Client onboarding videos: four short recordings every agency needs

The first week with a new client is full of questions you have answered a hundred times. Four short videos answer them better than a long kickoff call, and you record three of them once.

By the VeoRec team · Oct 3, 2026 · 12 min read

A client onboarding video is a short recording that welcomes a new client and shows them how the project will run: who they will work with, how reviews and approvals happen, which tools to use and what you need from them by when. Done well, a small set of these replaces the part of the kickoff call where you read your process out loud, and leaves the call free for the conversation that needs both of you.

Four videos cover it, and only one of them has to be recorded fresh for each client. Below are what goes in each, rough lengths, bullet scripts you can copy, and the order to send them in. The examples come from agency and freelance work, but any service business that explains the same process to every new client can use the same set.

Why the first week is where onboarding video pays off

New clients are at their most attentive and their most anxious in the first week. They have just signed, often after convincing someone internally, and they want proof it was the right call. They also get a flood of information: logins, a kickoff agenda, a questionnaire, a request for brand files, a calendar invite.

Text alone handles that flood badly. A five page onboarding PDF is thorough and mostly unread. A kickoff call covers everything once, at one speed, to whoever attended, and the person who joins in week three gets nothing. A short video sits in between: it has a face and a voice, it can be watched by whoever needs it whenever they have time, and it can be watched again.

It also saves you a lot of repetition. Most of what you say in an onboarding call ("here is how rounds work, here is where files go, here is how to approve") is identical for every client. Recording it once and sending it each time also means every client hears your best version of it, not the version you say at 5pm on a Friday.

Video should not be the only format, though. Nielsen Norman Group's research on instructional video found that plenty of people read the text first, or instead, and only then watch, that participants appreciated captions because they often could not or did not want to play sound, and that people resented it when a video was the only way to get a piece of information. Every video below comes with a short written summary for that reason.

The four onboarding videos, at a glance

One long "everything you need to know" recording is a common mistake. It is hard to watch, harder to update, and impossible to point someone to ("the bit about approvals is around minute nine"). Split it into four videos, each with one job.

The split also matches how people use them. The founder watches the welcome. The marketing manager who runs the project watches all four. The developer who joins in week three gets the tools tour and nothing else.

If you only have time to record one of them this month, make it "how we work". It is reusable, it answers the questions that eat the most email, and it lets the kickoff call start with the client's goals instead of your process slides.

Video 1: the personal welcome

This is the only video you record from scratch for each client, and the one where your camera matters most. It should be short, warm and specific enough that it could not have been sent to anyone else.

Open with the client's name and something from the sales conversation: "Hi Priya, thanks again for choosing us for the relaunch. I loved what you said about wanting the site to feel less like a brochure." Then introduce who they will work with, ideally with a face for each person. Then say exactly what happens in the next seven days. End with one action and a date: "Please pick a kickoff slot from the link below by Wednesday."

Record it on the page or document you are about to talk about, such as their current site or the project plan, so the camera is not just a talking head. A camera bubble in the corner over a screen recording feels more natural for many people than speaking straight into a webcam for two minutes, and it gives the viewer something to look at besides your face.

Mind what is behind you. A messy shelf or a colleague walking past pulls attention from what you are saying, and a home office background says more about your weekend than you might want a new client to know. A plain wall works. So does blurring the background: VeoRec can blur or replace the background of the camera bubble, processed locally in your browser, which helps when you record from wherever you happen to be.

Video 2: how we work

This is the video that saves the most time, because it answers the questions that otherwise trickle in for weeks: how many rounds are included, who approves, how fast you reply, when you meet and what happens if something is late.

Record it once over a simple slide or a page of your process, and split it into chapters so a client can jump to the part they need. A sensible order:

1. The phases, from discovery to launch, and what the client sees at the end of each.
2. How reviews work: what one round is, who sends the consolidated feedback, how long the review window is. (The guide to a client feedback process has the details and the wording.)
3. How we communicate: which channel for what, how quickly you reply, and which hours you are around.
4. Meetings: which ones are fixed (kickoff, concept presentation, launch) and which happen async.
5. Approvals and changes: what sign-off looks like and how new requests are quoted.

In VeoRec for agencies you can press M while recording to drop a chapter marker at each section and name the markers on the finish screen, so the client sees "Reviews" and "Approvals" as jump points instead of scrubbing through. The chapter markers guide shows how viewers move between them.

Keep the language plain. "We include two rounds of design changes per phase" lands better than "two revision cycles per deliverable". Say the thing the way you would explain it to a friend who has never hired an agency.

Video 3: a tour of the tools the client will use

Clients do not resist your tools because they dislike them. They resist them because they do not know where to click, and nobody wants to admit that in week one. Show them, on the real screen, the four things they will do most.

• Where to find the latest version of the work.
• How to leave feedback, and where (one place, not five).
• How to approve something.
• Where to upload files you ask them for.

Record the actual tool, at a readable zoom, with a demo project rather than another client's work. Move the mouse slowly and say where you are clicking ("top right, the blue Share button"), because many people will watch on a laptop with the video in a small window. Leave out every feature they will not use in this project.

If your tools change between clients (one uses your project board, another insists on their own), make one short tools tour per tool and send only the relevant ones. Three two minute videos are easier to keep current than one ten minute video that covers everything.

