Does skipping self-serve onboarding actually increase long-term user retention?

We spent months building an automated product tour so users could sign up and set everything up themselves.

Drop-off rates were still brutal at step three.

Out of desperation, we removed self-serve onboarding for new accounts and forced a quick 10-minute strategy call before setup. Conversions from signup to paid went up, and churn dropped by half.

Are self-serve flows overhyped for complex tools, or is manual onboarding just a temporary bridge?