Just having a high-quality product isn’t enough. Providing an excellent customer experience is vital, and a major part of that experience can come in the form of customer education.
A customer education program aims to ensure customers fully understand the value your product or service can deliver. Cultivating that understanding makes them more likely to engage with your company long-term and become brand champions who will spread the word about your product for you.
As a business strategy, customer education – or customer enablement, or customer training—is about more than just teaching new users your product’s fundamentals. Educated customers are happier, more loyal, and more successful, all of which will lead them to stay with your company longer. In a market where it’s hard to stand out, a strong customer education program can give you a real edge.
This article explores the benefits of customer education and covers two of the most common questions we get about new customer education programs:
- How can I measure my customer education program’s?
- How should I segment our user audiences so that our programs are relevant?
Why should you invest in customer education?
Put simply, it helps companies better onboard, train, and retain customers. Customer education can and should be an integral part of your customer’s overall experience. Many learning and development (L&D) and customer success (CS) teams are turning their eye to customer experience. In a recent survey from SuperOffice, nearly 46% of respondents said customer experience was their top priority to improve in the next five years.
Your customers want to get the most from your product. Good customer education programs demonstrate value quickly and equip customers with the resources and support they need to achieve their goals, such as saving money, completing complex tasks faster, or reducing their reliance on support teams.
How to segment your customer base
Your customers have diverse learning styles and use your product for various reasons, making one-size-fits-all content ineffective. This is why segmenting your customer education program is crucial. Here are some common ways to segment your customers and tailor content to their specific needs:
By user role
Users have varying responsibilities and needs. Segmenting your customers by their roles allows you to create targeted educational content that addresses the specific tasks and objectives your customer has set for each of them. For example, administrators might require detailed training in system configuration and management. At the same time, end-users may need guidance on daily operational tasks, like creating a new project template in our example company’s project management software.
By product usage
Users will find unique use cases for even your most basic products. That typically depends on their industry, business model, or individual preferences. Analyzing product usage patterns helps identify distinct user groups and their specific needs. For instance, a customer using your software for advanced analytics will have different training requirements than one using it for basic data entry. By segmenting based on product usage, you can offer tailored content highlighting relevant features, best practices, and advanced tips, ensuring each user gets the most out of the product.
By learning preferences
Learning preferences vary from person to person. Some are visual learners, some learn by example, and others might prefer a straight text-based set of instructions. Some might want to access learning from their mobile, others their desktop. Catering to the preferences of these different learners can significantly enhance their educational experience. Segmenting customers based on their preferred learning styles allows you to deliver content in formats that resonate best with each group. Additionally, consider preferences for self-paced learning versus live, instructor-led sessions.
Learning metrics to measure progress
To measure the effectiveness of a customer education program you can track key extended enterprise learning metrics such as:
- Course completion rates: Monitor the percentage of customers who complete the onboarding courses.
- Quiz scores: Assess understanding by tracking scores from quizzes embedded within the training modules.
- Engagement levels: Measure how actively customers engage with the educational content, such as the number of logins, time spent on modules, and participation in interactive elements.
- Learner satisfaction scores: Track how well customers like the extended learning environment and content by asking them to self-assess their satisfaction. You can do this both during and after engaging with the material.
How can a company use a customer education program to onboard new customers?
Effective customer education ensures customers understand how to use your products or services to their full potential. Let’s consider a software company launching a new application. The company can create a series of interactive tutorials, video guides, and webinars to walk new users through the software’s features. This educational content helps customers get up to speed quickly, shortens and flattens the learning curve to learn the application’s full feature set, and increases customer confidence in using the app.
Business metrics to measure the impact of a customer onboarding program
You can evaluate the broader impact on business outcomes by examining:
- Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT): Customer satisfaction (CSAT) is a well-established metric businesses across various industries use. Monitor your CSAT score to see how it improves.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): Your NPS goes beyond CSAT scores and asks clients how likely they are to recommend your product or service to others on a scale from one to ten. For example, clients who give a rating of nine or ten qualify as “promoters,” those who give a seven or eight qualify as “passives,” and all other clients qualify as “detractors.” The score reflects the overall sentiment toward your brand. A high NPS indicates that more clients promote your brand positively, while a low NPS suggests the opposite.
