You are starting on a new client account and the only onboarding you receive is a shared knowledge base with 200 articles plus a recorded product demo. How do you plan your first three days to learn the product well enough to answer customer emails, and what do you do when you encounter a term or procedure you don't understand?

Situation

I was newly assigned to a freelance client selling meal-plan subscriptions, and the only training I had was a shared folder of product guides and one recorded walkthrough.

Task

I needed to be able to answer customer emails about plan options, dietary tags, and delivery windows within my first few shifts without constantly asking the client for help.

Action

I sorted the knowledge base by the most common customer intents first, focusing on pricing, cancellation, and delivery FAQs. Then I watched the product demo twice, the first time for overall flow and the second time to note down every unfamiliar term. I created a one-page cheat sheet with categories like account changes, billing, and troubleshooting, and I flagged three unclear points to ask the client in a single consolidated message.

Result

By day three I handled chat questions about plan options and delivery windows on my own, and I only escalated a billing issue that was outside my approved scope.