Video 4: what we need from you, and by when

A slow first month usually has little to do with the agency. It comes from waiting for logins, logos, copy and decisions. A short, friendly video that explains what you need, why, and by when gives the list a reason to be acted on. A bare bulleted email is easy to put off until next week.

Group the requests so they are easy to act on:

• Access: CMS, hosting, analytics, domain, social accounts, whatever applies. Say who on their side can grant it. At the end of the project these accounts move to the client; see website handover to a client.
• Assets: logo files, brand guidelines, photos, existing copy.
• Information: answers to the brief questionnaire, product details, legal requirements.
• People: the name of the consolidator for feedback and the final approver.
• Dates: when you need each item, and what slips if it arrives late.

The dates are what make this video work, and "what slips" is the part most people leave out. For a website rebuild starting on the 2nd, the spoken version might go: "We need CMS and hosting access by the 6th, because our developer starts the technical audit on the 9th. If access comes later, the audit moves with it, and so does everything after. The brand guide and logo files by the 9th, so design can start on the 13th. And the questionnaire by the 6th as well, since the structure proposal on the 16th is built from your answers."

Thirty seconds of that does more than a bold DEADLINE in an email, because the client can see the chain. They know which request is holding up which person, and they can forward the access request to their IT contact with the reason already attached.

Keep the list itself in writing too, as a checklist in your project tool or an email. The video explains, the list is what they tick off. Record this one from a template and change the details per client; it is usually a few minutes of work once the template exists.

Script each video from bullet points, not paragraphs

Reading a full script on camera almost always sounds read. Speaking with no plan at all produces rambling and three restarts. The middle path is a bullet script: the opening line written out word for word, then a handful of bullets you speak around, then the closing ask written out word for word. The guide on how to script a screen recording goes further on this.

Use the planner to draft the welcome: type the hook, the context and the ask, and check that the speaking time stays inside two minutes.

And here are starting scripts for all four videos. Copy them, change the brackets, and rewrite anything that does not sound like you.

Record them so they work with the sound off

Many of your clients will open the first video in an open plan office or on a train. If the video only works with sound, it does not work. Three habits fix that.

• Captions. Turn them on or upload them for every video. VeoRec creates a transcript and captions automatically on every recording, which also helps clients who prefer to read.
• Show what you say. When you mention "two rounds", have it on the slide. When you say "click Share", the cursor should be on it.
• A written summary under each link. Three to five lines with the key points and the one action. It is also what people search for later.

The basics of a clean recording still apply: close unrelated tabs, mute notifications, use a decent microphone placed close to your mouth, and look at the camera when you greet the client. The guide on screen recording accessibility covers captions, contrast and pace in more depth.

Keep each video to its job and cut the warm-up. Wistia's State of Video Report puts it plainly: the shorter the video, the higher the engagement rate, where engagement means how much of a video people watch on average. Wistia adds the fair caveat that a longer video can still earn more total watch time, so the point is not "shorter at all costs" but "say the main thing before attention drops". A welcome that starts with "So, um, I just wanted to quickly..." has spent its best seconds on nothing.

Mistakes that make onboarding videos backfire

• Another client's work on screen. The tools tour recorded inside a live project shows names, feedback and sometimes prices that belong to someone else. Use a demo project.
• Promises you will not keep. If the video says "we reply within two hours" and you reply the next day, the video has taught the client to distrust everything else in it.
• A sales pitch. They have already bought; the pitch belongs in a video proposal, before they sign. A welcome that lists your awards reads as insecurity. Talk about their project.
• No ask. A video that ends with "any questions, let me know" produces no action. End with the one thing you need and the date.

Send them in order over the first few days

Four videos on day one is homework. Spread them so each arrives when it is useful.

1. Day 0: contract signed Send the welcome video with one action: book the kickoff or fill in the questionnaire.
2. Day 1 or 2: kickoff invite Attach "how we work" and ask the client to watch it before the call. The kickoff can then skip the process walkthrough and spend its time on goals and questions.
3. After kickoff: access granted Send the tools tour along with the logins, so the first time they open your tool someone is showing them around.
4. Same day: the requests Send "what we need from you" with the written checklist and dates.
5. Week three or later: new people When someone joins on the client side, send them the set again. The videos onboard them without a second kickoff.

Put the videos where they can be found again. A folder that holds the whole set, shared with one link, saves you from digging through old emails. In VeoRec a folder review link shares a whole folder with one URL, and the Gmail Video button inserts a clickable thumbnail of a recording into an email you are writing.

Keep the video library current

A reusable onboarding video that describes an old process is worse than none: the client follows it, and then you have to explain why it is wrong. Set two rules.

First, re-record a video whenever the thing it shows changes. Moved from one project tool to another? New review window? Re-record that video the same week. Because each video has one job, that means re-recording three minutes, not the whole set.

Second, watch the set once a quarter, start to finish, as if you were a new client. Note anything that has drifted. Ask a recent client what was confusing in their first week; their answer is often the most useful line in your next version.

Name the files so anyone on your team can find the right one: "Onboarding 2: how we work (v3, March)" beats "Process video final final". Keep the old versions archived rather than deleted, in case a client asks what they were told when they signed.

What to do this week

You do not need all four videos before your next client signs. Start with the one that saves the most time and add the rest over the next few projects.

The first time a new client books the kickoff the same afternoon your welcome arrives, the welcome has paid for itself. The tenth time you skip explaining review rounds on a kickoff call, so have the others.