I've been writing about client onboarding systems for small agencies, and one thing I keep wondering: how different is the reality from the "ideal" process?

For most agencies I've talked to, the first week looks something like:

• A celebratory Slack message about landing the client
• Scrambling to find the last onboarding document from a previous project
• Someone forgetting to ask for admin access until day 4
• The kickoff call being rescheduled twice

Is that closer to your experience, or have you actually built something that works reliably?

Specifically curious:

• Do you have a written onboarding process, or is it more "whatever felt right last time"?
• What's the one step that always gets skipped or delayed?
• Has AI changed anything in how you handle new clients?

I'm not trying to sell anything here — I'm genuinely trying to understand whether the pain points I think exist actually match what people experience.