Top Signs Your Onboarding Is Hurting Adoption

Jan 21, 2026 | Articles

SaaS customers in 2026 are looking for seamless self-service user experiences – and that extends to onboarding, product education, and developer enablement. As products evolve and customer expectations rise, onboarding  has become a critical driver of adoption, retention, and long-term growth.

Yet, many SaaS companies treat onboarding as a one-and-done activity. When that happens, early friction goes unnoticed, adoption slows, and teams miss clear warning signs that customers are struggling – or disengaging entirely.

So, what red flags can CX and CS leaders identify and address, to drive stronger adoption outcomes in 2026? Here are four signs that your customer onboarding needs a refresh (and the best KPIs to measure post-onboarding adoption).

Four onboarding red flags to address this year

Red Flag #1: Product changes weekly, but onboarding can’t keep up.

When product roadmaps move fast, but onboarding content lags behind, activation and adoption suffer.

How to keep onboarding on track with product releases:

  • Make critical info easily discoverable: Customers, partners, support agents, sales teams, should have intuitive and instant access to documentation, demos, and learning resources – whether through an internal LMS or an external customer training portal .
  • Use AI to surface the latest guidance instantly: SaaS companies that build customer academies with Litmos LMS are able to securely connect their own training libraries with the Litmos AI assistant, so that customers who ask for AI summaries and course recommendations, get the most accurate, up-to-date, and relevant product info without leaving the onboarding experience or opening a support ticket.
  • Automate review and approval workflows: Replace ad hoc reminders with automated review cycles. Trigger alerts when onboarding content hasn’t been updated in a set timeframe, or when related product changes are released.

KPIs to track moving forward:

  • Content update frequency
  • Time to update training content
  • Engagement with latest content
  • Reduction in support tickets tied to outdated information
  • Post-update learner feedback and course completion rates post-update

Red Flag #2: Content updates stretch lean teams to their limit.

If your onboarding content is out-of-date, inaccurate, or irrelevant, customer drop-off is inevitable. In most cases, this isn’t a lack of effort — it’s a lack of time, resources, or scalable tools. When lean training teams are forced to manually update courses, documents, and learning paths, content can quickly fall behind product and process changes.

How to keep onboarding content fresh without burning out your team:

  • Centralize content creation and updates: Managing courses, documentation, videos, and assessments  from a single system of record. reduces duplication of effort and eliminates version-control chaos.
  • Use AI to accelerate content maintenance: AI content authoring tools tools can dramatically reduce the time it takes training teams to update onboarding materials, rewrite sections, summarize updates, refresh outdated modules, and apply changes across multiple courses at once .
  • Standardize templates and modular content: Breaking onboarding into reusable, modular components makes updating content more manageable and consistent. while improving version control across the learning ecosystem.

KPIs to track moving forward:

  • Content review cadence
  • Time spent on content updates
  • Customer drop-off during onboarding

Red Flag #3: Ramp time slows to a halt.

If your time-to-value (TTV) stretches longer than expected, it’s a clear sign that onboarding isn’t doing its job. New employees, customers, and partners need clear, role-specific guidance that gets them productive fast — without friction, confusion, or unnecessary handholding.

How to shorten ramp time and accelerate time-to-value:

  • Create structured, role-based onboarding paths: Tailoring onboarding by role, use case, or customer segment ensures learners focus only on what matters most to them, speeding up comprehension and confidence. Growing SaaS companies use AI to personalize learning paths at scale while giving learners more control over their onboarding journeys.
  • Deliver learning in the flow of work: Embedded AI assistance, in-app links, and robust search within the learning portal reduces context switching so that learners can find answers to their product questions in the exact moment they need them.
  • Measure progress early and often: Knowledge checks, milestones, and progress dashboards help teams identify where learners get stuck — and intervene before ramp time stalls.

KPIs to track moving forward:

  • Time-to-Value (TTV)
  • Onboarding completion time
  • First-action success rate
  • Early adoption metrics
  • Learner confidence scores

Red Flag #4: Support tickets skyrocket.

High support volume during onboarding is often a symptom – not the root cause. When users can’t find answers during onboarding, they often default to opening tickets, increasing operational costs  and frustrating both customers and support teams.

How to reduce support volume through smarter onboarding:

  • Anticipate common questions during onboarding: Analyze early-stage support data to identify recurring issues and address them proactively in onboarding content .
  • Make self-service the default: Onboarding portals should surface FAQs, tutorials, walkthroughs, and AI-powered search results as the first line of support.
  • Equip support teams with instant access to training content: Support teams should be able to surface, summarize, and quickly link to onboarding training content during customer interactions.
  • Use AI to deflect tickets in real time: AI assistants embedded in onboarding environments can instantly answer questions using verified training content, reducing  redundant inquiries while maintaining accuracy and security.

KPIs to track moving forward:

  • Support tickets per new user
  • Time to first response
  • Repeat ticket categories
  • Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) post-onboarding

Align onboarding with business goals

As SaaS organizations navigate rapid product change and increasing customer expectations, investing in a robust learning management system (LMS) that can scale and personalize onboarding experiences is no longer optional, it’s essential.

A flexible all-in-one LMS can empower customer-facing teams to deliver relevant, up-to-date training tailored to each user’s needs, driving faster adoption, higher satisfaction, and long-term loyalty.

When onboarding keeps pace with your product and your customers, it becomes a powerful growth lever – not a hidden liability.

See how Litmos helps SaaS teams turn onboarding an adoption driver. Talk to a Litmos team member today!