through onboarding right now that they own car dealerships. They have no prior experience in the cannabis industry or retail or, in technology, so onboarding has to start at “cannabis 101,” and “point of sale 101,” and just start from ground zero. 

Luke manages a team of three onboarding managers who’ve worked tirelessly to drive efficiency in their time-to-launch a new customer, across a wide range of levels of experience. Customizing onboarding plans for new customers was a primary challenge for Blaze prior to working with Arrows.

Losing Momentum Onboarding With Google Suite

Because everything was previously done manually, customers would lose momentum in the moments between signing the contract, and getting their first welcome email. 

Anything that we can do to get them that email as soon as we possibly can to get them to book that kickoff call, because that goes back to keeping the momentum from sales. We don't want somebody waiting for six days to get an email. We want it to go to them right away.

And the onboarding experience wasn’t as good for the end customer-they’d get a google doc or a spreadsheet with their onboarding tasks on it, and have to work through it. 

Blaze started off managing their onboarding in a Google Doc, graduating to a google Sheet.

We had pretty task bars and percentages and things like that in the sheet. Keeping the momentum going and drilling it down into bite-sized, digestible pieces was what we needed there. And that just wasn’t really doable with Google Sheets. As much as I put progress bars and I did all of these crazy formulas that I didn't even know I could do, it still just wasn't what Arrows is. 

The main problem we were trying to solve was to keep momentum going and get the customers through within a certain amount of time and keep them on track and have a great experience. Because onboarding never ends, and if they have a great experience in the onboarding program, then they're going to stick around.

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Solution: Streamlined Onboarding With Automations, And Tailored Plans For Each Customer

Auto-Launch Personalized Onboarding Packages With Dynamic Branching

Blaze offers a tiered system of paid onboarding packages, aligned with the customer’s level of experience. 

Customers who are new to the industry can purchase an onboarding level that teaches them the industry fundamentals, in addition to the ins-and-outs of using Blaze as a point of sale. Industry vets can get the most minimal package that walks through using Blaze, exclusively.

With the Arrows plan, I can tailor it to that person's level of experience in the industry or in technology or in a retail environment. With the way that you can integrate HubSpot and do dynamic branching, phases and tasks appear to people that only need to see that phase or task. So if I've got an experienced user who is well versed in point of sales and the industry – they can move through the plan rather quickly. 

These custom plans are automatically created for each customer, based on the level of onboarding purchased on the “Deal” in HubSpot. 

Our golden package is for first time operators in the cannabis industry. That's the white glove package – heavy hand holding in that package for sure. Whereas if you're bringing on your third or fourth Blaze location, you’d sign up for the “Experienced” package. ‍So as sales is building this deal, they're selecting the products that the customer has purchased. And then based on that information, the plan is created.

Using Dynamic Branching means that Blaze can have just one onboarding plan, which is auto customized for each company – each user only sees the tasks that are most relevant to them.

See instructions for re-creating their tiered onboarding system using Dynamic Branching below:

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The result: Blaze Reduced Time-to-Launch by 39%

The HubSpot <> Arrows Integration Drives Automation And CRM Management

In addition to using data in HubSpot to update onboarding plans, Blaze also uses the Arrows integration to keep their CRM up-to-date.

By pushing data back into HubSpot from their onboarding plans, anyone on their team can check in on the status of a customer’s onboarding, without anyone having to do manual work. 

Before it was so manual. A lot of copying and pasting in order to update properties in HubSpot. But now, we can pull various information out of the Arrows plan into HubSpot. And we can also push information from HubSpot into the plan. From a workflow perspective, automation has been the huge key to success there with our increased use of HubSpot with Arrows.

Along these lines, they’re using an automation today which updates the customer’s stage as they work their way through the onboarding plan. This, in turn, pipes into reporting which helps them understand the rate at which customers are moving through their onboarding process, and helps them fix any areas where customers are getting stuck. (More on this below).

These self-proclaimed HubSpot power users also lean heavily into complex workflow automations to drive time-savings in the onboarding process: 

We design and build content sites for some customers. And so when we build that site, we send them the link through the Arrows plan to approve the site. They get a notification saying, there’s a link here, go ahead and review your site. Then when they review the site, if they need revisions, they just hit yes. And a form is there and they fill out the form and they submit the form. 

A lot of admin time has been saved with Arrows and us just being able to automate a lot of things with HubSpot and Arrows has been a huge time saver for the onboarding team. 

HubSpot is the centralized place for all of the information about the customer, right? If it's not in HubSpot, it didn't happen.  

A Better Understanding Of Where Customers Get Stuck

When managing onboarding in Google tools, it wasn’t possible to track how customers were moving through.

So you couldn't really measure anything with a doc or a spreadsheet, right? 

Today, Blaze is able to do two things: First they’ve built automations to help new customers get unstuck when they’ve spent too long in one plan phase. Second, they dig into, and figure out how to update the tasks that their customers are getting stuck on. 

With Arrows and the insights that we get on plan templates, we can see how long it takes people on average to complete a task, a phase. 

We also set up different automations with HubSpot, based on how many days have passed since this person has completed their last task and send a notification. We either shoot them an email, or tag them in the plan. Be like, “Hey, I see you're stuck on this task. Here's a link to my calendar. Grab 15 minutes. Let's tackle this and get, and keep them up, moving along here.” So it really allows us to pinpoint those tasks that people are getting stuck on.

If everybody's getting stuck on the same task, then it's “Hey, okay. What's up with this task? Obviously people are getting on this let's break it down. Is it too complex? Are we asking them to do too many things right here? If so, data shows that it's taking people longer to complete this than others. So let's drill down on this task and maybe break it up or reward it or put a different video in there so that we can prevent that from happening.”

So it's like you have much greater visibility into what's actually going on so that you can intervene if you need to basically.

These two practices combined lead to faster time to launch: customers are encouraged to take action in an automated way, and the Blaze team can improve areas that are slowing customers down. 

Wrapping Up 

Blaze's investment in Arrows created tangible benefits for both the company and its customers. Not only is manual work reduced for onboarding managers, and time-to-launch reduced by ~40%, customers are also having better onboarding experiences.

I put in a little survey halfway through the launch plan that says, “Hey you're halfway there, how are things going, how's Blaze, how do you like the launch plan, and how has our support been?”. And not everybody, but the majority of people give us a five star review on the launch plan.

Personalized onboarding tiers with Dynamic Branching has allowed Blaze to cater to customers with varying levels of experience, from industry newcomers to seasoned veterans. And the HubSpot integration helps them identify and address bottlenecks in real-time. When coupled with proactive support, has significantly reduced customer frustration and accelerated time-to-value.