When Do New Customers Actually Onboard? What 1,614 Obi Sessions Show

What we counted

• Sessions: 1,614 onboarding sessions with Obi, by 813 users, at 15 software companies that use Obi with their own customers.
• Window: 90 days, 21 July to 19 October 2026.
• A session: a user started working with Obi (to be shown around or to ask a question), and it lasted at least 60 seconds.
• Left out: test and demo sessions, Cor's own staff, the software companies' own staff testing their setup, and sessions under 60 seconds.
• Business hours: Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 17:00. Public holidays were not removed.
• HQ time: the local time in the city where the software company is based.
• User's own time: the time zone of the user's browser.
• Checks: the largest customer accounts for over half of all sessions. Each finding below still holds with that customer left out.

Finding 1: half of sessions start outside the software company's business hours

49% of onboarding sessions start outside the software company's business hours (HQ time), mostly customers in other time zones starting their day before the HQ does.

That is 784 of 1,614 sessions that started before 9:00, after 17:00, or on a weekend, in the software company's own time.

Finding 2: 1 in 5 sessions start between 10pm and 7am at the HQ

1 in 5 sessions started between 10pm and 7am HQ time.

That is 311 of 1,614 sessions, on any day of the week.

Finding 3: almost 1 in 4 sessions are outside the user's own workday

23% of sessions were outside the user's own workday: evenings, early mornings, weekends.

That is 366 of 1,614 sessions, counted in the user's own time zone, not the HQ's.

Finding 4: after-hours sessions are full working sessions

After-hours sessions ran just as long as daytime ones.

We compared session length for the 366 sessions outside the user's own working hours with the 1,248 sessions inside them.

The numbers in one table

Source: Cor product data, 1,614 Obi onboarding sessions at 15 software companies, 21 July to 19 October 2026.

Onboarding new users without more customer success hires

If you want every new customer to get guided onboarding without hiring more customer success staff, the timing matters as much as the volume. Your team can cover the hours your team works. To cover the rest with people, you would hire in other time zones or add shifts.

The other options each cover part of it:

• Help centers and videos are there at any hour, but the customer does the setup alone.
• Support bots answer questions at any hour, but wait for the customer to ask and do not work through setup.
• Product tours show the same steps to everyone and do not adapt to the customer's setup.
• An AI onboarding agent works through setup with each customer, at the time they start.

For which tool does which job, see AI tools for SaaS user onboarding without customer success hires.

When manual onboarding calls are overloading your team

Manual onboarding calls run in your team's calendar. Customers in other time zones get the early or late slots, or wait a day. Each call also takes a person for its full length, and after-hours sessions in our data ran just as long as daytime ones.

Many of those calls repeat the same setup steps. Those are the ones software can take. For how to sort your calls and what the software must do, see what software fixes overloaded onboarding calls. For the wider options, see how to scale onboarding without hiring.

Where Cor fits

Obi works directly with every new customer, at the time they start, in their own time zone.

• First contact. A new customer is added to Cor, directly or through an integration. Obi reaches out by email as standard. Customers can also start a session from a link, or from inside your product.
• A plan for each customer. Obi asks what they want to get done, then builds a plan in their language. An admin on your team confirms the plan before anything runs.
• Live sessions at any hour. The customer shares their screen and Obi guides them step by step, by voice and chat. Obi speaks 60+ languages.
• Setup where permitted. Where you allow it, Obi completes steps for the customer, within their own permissions, and asks before major actions.
• Follow-ups. When a customer goes quiet between sessions, Obi follows up by itself.
• Handovers. When something needs a person, Obi hands over to your team by email, Slack or the Cor admin, with what the customer was trying to do. Your team picks it up in its own hours.
• Reports. Every session ends with a report on what got done and where the customer got stuck. Session data syncs to your CRM on every plan.

Obi is set up in a day from your help docs and recordings, with no engineering. Your team keeps the accounts that need judgement. For how that split works, see hire an onboarding specialist or add an AI onboarding agent.

Read more: how Obi runs a session and pricing.