— Door 03 · Concept deliverable
Onboarding is where churn is won or lost.
For a bootstrapped, profitable company, every retained clinic compounds — so onboarding can't end at "switched on." This is a customer-success system that runs from signup to retention: the activation milestones that prove a clinic is getting value, a weighted health-score that flags risk early, the proactive "call before they fall off" cadence the brief asks for, a scaling path across AU/UK/NZ, and the metrics worth watching. My interpretation of how I'd build the function — shown as concept work, not Aeva's internal system.
— 01 · Activation
Four milestones that mean "value delivered"
"Onboarded" is a feeling; "activated" is measurable. A clinic isn't really live until it crosses these — and each one is a checkpoint I'd drive, not hope for.
01 · Connected
Live on Cliniko
Aeva connected, hours/services mapped, a test booking written back to Cliniko successfully.
Day 1–3
02 · First real call
Answered a patient
Aeva has handled at least one genuine inbound call and the clinic has seen the result.
Day 3–5
03 · First saved call
Caught what they'd have missed
An after-hours or overflow call booked that the front desk would have lost. The "aha" moment.
Week 1
04 · Trusted
Phones left on, unprompted
The clinic keeps forwarding on through a full week without hesitation. That's real activation.
Week 2
— 02 · Health score
A weighted read of who's actually OK
A simple, transparent score so the team always knows which clinics to leave alone and which to call. Weighted toward the signals that actually predict churn — usage and the human read, not vanity logins.
Usage & bookingscalls answered · bookings to Cliniko · trend
30%
Forwarding livephones actually pointed at Aeva
25%
Activation depthmilestones crossed (section 01)
20%
Sentimenttone on calls · complaints · my read
15%
Engagementresponds to check-ins · logs in
10%
Why weighted this way: a clinic can log in every day and still churn if Aeva isn't actually catching calls — so real usage and live forwarding carry the most weight. A green score means leave them be; amber and red drive the cadence below. No expensive tooling required to start — this runs in a spreadsheet on day one and graduates into proper CS tooling as the clinic count grows.
— 03 · The cadence
"Call before they fall off" — made systematic
The brief's key line, turned from instinct into a rhythm. Each health band gets a defined motion, so no at-risk clinic slips through because everyone assumed someone else had it.
● Green · nurture
Light, value-led touch
- Day 14 + Day 30 value recap in their own numbers
- Quarterly "anything we can tune?" check
- Ask for the referral / review once they're delighted
● Amber · reach out
Proactive call this week
- Triggered automatically when the score dips
- "Noticed it's gone quiet — can I help tune it?"
- Fix the one prompt/setting that's the blocker
- Re-confirm forwarding is fully on
● Red · save
Personal call today
- Same-day human call, founders looped if needed
- Listen first — understand the real reason
- Fix, or offer a guided reset / pause not cancel
- Log the churn reason to fix it upstream
— 04 · Scale
One playbook, three countries
Aeva is already live across AU, UK and NZ — so the system has to scale across time zones and small local differences without losing the human call. Remote-first by design, which suits how I work.
🇦🇺
Australia
Home base, AEST. Cliniko's strongest market — the reference playbook and most onboarding calls anchor here.
🇳🇿
New Zealand
Near-zone overlap — same-day onboarding calls are easy. Minor local terminology and holiday tweaks to the scripts.
🇬🇧
United Kingdom
Time-zone gap handled with async setup + a booked live call in their morning. AI-drafted prep means a UK clinic never waits.
— 05 · Metrics
What a bootstrapped team should watch
Not a vanity dashboard — the four numbers that tell you whether onboarding is working and revenue is safe. Targets are illustrative placeholders to show the shape, not Aeva's real figures.
Time to value
< 5 days
Signup → first saved call. The faster, the stickier.
Activation rate
% to M4
Clinics reaching "trusted / phones left on" in 14 days.
At-risk caught
Lead time
Days between a red flag and the save call. Lower = better.
Logo retention
Net churn
The number onboarding ultimately protects for a bootstrapped P&L.
Honest note: This is a concept system I designed for my application — the milestones, the weighted score, the cadence, the metrics. It is my interpretation of how I'd build the function, not Aeva's internal customer-success system, and all weights, targets and figures are illustrative. The real model would be calibrated against Aeva's actual data, product behaviour and churn patterns in the first weeks — and I'd genuinely want to learn the allied-health/Cliniko domain to sharpen it. See Door 01 for the honest fit map.