CX Onboarding 101

Hii!

Exciting and busy week here. Minus some torrential downpours, the weather is nice and getting warmer. Super hectic week before we take off Saturday night to Tel Aviv for a month.

I always love the change of pace and endless hummus, and I'm excited to bring that energy back to these words. 

A topic I have been asked quite a bit about here is onboarding. Most onboarding looks like a Google Doc, a shared inbox, and a Slack message saying, “let me know if you have questions.” 

New reps burn out or sound robotic because no one gave them the context or coaching they actually need.

Today, I want to give you some practical and lightweight CX onboarding tips.

Quick and painless, and hopefully helpful.

Let’s dive in. 

This week’s newsie is brought to you by EcomExperts. 

EcomExperts is an agency offering persuasive design + engineering for some of the best Shopify stores in ecom. They work with brands like Jones Road, Malbon Golf & Winc.

You just read how thoughtful onboarding turns new CX reps into high‑impact pros. Guess what? Your store needs onboarding, too—the moment a shopper lands, your site either guides them or loses them.

With tariffs squeezing margins and consumer confidence down, every abandoned click now hurts twice. That’s why brands bring in EcomExperts.

We build the shopper‑onboarding engine inside Shopify

• Persuasive, data‑backed design
  We translate your brand voice and CX values into layouts, high-converting PDPs, and funnels that shepherd visitors from landing to “add to cart.”
  

• Lightning‑fast performance
  Our ex‑Shopify team rips out app bloat, refactor Liquid, and add +12–25 points to your mobile speed score—because a stalled loader is the worst onboarding.
  

• Iterate, test, repeat
  Built‑in A/B testing and step‑by‑step playbooks keep your team learning and improving long after the sprint ends.

Tariff‑Season OPEX‑Slash Sprint

For the next four weeks we’re working at internal cost only—no agency margin—so you cut operating spend while conversion climbs. Capacity is capped to maintain our sub‑one‑hour Slack response times.

Brands vouch for the impact

“We’ve been thrilled—never had a good agency recommendation until now.”
 — Cody Plofker, CEO Jones Road Beauty

“It’s been an absolute pleasure… one of the best teams I’ve seen in 25 years.”
 — Craig Gillen, CEO iRocker & former VP E‑com at YETI

➜ Ready to give shoppers the onboarding they deserve—and rescue your OPEX?

Book a call with Jeremy (employee #4 at Shopify) via the link below. We’ll show the exact milliseconds (and dollars) we can win back.

1. This might sound like a no-brainer

Onboarding shouldn’t start with a help desk platform login or a list of macros. It should start with what you actually believe about the customer. Who are they? How can we make their day better? What are our actual values as a CX team?

Most CX teams say they care about the customer, but that doesn’t mean anything unless your new hire hears it early, clearly, and often.

Walk them through your team values. Not the fluffy company mission statement. The real ones that guide how you show up every day. 

Here is a slide from the deck we shared with every CX hire at OLIPOP.

It helps them make decisions. Do I refund this? Do I push back? Do I escalate? These choices get a lot easier when the team knows what matters most.

Give specific examples. Talk through situations where those values made the difference. If your brand believes in personalization, show them how that looks in real tickets. If your value is “be part of the solution,” walk them through a moment where a rep flagged a recurring issue and helped fix it upstream.

Starting with values makes the rest of the onboarding smoother. It gives everything context. Tools and workflows are important, but they’re not at all what makes your team special.

2. This might sound silly

Tone matters. It’s how customers experience your brand when things aren’t going perfectly. If your CX team is handling hundreds of conversations a day, how they write shapes how the brand feels. That consistency is what makes support feel like part of the same universe as your ads, packaging, or website.

At OLIPOP, we shared this voice slide during onboarding.

It helped set direction, but the more important work came after. We sat with new reps and walked through real tickets. Some were messy. Some were sensitive. Some were just strange. That’s how you show what the voice looks like across different moments, channels, and moods.

You don’t need every rep to write the same way. But you do need them to understand what fits. When to pull back. When to lean in. When to prioritize warmth and when to get straight to the point. That kind of judgment doesn’t always show up in a static doc. 

I also recommend sending a writing project before hiring. A few ticket scenarios, nothing fancy. You’ll see fast whether their instincts are even in the right ballpark. 

A real estate closer from New York and a second-career parent from Georgia won’t write the same way. That’s fine. But you should be intentional about the voice you’re building.

3. This is what good looks like 

Most new hires want to get it right. What they don’t have is a working definition of what “good” means on your team. Without that, they freeze, ask a million questions, or copy whoever looks confident, even if that person’s doing it wrong.

During onboarding, we shared examples of tickets that worked. Not because they were fast or hit a macro. Because they showed care. Because they solved the problem in a clean way. Because they left the customer feeling heard.

We also shared the ones that didn’t work. One where the tone was too flat. One where the macro was pasted in without context. One where the rep answered the surface-level question but ignored the actual problem. These weren’t used to shame anyone. They helped show what good looks like by contrast.

Walk through your escalation flow and tagging rules, too. Most teams default to “ask if you’re unsure,” but it helps to actually spell out what’s considered high priority, when it makes sense to bring someone in, and what a second set of eyes is for.

If your goal is quality, then quality needs to be visible. Show what it looks like. Talk about it. And give them room to get there.

4. This is what slows people down

One of the fastest ways to kill momentum on a new CX hire is leaving them unsure of who owns what. They’re not afraid to ask questions. They just don’t want to ask the wrong person. So they either DM five people or sit on something too long.

During onboarding at OLIPOP, we gave every rep a cheat sheet like the one below.

Contrary to what the SOP maniacs might say, most questions don’t need a long doc. They just need a name. A Slack handle. An email.

We also made it clear that #cx in Slack was the first stop. If you’re not sure where something lands, start there. It’s on the rest of the team to guide you.

This part of onboarding doesn’t need to be complicated. It just needs to be clear. What’s actually in your team’s scope, and what gets escalated out. New reps don’t need to memorize it all, but they should know where to look when something feels off.

The smoother this handoff feels, the more confident they get. 

5. This is what makes or breaks the first month

You can give someone the cleanest onboarding doc in the world. If they’re still guessing after week one, none of it matters.

At OLIPOP, we made feedback part of the daily rhythm. Not formal reviews or long check-ins. Just small moments that helped people course-correct. A quick Slack thread on a tricky ticket. A “this was solid” callout in team chat.

We also made space for uncertainty. New hires don’t always speak up when they’re unsure — they don’t want to slow things down or ask the wrong question. So we built that into our check-ins. Show me two tickets you weren’t sure about. Let’s walk through them. That kind of feedback loop builds confidence fast.

And when someone gets it right, call it out. Show the rest of the team. Even the rest of the company on the #general channel if it’s a big win. Let good work be seen.

That’s it for this week!

Any topics you'd like to see me cover in the future?

Just shoot me a DM or an email!

Cheers, 

Eli 💛

P.S. Looking for inspo on your next email/sms campaign?

I know you will love this.