- Product use rates: Track how frequently and effectively new customers use the product features after completing the educational modules.
- Customer retention rates: Retaining customers is typically easier than acquiring new ones. To achieve and sustain high retention rates, companies must demonstrate their commitment to the customer experience, beginning with top-notch customer education. Analyze the correlation between customers who complete onboarding education and their likelihood to remain loyal customers.
- Support ticket volume: Measure the reduction in support requests from new customers, indicating that they are better equipped to use the product independently.
How can customer education programs help reduce support costs?
Customer education is a powerful tool for reducing support costs by empowering customers with the knowledge and skills they need to use products and services effectively. Let’s return to our example software company. Now they’re releasing a more complex software suite. By providing comprehensive online training modules, interactive FAQs, and detailed user manuals, the company can help customers troubleshoot common issues independently.
This proactive approach reduces the need for customers to reach out to support for help with basic problems. That saves the customer time and reduces the support burden on the company. It is a win-win.
Business metrics to measure the impact of a customer education program on support costs
You can evaluate the broader impact on business outcomes by examining:
- Support ticket volume: Track the number of support requests received before and after implementing customer education programs. A reduction in support ticket volume indicates that customers are better equipped to resolve issues independently, thanks to the training they have received.
- First contact resolution (FCR) rates: Measure the increased number of issues resolved during the first customer interaction. Higher FCR rates suggest that customers are better prepared and more knowledgeable, enabling your support team to provide the necessary information on the first contact.
- Time to resolution: A shorter time to resolution reflects improved customer self-service capabilities, as customers are more likely to find solutions on their own or provide relevant information quickly.
- Cost per ticket: Calculate the reduction in costs associated with handling support tickets. This can directly link to fewer, simpler queries resulting from effective customer education. Lower support costs per ticket demonstrate that your education programs are improving customer knowledge and reducing the resources required for support.
How can a customer education program help improve customer satisfaction and retention?
Customer education is vital in enhancing customer satisfaction and retention by empowering users with the knowledge they need to maximize the value of a product or service. Let us check in on our example software company again. Their software suite has been wildly successful, and now they have developed a full ecosystem of applications. Their focus has shifted to retaining customers.
They build a comprehensive onboarding program with webinars, how-to videos, and a comprehensive knowledge base. By providing customers with easy access to educational resources, the company ensures that users can efficiently navigate their applications, understand their full capabilities, and resolve common issues independently.
Business metrics to measure the impact of a customer education program on customer satisfaction and retention
Many of the existing metrics we have already mentioned work well here. You can evaluate the broader impact on business outcomes by examining:
- Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT): Measure overall satisfaction with the product and support services through surveys and feedback forms.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): Track customers' willingness to recommend the product to others, which strongly indicates satisfaction and loyalty.
- Churn rate: Analyze the rate at which customers discontinue using the product to identify if educational efforts are helping to retain users.
- Customer lifetime value (CLV): Evaluate the long-term value generated by customers who receive comprehensive education compared to those who do not.
Watch webinar: Customer education strategies for improved retention and support
How can customer education help increase product adoption?
Customer education is crucial for driving product adoption by ensuring users understand and can effectively use all features and benefits of a product. After the successful launch of the software suite, our example software company is now developing a sophisticated project management tool. By offering a range of educational resources, such as video tutorials, step-by-step guides, webinars, and interactive workshops, the company can help users quickly learn how to leverage the tool’s capabilities. This thorough understanding encourages users to integrate the product into their daily workflows, which will lead to those increased adoption rates you are looking for.
Business metrics to measure the impact of a customer education program on product adoption
You can evaluate the broader impact on business outcomes by examining:
- Adoption rate: Track the percentage of customers who use the product regularly after completing your educational programs. A high adoption rate indicates that the training is effective in helping customers understand the product and its value.
