AI for Customer Onboarding: 6 ways teams are actually using it

Right now, somewhere in America, a robot is writing a handwritten note to welcome a new software customer.

Believe it or not, this isn’t science fiction.

(It would make a decent sci-fi novel if the robots went haywire, though.)

"All you do is you upload an address list and the message that you want to send and they have a bunch of robots in the background that do the handwriting," explains Alex Turkovic, Senior Director of Customer Experience at Belfry, a SaaS firm that uses AI workflows to trigger handwritten onboarding notes.

Robot-written welcome notes might sound like a gimmick, but they’re a great example of something bigger. Customer success teams are in the middle of an industry-shifting AI experiment that will fundamentally reshape how customers are onboarded.

How are people actually using AI for onboarding today? We've investigated how leading CS teams are adding AI into their onboarding processes—and the results might surprise you.

Where can AI add value for client onboarding?

The key to getting AI right in customer onboarding is understanding what it should—and shouldn't—handle.

• You don't want AI to replace the human elements of your onboarding journey. Those strategic conversations and relationship-building moments are what matter for long-term success.
• You do want AI to eliminate the busywork that keeps your team from having those meaningful customer interactions.

Here’s how Michael Forney, VP Customer Success at Responsive, explains the distinction: 

"If I have to interact with an AI all the time for software that I'm using, I don't necessarily mind that. But I'm not going to lunch with the AI. The human part is knowing that there are other humans inside of that organization who know about you and who are going to advocate for you."

Here’s what to keep in mind as you integrate AI into your onboarding:

• Let AI handle what it does best. AI is unbeatable at processing huge quantities of data, generating routine content, and spotting patterns that humans might miss. Use it for tasks like personalizing welcome materials or analyzing onboarding completion trends.
• Keep humans focused on human work. Your team should spend their time on strategic decision-making, building relationships, and showing empathy—not writing repetitive messages or updating tracking spreadsheets.
• Look for administrative bottlenecks. What are the routine tasks in your process that tend to create bottlenecks? Creating checklists, writing meeting summaries, and assigning tasks are all perfect candidates for AI help.
• Think enhancement, not replacement. The goal isn't to turn your high-touch onboarding into a fully automated experience. AI should help your team, not replace them.
• Start with internal processes. Before implementing customer-facing AI tools, look for opportunities to streamline your team's behind-the-scenes work.

Think of AI as a way to amplify your team's impact, not replace their expertise.

6 key use cases for AI onboarding

Here are the six most impactful applications of AI in customer onboarding we're seeing today.

1. Take repetitive onboarding tasks and admin work off CSMs’ plates

Maybe the most immediate benefit of AI in onboarding is its ability to handle routine administrative tasks—the kind of work that slows down your CSMs but doesn't directly add value for customers.

Gillian Heltai, Chief Customer Officer at Haus, describes the impact of outsourcing routine tasks to AI:

"It's great, because it's work that people hated doing: activity logging, meeting notes, recaps to customers. There was some value in it because it forces you to synthesize and summarize and prioritize and all of that. But this work, we can now just totally automate today through AI.”

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

• Meeting note-taking: With AI note-taking tools like Gong, says one CSM on Reddit, “I don't have to try typing notes while listening to the customer and asking questions. I can just focus on the conversation and review the notes later.”
• Prep and follow-up: CS teams are using AI to generate structured meeting notes, extract action items, and create personalized follow-up materials. Instead of spending 30 minutes after each kickoff call writing up notes and next steps, AI can do it in seconds.
• Emails: If your CSMs are copying and pasting generic ChatGPT text into customer emails (e.g., ”In today’s dynamic digital landscape…”) you might have a problem. But there are plenty of email use cases that don’t involve robotic AI text, like proofreading, editing for clarity, and adjusting an email’s tone.

🤖AI tip: Using Dock AI, you can convert Gong recordings or meeting transcripts into a recap, a project plan, or a list of action items—and then embed it directly into your Dock onboarding workspace.

