Accelerating Coach Matching Through Strategic Onboarding


Reducing time-to-value for enterprise coaching programs at Torch

B2B . ONBOARDING

What's this about?

Problem . My role . Solution

Problem

Customers waited 1-2 weeks for their employees to get matched with a professional coach

Torch had little-to-no onboarding as coaching participants ("coachees") were dropped into the product the moment after signing up.
1 - 2 weeks
Average time to complete match profile
No context
Average time to complete match profile
My Role
MY ROLE
Co-lead
Research & Design
TIMELINE
3 months
Research: 2 / Design: 1
PLATFORM
Web
Responsive design
COMPANY
Torch
B2B coaching platform
Solution

A strategic onboarding flow that guides coachees from selection to matching

1
Audited & researched the end-to-end experience
I co-led an effort to audit and research the current coach & coachee experience from the beginning of a typical 6-month coaching engagement to the end.
2
Identified onboarding as critical intervention point
Once I synthesized and presented the findings, we identified product onboarding as one of the most critical pain points to address.
3
Designed new onboarding flow with cross-functional team
I collaborated with stakeholders to create a new onboarding flow to help coachees understand why they were selected and what to do next.
TARGET GOAL
48 hrs.
Time to complete (from 1-2 weeks)
Before

Dropped Into Ambiguity

What participants experienced:
  • Sign up for Torch → Immediately land on "Path" page
  • See various navigation options with no guidance
  • Eventually discover match profile buried in resources (key action)
  • Take 1-2 weeks to complete (if at all)
Journey timeline

Providing Strategic Guidance

What participants NOW experienced:
  • Sign up for Torch → Land on WITC welcome page
  • Understand why selected, what to expect, what to do next
  • Immediately directed to match profile with clear progress
  • Complete within 48 hours
Journey timeline

How did we get there?

Problem . Research . Framing

THE CONTEXT

A critical problem at the moment that mattered most
Torch's B2B enterprise platform matched thousands of employees with professional coaches annually, but delayed launches were undermining the ROI promise and creating significant churn risk.

THE SYMPTOM

1-2 week delay in match profile completion
Coaching participants ("coachees") took 1-2 weeks to complete their match profile—the critical action that triggered pairing with a coach.
Why was this happening
Leadership impact
"Is Torch fulfilling its core promise to unlock the potential of people, teams, and organizations?"
When new product leadership arrived, they immediately questioned our value delivery. The problems, they observed, began the moment someone signed up.
KEY QUESTION
How might we accelerate the first critical action and deliver value from day one?
This became our north star: reduce time-to-match, improve completion rates, and prove Torch's value promise from the moment of sign-up.

THE RESEARCH

Identifying the highest-leverage opportunity
After reviewing past user feedback, experiencing the flows ourselves, and synthesizing themes, I presented five critical problem areas to leadership.
The Five Critical Problems
1. Product Onboarding (PRIORITY)
Identified as highest-leverage opportunity. No guidance for new coachees, leading to 1-2 week delays in match profile completion.
2. Meeting Scheduling
Opaque, confusing process. Users struggled to understand how to book sessions.
3. "Path" Structure
Too linear for desired experience. Rigid progression didn't match the flexible coaching journey.
4. Navigation/Wayfinding
Inconsistent across pages. Users couldn't predict where to find key features.
5. Notifications
Used ineffectively. Important updates were missed while low-priority alerts overwhelmed users.
Validation moment
"Where you're seeing issues follows exactly what I've been hearing from customers and customer-facing teams." - Chief Product Officer
"I'm seeing the same issues from cohorts in recent survey feedback." - Lead Designer
DECISION MOMENT
Tasked with redesigning onboarding
With validation from both product leadership and design leadership, I moved forward to redesign onboarding as the highest-leverage intervention.

FRAMING THE PROBLEM

The Magic Questions
Before jumping to solutions, I applied an outcome-driven framework to connect design decisions to measurable business impact.

1

What customer behaviors
drive business results?

Key Behavior Identified
Completing match profile within 48 hours of signup
Why This Matters: Behavior Predicts Outcomes
Leading indicator
Time-to-first-coaching-session
Lagging indicator
Customer satisfaction at launch
Leading indicator
Participant engagement throughout program
Lagging indicator
Contract renewal rates

2

How can we encourage more of those behaviors?