- Feature usage: Increased feature usage suggests that customers aren’t only using the product more but also exploring and benefiting from its full range of capabilities. By analyzing which features customers use more frequently after completing training, you can assess whether the education program effectively highlights the product's key functionalities.
- Customer retention: This metric is crucial for understanding the role of customer education in reducing churn. High retention rates among customers who have completed educational programs indicate that the training helps them derive ongoing value from the product.
- Customer feedback: Collect direct feedback on the product and educational content to understand user satisfaction and identify areas for improvement. Positive feedback on the program indicates that customers find the content useful and engaging, while constructive criticism provides valuable information for refining and optimizing the training.
Is an LMS the best customer training software?
There are many flavors of customer training platform to choose from. Each has strengths, and the best choice depends on your specific needs and goals. But an LMS is the better choice if you aim to provide structured, in-depth training with various content types and formal assessments. The system manages, delivers, and tracks educational courses and training programs, offering a broad educational experience and tracking learner progress over time. Here are some key capabilities you should look out for:
- Structured learning paths: LMS platforms allow you to create detailed and sequential learning paths, making it easy to guide customers through complex topics.
- Content variety: They support diverse content formats, including videos, quizzes, documents, and interactive modules, to accommodate different learning styles.
- Certifications and badges: Many customer training LMS platforms provide options to award certificates and badges, which can motivate learners and validate their achievements.
Learn more about how to foster customer success: Enhance customer training with an extended enterprise LMS
Key features your LMS needs to deliver excellent customer training
Different learning management systems cater to different business needs. And it is important to remember that if an LMS touts itself as one-size-fits-all, that means it doesn’t really fit anyone’s unique needs. You need to ensure the LMS you select does what your organization needs it to. Here are some of the most important features to consider when evaluating which LMS is best for your organization’s unique customer education use cases.
- Multi-tenancy. This feature enables organizations to cater to internal and external user groups and their subgroups' unique needs. For example, an organization might want different LMS tenants for customers and contractors as part of their extended enterprise initiatives.
- Administrative tools. Your LMS should provide comprehensive tools for easily managing users, content, and courses. Your HR, L&D, or customer success administrators need to be able to easily oversee the learning process, track learner progress, and make adjustments as needed to optimize the training experience. If you are running compliance courses, they will also need to be able to run reports for regulators.
- Customer support. Customer support features within an LMS ensure users have access to help when they need it. This can include live chat, email support, and a knowledge base.
- Integrations. Integrating with other major business tools, like your CRM or ERP enhances functionality, streamlines workflows, and ensures a seamless data flow across all your essential business platforms. You maintain a single source on all relevant learning and course completion data.
- Self-service portals. Self-service portals serve as dedicated access points within the LMS, offering a personalized learning experience for different user groups receiving customer training. These portals empower customers to take control of their learning, allowing them to access materials on their own schedule without waiting on instructors or administrators. That enhances the learning experience and significantly reduces the time and resources companies need to dedicate to customer training, making it a cost-effective solution for educating a wide audience.
- Customizable. Look for an LMS you can make your own. You should be able to tailor the customer education platform's look and feel to fit your branding and how your users will interact with it.
- Reporting. Reporting tools within an LMS are incredibly valuable for all your internal stakeholders. They can provide detailed insights into learner progress, course completion rates, and engagement metrics. And if your users are taking training courses to meet regulatory standards, your LMS should make it easy for you to demonstrate compliance and head off issues before they arise.
- Flexible e-commerce options. Your LMS should help you engage and educate customers and act as an additional revenue stream. Look for an LMS with flexible ecommerce options for selling access to courses. You will need to be able to configure a course marketplace, adjust prices, and set up tax collection.
- Headless capabilities. A headless LMS pops into other business applications, so users do not have to switch applications just to get a quick answer to a question. So, if a customer wants to learn about a particular workflow while filling out a spreadsheet in Excel, they can simply open a headless window right on top of their work to get the answers they need.
Absorb LMS helps organizations do more with learning. It inspires learning and fuels business productivity by helping organizations achieve their training goals through meaningful learning experiences that produce tangible results. No matter the learner (internal or external), the focus is on supporting the holy grail of learning: outcomes.
