[ericabiz]

As a data point from another SaaS company owner, we thought this would be temporary too, but we found out it was so valuable in increasing customer retention and engagement that we are now planning to make it permanent (see my post above--we're hiring a FT person for this now.) The cost-effectiveness of this is off the charts. Patrick found out about this from me when I spoke about it at Microconf and I already have people from there telling me it's made them $500/hr+ (I believe it, as I've seen similar numbers in my own SaaS company.)

Oh, I should add: If you want people to rave about your company, there's nothing better than this onboarding process to do so. People become sort of religious about your business after a first-touch customer experience like this one. Probably preaching to the choir if you are Jason Fried, but this goes double for everyone else reading this who's building a software company.