Barrier 1: Credibility gap
"Why was I selected? Is something wrong with me?"
Barrier 2: Impact gap
"What am I supposed to do? Where do I start?"
Hypothesis
We believe that providing participants with (1) clarity on why they were selected and (2) a direct, streamlined path to complete match profiles will increase completion rates from within one week to within 48 hours.

3

How do we know we're right?

Primary Outcome
Match profile completion within 48 hours

What was the approach?

Constraints . Design . Collaboration

CONSTRAINT BALANCING

Strategic Tradeoffs
Every design decision required balancing three competing constraints, each pulling in different directions.
Constraints
Business constraints
  • 1 month to design (fast execution for upcoming cohort launches)
  • Limited engineering capacity for new components
  • Product leadership needed "quick wins" to demonstrate value
Technical constraints
  • Existing design system lacked key components (progress bar, improved form inputs)
  • Integration with coach matching algorithm
  • Coordination with email/notification systems
What we prioritized
  • Understand selection
  • Complete profile
Why this decision:
  • User research showed participants valued speed to coaching over exhaustive education

  • Parkinson's Law warned us: "Any task will inflate until all available time is spent"
  • We needed to respect users' time at their busiest moment
What we chose NOT to include
1. Detailed coaching methodology education
→ Moved to post-match
2. Platform feature tours
→ Deprioritized for post-onboarding
3. Extensive customization options
→ Simplified to essentials

THE DESIGN

Outcome-Driven Onboarding
To achieve a measurable onboarding experience, I needed to guide the team from abstract strategy to concrete implementations.
Strategy
User Goals (Jobs to Be Done)
  • "Help me understand why I was selected for coaching"
  • "Help me take the first critical action to get matched with a coach"
Business Goals
  • Match profile completion within 48 hours
  • Reduce time-to-first-coaching-session
  • Improve customer satisfaction at launch
Pain point matrix
Scope & Key Designs

1

"What is Torch Coaching" (WITC) Welcome Page

Purpose
Address the credibility gap
Content strategy
Why they were selected
Recognition of potential, not deficit
Addressing what it means to get a professional coach
Setting clearer expectations
What to expect from coaching
Outcomes, not features
UX PRINCIPLES APPLIED
Jakob's Heuristic #10
Help and Documentation: Front-load context rather than relying on discovery.

2

Streamlined Match Profile Flow

Purpose
Address the impact gap
Design system work
Collaborated with design team and eng. to build new components
Design changes
Moved from hidden "path resources" to mandatory onboarding step
Reduced cognitive load with new progress indicator components
UX PRINCIPLES APPLIED
Hick's Law
Reduced choices during onboarding to focus attention
Jakob's Heuristic #1
Visibility of System Status: Progress bar shows completion

THE COLLABORATION

Cross-Functional Partnership in Action
Success required coordination across multiple teams, each bringing specialized expertise while maintaining alignment on shared goals.
Highlights
Customer Success: Content Development
  • Collaborate: Refined WITC messaging with customer success
  • Test: Tested comprehension with sample participants
  • Iterate: Iterated based on feedback about tone and clarity
Product team: Flow Optimizations
  • Collaborate: Revised match profile questions with product/data team
  • Test: Tested usability and comprehension of new UI
  • Iterate: Validated that progress indicators reduced anxiety
Engineering: Component building
  • Partner: Built design system components with engineering
  • Ensure: Ensured accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1 AA)
  • Maintain: Maintained responsive design for mobile/desktop
Final Designs

What happened?

Results . Reflection

RESULTS

Strategic Value Created
This outcome—protecting customer lifetime value through better first impressions—demonstrates how strategic design at leverage points creates measurable business outcomes.
Targeted goals
  • Reduced launch anxiety for both participants and customer success teams
  • Improved first impressions protecting customer relationships at critical moment
  • Competitive differentiation through faster time-to-coaching experience

Reflections

It's tempting to put additional steps into the onboarding flow where they may feel like they are adding value, but that doesn't always align with end-user expectations.

This is a problem because "any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent" (Parkinson's law).

Meaning, we have to respect and guide our users time when they first sign up with our products and we do that by better understanding what is going through their head at that moment so we can provide designs that tie in with how the product will provide value.

In Torch's case, it meant addressing why they were selected, what they should expect, and what actions they needed to take so they can speak with a coach that would understand and benefit their career development right away.
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