How HubSpot accelerated customer onboarding by 30% with Arrows

HubSpot's onboarding specialists were drowning in manual work

HubSpot's onboarding team was drowning in manual processes that slowed down customer success. With 30 customers per specialist at any given time, the team faced several critical issues:

Inconsistent customer experiences. The previous internal tool was clunky and cumbersome, leading reps to avoid using it. This created wildly different onboarding experiences depending on which specialist customers worked with.

No visibility into customer progress. Specialists lived in Post-it notes, spreadsheets, and Word docs with no centralized way to track where customers stood in their onboarding journey. "There was no way to track if customers were actually looking at our checklists or accomplishing tasks," explains Trent Hope, Services Consultant at HubSpot.

Overwhelming administrative burden. Specialists spent 25-30 minutes per customer per week on admin work—listening to call recordings, reviewing notes, sending follow-up emails, and chasing customers for updates. This left little time for actual strategic consultation.

The mental load was unsustainable. Specialists were constantly trying to remember details for dozens of customers. "There were just days where you would end work full of anxiety just because you were trying to remember what was next and for all the calls you had to do tomorrow," recalls Trent.

Outdated, irrelevant materials. Much of the content customers received hadn't been updated in years and was no longer accurate or useful. Customers became overly dependent on their specialists for basic next steps.

The situation had persisted for over two years, creating stress and anxiety for the team while preventing customers from achieving value quickly.

Arrows automated onboarding workflows and gave real-time customer visibility

HubSpot implemented Arrows as their customer onboarding platform, providing a centralized source of truth for both specialists and customers.

Automated workflows replaced manual tasks. Arrows handles automated reminders, weekly roundups, and follow-up communications that specialists previously managed manually.

Real-time visibility into customer progress. Specialists can now track exactly when customers open tasks, complete milestones, and where they might be stalling. The platform integrates seamlessly with HubSpot's CRM, giving specialists a centralized dashboard to prioritize their book of business.

Customizable, up-to-date onboarding plans. Unlike their previous system, Arrows makes it easy to customize onboarding templates per customer and keep content current and relevant.

Customer-driven progress. The platform is designed to drive customer action independently, reducing their dependence on specialists for basic guidance while maintaining support when needed through commenting functionality.

Pilot results were so strong HubSpot fast-tracked global rollout

The pilot program delivered immediate, measurable improvements across all key metrics:

→ 30% faster time to value for customers using Arrows compared to the control group

→ 7% increase in customer activation rates

→ 15 hours per week saved per onboarding specialist (30 minutes saved per customer)

The results were so strong that HubSpot's leadership approved a global rollout to their entire international onboarding team months ahead of schedule.  Teams across all of HubSpot offices and regions now use Arrows to onboard their customers in English, German, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Japanese.

"One of the things we believe at HubSpot is that speed is a moat. Speed is an advantage for businesses in the age of AI because you have to be able to move at what we call AI speed. And we just believe deeply that time to value matters for our customers." - Jon Dick, Chief Customer Success Officer at HubSpot

The Arrows team felt like an internal partner, not vendors

HubSpot emphasized that working with Arrows felt like partnering with an internal product team rather than using an external vendor.

"Working with the Arrows team has really felt like I was working with a product team," notes Trent Hope. "They really listened to everything that we were asking for and what we needed. Every update feels purposeful—it's not just shiny features, it's things that made my job easier and make our customers more successful."

Cate McCaffery, Senior Manager on the Customer Success team, adds: "The Arrows team listens to what we need, what our customers need, and makes it happen really quickly. That's a superpower."

Time savings freed specialists to focus on strategic consultation

For HubSpot, faster customer onboarding isn't just about efficiency—it's about fulfilling their mission to help millions of organizations grow better.

The transformation went beyond metrics. Specialists moved from mechanical task management to meaningful customer relationships. "It was literally going through a checklist before," explains Trent Hope. "And now we can actually sit with the customer and really align to their goals."

"Arrows has allowed me to get back to what I really do best—helping customers," he adds.

The impact extends to customer satisfaction as well. "Customers say that they have never had such a good experience with onboarding," notes Trent. "And they wish that every other software company did what we did."

"One thing that became blindingly obvious is that the first year of a customer's journey with HubSpot, but really any software is just so pivotal. It's make or break," explains Jon Dick, Chief Customer Success Officer. "The results are so dramatically different in terms of the success that a customer sees if they have a great first-year experience than if they have a bad first-year experience."

With Arrows handling the administrative work, HubSpot's onboarding specialists can focus on what they do best: strategic consultation and building relationships that help customers succeed.