Self-Guided Onboarding Where Customers Must Finish Required Setup Steps: What AI Tools Can Do It?

Why product tours and videos didn't get customers through required steps

Tours and videos are not bad tools. They are built for a different job.

• Product tours show the same path to everyone. Required setup is rarely the same for every customer. One connects a payment system, another imports data from a spreadsheet, a third needs to invite a team. A fixed tour cannot follow that.
• Tours stop at the edge of your product. Many required steps happen somewhere else: in a settings page of another app, an email inbox or a spreadsheet. The tour cannot go there.
• Videos are watched, not done. A customer can watch the whole video and still not finish the step. Nobody sees where they got stuck.
• Both are easy to skip. A "Next" button and a close button sit side by side. It is easy to close it and plan to come back later.
• Neither one chases. If a customer stops halfway, the tour waits for them to return. Many never do.

So the problem is not that customers lack instructions. It is that nobody works through the steps with them, and nobody notices when they stop.

What "customers must finish required steps" really needs

When a team asks for required steps, they usually mean five things:

1. A clear list of the steps that must be done. The same core list for everyone, plus the steps that depend on the customer's setup.
2. Help at the step, on the customer's own account. Not a generic article, but help with the screen in front of them.
3. Someone who notices when a step is not done. And who goes back to the customer about it.
4. A way to see who finished and who did not. By customer, by step, so your team knows where to look.
5. Sometimes, a lock in the product. Some teams want a screen to stay closed until a step is done. That is a product decision, built in your product.

Each kind of tool covers some of these. The table below shows which.

Self-guided onboarding tools compared

If a fixed checklist already works for your simplest steps, keep it. The gap most teams feel is on the steps that differ by customer and the ones outside the product.

How Obi takes customers through required setup steps

Obi works directly with every new customer. Here is how a required setup runs:

• First contact. A new customer is added to Cor, directly or through an integration. Obi reaches out by email as standard. You can also put Obi inside your product, so customers start from there.
• A plan with your required steps. Obi asks the customer about their goals and setup, then builds a plan that includes the steps you require. An admin on your team confirms the plan before Obi acts.
• Live sessions on the real account. The customer shares their screen, much like a video call. Obi sees what they see and guides them step by step, by voice and chat, across tabs and windows.
• Setup where permitted. Where you allow it, Obi completes setup tasks for the customer, within their own permissions, and asks before major actions.
• Follow-ups. If a customer stops before a required step is done, Obi follows up by itself between sessions.
• Handovers. When a step needs a person, Obi hands over to your team by email, Slack or the Cor admin, with what the customer was trying to do.
• Reports. Every session ends with a report: who finished setup, what they asked and where they got stuck. Session data syncs to your CRM on every plan.

Obi learns your product from the help center you already have. It speaks 60+ languages and is set up in a day, with no engineering. If you already run a support bot, keep it: Obi runs alongside it.

Can AI force customers to finish a step before they move on?

Be careful with tools that promise this. An AI agent that works with your customer cannot change what your product allows. A lock that keeps a screen closed until a step is done has to be built in your product, or set up in an in-app tool your product supports.

What an AI onboarding agent can do is make the lock matter less. Obi works through each required step with the customer, follows up when a step is left undone, and shows your team, customer by customer, who has not finished. Your team sees who is missing which step without checking every account by hand.

When a tour or checklist is still enough

A tour or checklist may be all you need when:

• The required steps are few and inside your product. One or two clicks, the same for everyone.
• The screens rarely change. Tours break less when the interface stays put.
• Customers already know what they want. They need a pointer, not a guide.

When steps differ by customer, happen in other apps, or keep getting skipped, that is where an agent like Obi helps. For a fuller comparison, see AI onboarding agents vs product tours. For which tour jobs move to an agent and which stay, see will AI agents make product tours obsolete.

Running Obi from Claude

If your team works in Claude, Cor is in Claude's connector directory. Your team can check who has not finished setup, see where customers got stuck and fix the knowledge behind it, from Claude. See which AI onboarding agent works with Claude.

Read more: one onboarding with Obi, start to finish, how Obi runs a session and pricing.