2. Let AI handle your onboarding content

Another widely adopted use of AI in onboarding has been around content creation and personalization. 

AI systems can create and customize various types of user onboarding materials, from basic documentation to complex customer success plans.

We're seeing this play out in several ways:

• Onboarding documentation: Instead of spending hours writing guides and recording tutorials, CS teams are using tools that automatically generate documentation by watching you complete tasks. As a result, customers always have up-to-date resources while freeing CSMs from endless documentation maintenance.
• Intelligent personalization at scale: AI can analyze customer data to customize onboarding materials based on industry, use case, and behavior. Your healthcare clients see HIPAA-relevant examples, while your e-commerce customers get industry-specific guidance—all without manual customization from your team.
• AI-powered product guidance: It’s now possible to offer contextual in-app help that adapts to user behavior. Instead of generic product tours, customers get personalized guidance right when they need it.
• Video content at scale: AI video platforms let you create onboarding video tutorials for different customer segments (or even unique videos for each customer) without the traditional production overhead.

By letting AI handle these routine tasks, your CSMs can spend less time on admin work and more time on what matters most: helping customers succeed.

3. Make it easier for CS teams to find and use internal information

One of the biggest challenges for CS teams isn't a lack of information—it's finding the right information at the right time.

As Aftab Khanna of Deloitte Consulting points out, this eats up a lot of time:

"[CSMs] spend about 30% to 35% of their time on getting information from different data sources and compiling the right view of a customer account. And if you think about it, there’s a great role that AI can play by pulling information from different tools and areas, summarizing it, and giving them something to take into a customer meeting and talk about and really have them focus on the key areas that they need to.”

Here’s how AI makes it easier to organize and access internal knowledge:

• Smart content organization: AI can automatically tag and categorize internal documentation, making it easier for team members to find what they need. (No more digging through folders to find that one implementation guide you know exists somewhere.)
• Contextual recommendations: Based on the customer you're working with or the phase of onboarding you're in, AI can proactively suggest relevant resources, best practices, and process documentation.
• AI-powered knowledge base: When team members have questions about processes or best practices, AI can quickly surface relevant information. This saves time and reduces your dependency on tribal knowledge. (Your most knowledgeable CSMs—the ones everyone goes to with questions—might magically gain some extra time back.)

When your team can instantly access the right information, every customer interaction becomes a chance to focus on the relationship rather than a frantic search through shared drives and Slack channels.

4. Get more insights from your data

What if your CSMs started each day with an AI-generated priority list showing exactly which accounts needed attention? Not just surface-level metrics, but deep insights like:

• A customer who's three weeks past kickoff without completing technical integration
• An account showing unusual usage patterns that suggest they're struggling with key functionality
• A series of support tickets indicating growing onboarding frustration

This sort of thing is already happening with CS tools like Cust.co, which proactively highlights customer onboarding issues (like slow implementation) and suggests next steps to CSMs.

But there's a catch. For this to work, you need well-organized data, points out Jonathan Murray, Chief Strategy Officer at Mod Op—and most organizations aren’t there yet.

"… the fuel for AI is well-organized and well-curated data. And so many organizations even today have not gone through the work that's required to actually curate, organize, and link the key pieces of critical data that will be the underlying fuel for any AI initiative."

But once that foundation is in place, the potential is enormous. AI can analyze multiple data streams simultaneously—customer calls, onboarding results, sentiment analysis, and usage patterns—to identify trends and needle-in-a-haystack issues that would be nearly impossible for humans to spot.

5. Make customer support more helpful

When was the last time a customer actually got excited about your onboarding experience? Not just satisfied—but LinkedIn-post, tell-all-their-friends excited?

For Boardy, an AI networking app, this happens regularly. Their secret is a uniquely painless customer onboarding process that—unlike most onboardings—happens by voice via an AI-driven phone conversation.

