Support
Client onboarding that stops depending on memory
Every project started differently, so the first fortnight was rebuilt as a written sequence with owners, triggers and one weekly check.
- Category
- Support
- Year
- 2026
- Type
- Operations and client onboarding
01
The situation
The practice is six people and signs between two and four projects a month. Everything after the signature depends on the founder: the welcome message, the deposit invoice, the folder, the kickoff call, the access requests, the brief.
None of it is difficult. All of it is remembered. When two projects start in the same week one of them gets a slower start, and the client notices the thing that arrived late rather than the six things that arrived on time.
The practice did not want new software. It wanted the first fortnight to happen the same way every time, whoever is running it.
02
What we looked at
- The last eight projects, reconstructed from the inbox, to see what actually happened rather than what was supposed to.
- Where each one lost time, and whether the cause was a missing step, a missing document or a decision waiting on the founder.
- The documents already in use, including three versions of the same welcome email.
- Which steps genuinely need the founder, and which only need somebody to own them.
03
What Toyzie did
- 01
Reconstructed the sequence that already exists
Before designing anything, the real steps were written in order, with the time each took and the person it waited on. Most of the delay sat in four places.
- 02
Cut the sequence to eleven steps
Some steps were duplicates and two existed only because a document was hard to find. What remains is eleven steps across ten working days, each with an owner and a trigger.
- 03
Wrote the documents once
One welcome email, one access request, one kickoff agenda, one project brief. Each written to be sent as it stands, with the fields that change marked clearly.
- 04
Moved the founder out of eight of the eleven steps
The founder stays on the kickoff call, the brief and the scope confirmation. The rest can be run by anyone in the practice following the written sequence.
- 05
Added one weekly check
A ten minute review of every project still inside its first fortnight, so a stalled step is caught while it is a small problem.
04
The work
An office at the end of the day, low sun across a desk, a printed checklist with three items ticked and a pen resting on it.
- An onboarding sequence of eleven steps, with owners, triggers and expected timings.
- Four templates ready to send, replacing the versions that were being rewritten each time.
- A folder structure and naming convention matching how the practice already files work.
- A one page weekly check, and a short handover note so the sequence does not depend on one person.
05
What good looks like
This is what the work is judged against, agreed at the start so progress can be checked against something specific.
- A new project starts the same way whether it is the first that month or the fourth.
- The founder is needed at three points rather than eleven, which is the difference between absorbing a new project in a busy week and delaying it.
- The first fortnight reads as organised to the client, because it follows a sequence rather than a memory.
- When somebody new joins, onboarding is something they can read and run, not something they learn by watching.
06
Closing thought
Support is often described as taking tasks off a list. The more useful version is making the list unnecessary: writing the recurring parts of a business down clearly enough that they no longer need the person who invented them.
If the same problem is sitting in your business, start there.
Describe the situation in your own words. The first reply will set out how Toyzie Studio would approach it and what could realistically be established first.