Customer onboarding template

This customer onboarding template turns that playbook into a reusable Jira Epic, with the kick-off call, account setup, training, milestones, and go-live checklist pre-wired underneath. Copy the template above straight into a Jira issue, or read on for the customer onboarding checklist, the onboarding phases, a good-versus-weak example, and how to turn the structure into a reusable template with Process Templates for Jira.

What this template captures and why

In Customer Success, onboarding is the moment a sale becomes a working relationship. A standardized template is a pre-defined format for managing that process: the customer’s details, the start date, the onboarding plan, the training and support resources, and the relevant milestones, all in one Epic.

The payoff is consistency. When every account runs through the same shape, deviations surface early, handovers between CSMs are clean, and nothing important gets skipped because someone built the ticket from memory.

Customer onboarding vs employee onboarding

These two share a word and almost nothing else, so it is worth being explicit. This page is a customer onboarding template: a new customer or account adopting your product, owned by Customer Success, measured by time to first value. It is not employee onboarding, which is an HR process for a new hire joining your company, owned by People or IT, and concerned with paperwork, equipment, and first-week setup.

If you landed here looking to onboard a new team member, use the Employee onboarding template instead. Everything below is about getting a paying customer live, not a colleague.

The customer onboarding checklist

The fastest way to make onboarding repeatable is to run it from a checklist rather than from memory. This template builds that checklist into three of its list fields, Onboarding steps, Account setup, and Training and support, so each item becomes a tickable sub-task on the Epic. A complete customer onboarding checklist looks like this:

• Welcome and kick-off. Send the welcome email, schedule and run the kick-off call, confirm goals and stakeholders, and agree on the go-live date.
• Provision the account. Create logins, configure workspace settings, and verify SSO so the customer can log in on day one.
• Import and validate data. Migrate existing data, then check it together so the customer trusts what they see.
• Train the team. Deliver the admin webinar and the onboarding calls, and share the getting-started guide and recorded videos.
• Go-live review. Confirm the first workflow is live, walk the customer through it, and sign off go-live.
• Follow up. Run the day-14 check-in and the day-30 satisfaction survey, then hand over to the ongoing CSM cadence.

Keeping this as a checklist on the Epic means progress is visible on the board, and nothing on the list quietly gets skipped.

The onboarding phases

Most B2B customer onboarding moves through four phases. Naming them keeps reporting honest and tells everyone where an account stands at a glance.

1. Kick-off. Align on the goal the customer bought the product for, confirm the sponsor, admin, and end-user lead, and set both anchor dates. This is where the Onboarding kick-off date and Stakeholders fields earn their place.
2. Implementation. Provision the account, configure it for this customer, and import their data. The Account setup checklist drives this phase, and it is usually where time slips, so treat it as the critical path.
3. Training. Get admins and end users productive with webinars, onboarding calls, and self-serve materials. The Training and support and Onboarding materials fields cover it.
4. Go-live. Confirm the first real workflow is live, prove first value, and hand the account to the ongoing CSM cadence with the day-14 and day-30 follow-ups already scheduled.

The Key milestones field maps one clear signal to each phase: kick-off complete, first workflow live, team trained, go-live signed off. That gives you a four-point progress bar for every account in your Jira customer onboarding pipeline.

Field-by-field breakdown

• Description (long text): the one-paragraph summary of this onboarding, including the goal and the time window for first value.
• Customer information: company name, industry, and the primary contact, so anyone picking up the Epic knows who they are serving.
• Account size (dropdown): Starter, Growth, or Enterprise. This single field can branch how much hands-on support the rest of the plan assumes.
• Onboarding kick-off date and Target go-live date: the two anchor dates that frame the whole engagement.
• Customer Success Manager: the owner accountable for the account reaching go-live.
• Onboarding steps, Account setup, Onboarding materials, Training and support (checklists): the working lists. Each is a sub-task or checklist item the team ticks off as the customer moves forward.
• Key milestones: the few moments that prove progress, such as kick-off complete, first workflow live, and go-live signed off.
• Feedback and follow-up: the day-14 check-in, the day-30 survey, and the handover to the ongoing CSM cadence, so onboarding ends deliberately rather than just fading out.
• Stakeholders: the sponsor, the admin, and the end-user lead on the customer side.
• Additional information (long text): anything specific to this account that the standard plan does not cover.