Here’s how Lauren Vriens, a consultant, reacted to the Boardy onboarding experience:

While AI voice onboarding might not work for every B2B SaaS product (though it might be a fun way to kick things off), the broader lesson is clear: AI support has evolved far beyond basic chatbots.

AI agents can serve as a first point of contact for new customers during onboarding: offering personalized onboarding experiences, making suggestions, and answering common questions. 

When implementations go off-track, AI agents can jump in with proactive follow-ups, or reach out with specialized instructions to help with technical integrations.

6. Create a hybrid AI/human onboarding flow

The goal isn't to replace your CSMs with artificial intelligence. Anyone who's been bombarded by automated emails or frustrated by a poorly trained AI chatbot knows that CSMs will remain critical to high-touch onboarding experiences.

But leading CS teams are rapidly adopting hybrid, human-in-the-loop onboarding workflows that combine AI, automation, and human expertise.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Dynamic checklists that adapt to customer needs
• Automated progress tracking that spots bottlenecks before they happen
• Smart task scheduling that keeps implementations on track

Whatever AI and automated elements you add to your onboarding flow will need periodic oversight, says Alex Turkovic, Sr. Director of Customer Experience at Belfry:

"You have to insert yourself into your customer's journey on a regular basis as a leader, because if you're not doing that, you're not actively seeing what emails get triggered when and what notifications go out when. The more automation you put in place without checks and balances, the more likely you're just confusing your customer with stuff coming at them all over the place."

This is why modern onboarding workspaces—like Dock—focus on hybrid workflows that give you:

• Automation for repetitive tasks
• AI help for complex processes
• Human oversight where it matters most
• Full control over the customer experience

How should CS organizations think about introducing AI?

Instead of rolling out AI technology from the top down, take a collaborative, team-wide approach. 

Start by talking to your team about where they spend too much time or get frustrated, both internally and with customers. Instead of asking, "What can AI do,” ask, "What slows us down?"

Since 44% of US employees report using AI for work tasks, your team is probably already using AI in ways you didn't know about. Figure out what’s working well and consider making it an official part of your process, or even building it into an internal tool. (Just remember to set clear boundaries upfront, like "don't use AI-generated text directly in customer emails.”)

Here's a structured approach to implementing AI in your CS organization:

Phase 1: Start small and internally

Start with simple internal tools that help your team work better. Meeting notes are a great first step—everyone needs them but no one likes taking them. Leverage AI to turn recordings into notes, summaries, and to-do lists. 

Then move on to organizing your internal documents to make it easy for CSMs to find what they need.

Phase 2: Bring it to customers

Start using AI to improve how you work with customers. Personalizing welcome materials and creating training guides are both good places to start. 

Consider experimenting with more advanced applications too, like AI agents and predictive analytics.

Phase 3: Keep evolving

AI changes fast. After trying these first steps for a few months, you'll likely find that the landscape has already shifted. Consider having someone on your team keep track of new AI tools and use cases that could make your work easier.

How will you know if your AI efforts have been effective? 

According to a 2024 Gainsight survey:

• 73% of CS leaders are looking for increased CSM productivity
• 55% are measuring effects on retention; and 
• 48% want to see more time for customer interaction

Best AI tools for customer onboarding

If you're nodding along, thinking "this all sounds great, but where do I start?"—you're not alone. Most CS teams begin with a single pain point they're trying to solve, then expand from there.

Let's look at the AI tools making the biggest impact in onboarding today.

1. Dock

Dock has always helped teams manage onboarding through collaborative workspaces. Now, with Dock AI, teams can use AI to create and maintain customer content.

The new Dock AI widget turns customer interactions—whether from call transcripts, documents, or Gong recordings—into tailored workspace content in just a few clicks. 

Instead of spending hours writing meeting recaps or success plans, you can use AI to go from kickoff call to personalized onboarding workspace even faster.

2. ChatGPT and other large language models

The easiest way to get started with AI is to play around with general-purpose large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude.

