Welcome calls: when a personal onboarding call is worth it

Membergate Support - September 25, 2023

A new member has just paid. They are curious, a little uncertain and about to face a members area full of material they have never seen. For most members, a good welcome email and a clear place to start will carry them through. For some, though, a fifteen-minute conversation with a real person does more than any amount of automated onboarding. It shows them where to begin, uncovers what they actually want and makes it much harder to drift away quietly.

The catch is time. Calls do not scale the way emails do, and a welcome call offered to everyone can swallow your week. So the real question is not whether welcome calls work, but who should get one, how long it should last and what you should say. Here is how to decide.

What a welcome call does that an email cannot

An email can tell a member where things are. A conversation can find out what they need. On a short call you can:

Hear the member's goal in their own words, including details nobody types into a sign-up form, such as a looming deadline.
Spot a mismatch early. If someone expected something you do not offer, learn that in week one, not at renewal.
Hand them a first win. You can point to one specific lesson, template or discussion and explain why it suits them.
Create a relationship. In our experience, members who have spoken to the person behind a site are much less likely to disappear without a word.

Calls also teach you. After a dozen of them, the same worries and goals keep coming up, which is exactly what you need to build your content around your members' biggest problems.

Decide who gets a call

Start with a quick calculation of what calls would cost you. As an illustration, say you run a membership for freelance grant writers at $60 a month, and 30 people join each month. A 15-minute call, plus scheduling, notes and a follow-up email, takes about 30 minutes per member. That is 15 hours a month, which is more than most solo owners can spare.

So choose the members for whom a call matters most. Good candidates include:

Members on your highest tier or an annual plan, where the most revenue is at stake.
The person who bought a group or team account, because their success determines whether the whole group renews.
Members whose sign-up answers suggest a complicated situation or a goal your membership only partly covers.
Your earliest members, while you are still learning what new people need.
Members who have not logged in a few days after joining, for whom a call is a gentle rescue rather than a welcome.

A simple test helps. In the grant-writing example, a member who stays six months longer is worth $360. If ten calls take five hours and keep even one extra member that long, they have paid for themselves. At $8 a month, the same arithmetic gives a different answer.

Make the call easy to book and easy to skip

Offer the call; do not require it. Some members would rather get started alone. Keep the invitation short and clear about the length and the benefit.

Subject: A quick call to get you started?

Hi Tobias,

Welcome aboard. I like to offer new members a 15-minute call to hear what you're working on and point you to the parts of the membership that will help most. No sales pitch, just a head start.

If that sounds useful, pick any time that suits you on my calendar. If you'd rather dive straight in, the Start Here page is the best place to begin.

Best, Helena

Limit the slots you offer each week so calls do not take over your schedule, and let members choose phone or video. Plenty of people are more relaxed without a camera.

A sample welcome call script

A loose structure keeps calls to time and makes sure you cover what matters. Adapt the wording so it sounds like you:

Opening (1 minute): “Thanks for making the time. I'd love to hear a bit about you, and then I'll suggest where to start. We'll be done in about fifteen minutes.”

Their goal (5 minutes): “What made you decide to join now?” Then: “Six months from now, what would make this membership obviously worth it to you?”

Their situation (3 minutes): “How much time do you realistically have each week? What have you already tried?”

First step (4 minutes): “Based on what you've said, I'd start with the proposal-budget lesson. It takes about twenty minutes, and it's the one that makes the biggest difference for people in your position.”

Close (2 minutes): “I'll email you the link today. If you get stuck, reply to that email and it comes straight to me.”

Listen more than you talk, skip the feature tour and never pitch an upgrade. The member should leave with one clear next step and the sense that someone understands their goal.

What to do in the hour after the call

The follow-up is where much of the value lies, so do it while the conversation is fresh:

Email the link you recommended the same day, with a line that shows you listened, such as “Good luck with the foundation deadline next month.”
Note their goal, experience level, available time and anything you promised on their member record.
Set a reminder to check in at a natural point, such as a week after their deadline.
Once a month, read back through your notes for patterns worth turning into content.

When a call is not worth it, and what to do instead

For low-priced memberships with many sign-ups, one-to-one calls rarely make sense. You can still capture much of their value with a group welcome session held at a regular time, a short personal video for a member who shared their goal at sign-up, or an email that asks why they joined and gets a personal answer. If these conversations start to feel chaotic, a well-organized customer support setup will help you keep track of them.

Your first steps

Work out how many hours a month you can realistically give to welcome calls.
Choose one group of members to offer them to, starting with the members whose retention matters most.
Write your invitation email and set up a limited number of weekly booking slots.
Follow up the same day, keep notes and review them monthly.
After a few months, compare how long called members stay with those who were not called, and adjust who gets a call.