Turn the variable fields (customer, account size, dates, CSM) into template variables so they are filled in at create time, while the checklist structure stays fixed.

Best practices

• Wire sub-tasks under the Epic. The Epic is the playbook; the real work lives in Story or sub-task templates that auto-create beneath it. Process Templates for Jira can chain a parent to its children so kick-off, provisioning, training, and the go-live checklist all appear in one create action.
• Use a dropdown for account size, not free text. A constrained list keeps reporting clean and lets you standardize the plan per tier.
• Set dates as variables, not hard-coded values. Prompt for the kick-off and go-live dates when the Epic is created so they are right for each customer. You can prefill the rest of the create screen automatically.
• Keep milestones short. Three to five milestones that genuinely signal progress beat a long list nobody updates.
• Always include feedback and follow-up. Onboarding that has no defined end tends to drift; the day-14 and day-30 touchpoints close it cleanly.

A good Epic versus a weak one

A weak onboarding Epic looks like a single ticket titled “Onboard Acme” with a paragraph of notes in the description. Nobody knows who owns what, the go-live date lives in someone’s calendar, and the next CSM who inherits it has to reconstruct the plan from scratch.

A good one uses this template: the Epic carries the customer, account size, CSM, and both anchor dates as fields, and the kick-off call, account setup, training, and go-live checklist exist as linked sub-tasks with their own owners. The progress is visible on the board, the milestones report up cleanly, and onboarding the next customer is a 30-second create action instead of an afternoon of copy-paste.

How to use this template in Jira

1. Build one onboarding Epic with sub-tasks the way you want it, with the kick-off, account setup, training and go-live sub-tasks underneath, then save it as a template. See creating issue templates for the full walkthrough.
2. Mark the per-customer fields as variables (customer, account size, dates, CSM) so they are requested at create time. See template variables.
3. Create the onboarding Epic from the template when a new customer signs, and fill in the variables. The Epic and its sub-tasks are generated together with links intact.
4. Onboard each customer with a single launch after a sign-up or migration, launching the template once per customer to build the full onboarding Epic and its sub-tasks.

Frequently asked questions

What is a customer onboarding template? A customer onboarding template is a predefined Jira Epic that captures everything a new account needs to reach first value: the customer’s details, the kick-off and go-live dates, the onboarding steps, the account setup, training and support, key milestones, and feedback and follow-up. Saved once, it lets every Customer Success Manager onboard the next account the same way without rebuilding the structure.

What should a customer onboarding checklist include? A customer onboarding checklist should cover the kick-off call, account provisioning and configuration, data import or migration, training sessions, a go-live review, and a defined follow-up such as a day-14 check-in and a day-30 satisfaction survey. The checklists in this template (Onboarding steps, Account setup, Training and support) give you that list as tickable sub-tasks.

What are the phases of customer onboarding? Most B2B onboarding runs through four phases: kick-off (align on goals and confirm stakeholders), implementation (provision the account, configure it, and import data), training (get admins and end users productive), and go-live (confirm first value and hand over to the ongoing CSM cadence). The Key milestones field maps one signal to each phase.

Is this template for customer onboarding or employee onboarding? This template is for customer onboarding: a new customer or account adopting your product, owned by Customer Success. It is not employee onboarding, which is an HR process for a new hire joining your company. If you need the HR version, use the employee onboarding template instead; it covers IT provisioning, paperwork, and first-week setup.

Related templates

Pair the customer onboarding template with the rest of your Customer Success workflow: the Customer feedback template for what accounts tell you after go-live, the Employee onboarding template for the HR side, and the User story template for the product work onboarding surfaces. Or browse the full template library for matching formats across software, ITSM and support work.