While they aren’t as streamlined for onboarding as a purpose-built AI app, LLMs are a low-commitment way to test your assumptions and figure out what AI use cases actually save you time.

For example, you could ask Claude to come up with personalized onboarding plan templates for different user personas, or ask ChatGPT to extract action items from a call recording.

3. AI meeting assistants

Here's an unfortunate truth about onboarding calls: even the best CSMs struggle to take detailed notes while actually engaging with customers. As a result, note-taking tools are one of most widely adopted categories of AI onboarding tools.

Gong is a popular choice, but you might also consider testing Avoma, Fathom, Grain, Otter, or Fireflies. Any one of these tools will help you capture and summarize your conversations with customers so you don’t miss a word. 

With tools like Fathom, you even have back-and-forth conversations with a built-in chatbot to figure out what was discussed in past meetings—complete with links to the relevant meeting clips.

4. Personalized user onboarding platforms

Designing a personalized user experience for onboarding used to mean either hiring more CSMs or accepting that only enterprise customers would get the personal touch.

But tools like Userpilot and Pendo are changing that. Instead of generic product tours, you can analyze how customers actually use your product and adapt in real time. 

For example, new users can get extra help with the basics, while power users jump straight to advanced features.

5. Data enrichment tools

When you're getting a complex implementation off the ground, you need to know who's who, what they care about, and what was promised during the sales process. But digging through Slack threads and CRM notes is time-consuming. It’s also risky: a neglected stakeholder or forgotten promise could derail your onboarding.

That's why CS teams are borrowing a page from the sales playbook. Tools like Gong and Clari don't just record calls—they help CS spot when new stakeholders appear, flag concerns before they become problems, and let new CSMs learn from your team's best onboarding conversations.

6. Personalized onboarding videos

Recording personalized onboarding videos for every customer segment (or every customer) used to be a luxury reserved for only the highest-touch onboarding processes. Now, AI is making personalized video possible at scale—though it still has a few “uncanny valley” issues to work out.

Tools like Synthesia and HeyGen let you create custom product walkthroughs and training videos without extensive production work. 

The results can sometimes feel a bit artificial, but for basic product walkthroughs and feature updates, they're already saving CS teams significant time.

7. Smart documentation

Creating and maintaining onboarding documentation has always been a massive time sink for CS teams. And unfortunately, there’s an inherent trade-off: the more time you spend writing guides, the less time you have to actually guide customers.

AI documentation tools are changing this dynamic. 

Instead of writing step-by-step instructions, tools like Scribe watch you complete a task and automatically create the guide. Record it once, and the tool handles the rest—creating documentation that's always accurate and up-to-date.

Guidde takes a similar approach but focuses on video documentation, making it easy to create and maintain visual guides without endless retakes and edits. 

Meanwhile, Levity handles another documentation headache: checking that everything's properly signed and filled out. It automatically verifies onboarding documents and triggers the right workflows to keep implementation moving.

8. Conversation intelligence

Getting customers successfully onboarded means having lots of meaningful conversations—from technical deep dives to change management discussions. But how do you make sure every conversation moves customers closer to value?

Conversation intelligence platforms like Chorus help you understand which topics keep coming up, where customers typically get stuck, and what approaches work best for different types of implementations. 

Tools like Outreach Kaia take this further by surfacing relevant information during calls—whether that's product specs, pricing details, or technical documentation—so your team always has the right answers ready.

Create smarter onboarding experiences with Dock AI

The AI revolution in customer onboarding is already here—but it might not look like what you expected. Instead of robots replacing CSMs, we're seeing AI handle the routine work that keeps your team from having meaningful customer conversations.

Whether you're just starting to explore AI or looking to take your onboarding process to the next level, the goal is the same: find use cases that boost your team’s efficiency without sacrificing the human touch that drives customer success.

Ready to transform your onboarding process? 

Get started with Dock to see how AI-powered workspaces can help you deliver personalized, efficient onboarding experiences at scale.