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Grab any of your 2-min Maggie Packet and look on its label back, there’s always a recipe for your delicious dish. They don’t just sell you a product but teach you how to make use of it.
This is the purpose of your customer training academy — teaching customers about how to make the most out of your product. This educational process simplifies the complexity (too technical sounded) around your product & services & helps to advance leads further down to dedicated customer onboarding even creating a lubricative sales funnel.
It’s high time! Surface the value of your product by educating your customers and letting them become experts in what they’re using. Because an expert product user is hooked to become your brand advocate.
So, shall we start by understanding why you need a customer-training portal for all this education and how to build customer training academy using an LMS?
Why Do You Need a Customer Training Portal?
Essentially, you aim to create an academy for your customer to make them aware of your product, but, then why do need a customer training portal for that? Is it worth your investment?
Every customer needs something more or less when they’re buying anything online, so it all drips down to the amount of information they have, supporting them in their buying decisions. In simple terms, you need an advanced approach to identify your user’s expectations, goals, nature of work, requirements at their job, etc to create a personalized learning experience.
And hell no, you’re using excel sheets & data segmentation tools to accomplish that process, you need an intuitive portal. You need an AI-tech-driven portal that accommodates a few factors:
- Provides a personalized customer experience through Intuitive Onboarding
- Reduces churn by providing value-driven solutions
- Upsells your sales funnel
- Enables your users to become Brand Advocates.
- Increases Lifetime value (LTV) & customer retention rate.
An expert user is like a loyal addition – they will see the value earlier in your sales cycles. Even if they’ll consider activating or up-gradation your higher-end services as your academy serves as a gainful experience, they will stick for longer.
To upscale your educational bar, consider offering high-quality industry-related education. It will establish your organization as a though-leader or leader in your industry. Furthermore, it improves your position as a strong brand, attracting more and more leads & easy conversions.
How Companies are Using LMS for Customer Training?
High chance that you already have customer onboarding in place through various means — resource sections (blogs, ebooks, case studies, etc), an auto-responder email sequence, live webinar sessions, or even a live demo about your product use. Considering the time factor, these are time-consuming mechanisms to achieve any desired sales goals.
You need to keep a constant tap on your customer’s life cycle and regulate your training process to enable an environment of self-paced learning. A dedicated customer training portal helps to tap such aspects by personalizing the right content mix to teach the use of your product until the customer reaches their “Aha!” moment.
Segment the courses from basics to expert-level of your product. That’s exactly what Hubspot Academy does with its education academy. They created courses on how to use every tiniest feature of their product, resulting in users buying their premium features to explore more.
How Do You Build a Customer Academy Using LMS?
Let’s take the example of Articulate 360 academy to understand the need for a dedicated training portal. Now, you don’t have to align your goals based on these current academies, just a tap of how successful an academy can be for inclusive lead generation.
This portal was built using Rise 360, a top-rated online course platform (application) and LMS. Rise 360 is a white-label solution with full-customizable features to educate the customer and train the employees or provide courses to a wide audience.
Tips for an Effective Training Portal
When we talk about tools that any organization can employ to create an effective academy – there is a wide variety to implement a training portal. Depending on your S.M.A.R.T goal set in to channel the purpose of your academy. E.g:- You can use tools to establish a knowledge hub. They have an integrated system, providing a range of features to achieve your academy goals.
The Following are Effective Training Portal Features
- Lesson-segmenting capabilities
- Course-access restriction
- Interactive E-books
- Interactive Video Content
- Media Solutions (Visuals, Audio, Exercises, Quizzes, and Text-format)
These features help enable a unique learning experience for your users and encourage them to upskill enjoyably.
Quick Checklist to Build Customer Training Academy (Using an LMS)
A self-hosted LMS can cost expensive range to set up, but a cloud-based LMS setup might cost somewhere lesser, comparatively. Even though purchasing a learning management system is essential for enhancing your training programs, if you’re hesitant to spend the time setting up your platform properly — your training initiatives may not succeed.
We’re going to assist you in properly setting up your LMS today by guiding you through the checklist of an LMS setup, are you ready? (Sip up a coffee, you might need these pointers for later whiteboard sessions)
- Schedule a launch date
- Prioritize the first steps
- Define your KPIs
- Familiarize yourself with LMS
- Set up Integration
- Establish User Roles
- Set up Customer Portals
- Upload Relevant Content
- Customize Email Notifications
- White Labelling & Branding
- Finalize Courses & Platforms
- Onboard & Enroll Users
1. Schedule a Launch Date
Choose a day/date when your platform will be ready to accept users. This is the first implementation step. So, let’s start from scratch.
Yes, we are aware that the launch of your LMS is less significant than the launch of Elon Musk’s rockets into space, but setting a deadline will help ease the planning stage for a successful training program launch. All we want to suggest is to keep working with your team to choose a day on the calendar so that your business and the stakeholders are trained enough to keep their necks up.
2. Prioritize the First Steps
Prioritize to work on essentials (features, integrations, and learning resources) before launching your LMS. In other words, there may be some features, functionalities, and other course suggestions that might need a detailed inspection eye, not necessarily for the first launch of your training programs.
3. Build an implementation team
Some businesses will take up considerably more time than others, depending on several factors;
- Learning resources you need
- The size of your business
- The level of training delivered
Another thing to consider is that, if your company is getting started (startups), there are chances of hiring any full-time eLearning and training managers or specialized training managers that may get out of budget. For that situation, you can train your employees to implement the program. Start by sketching the picture through questions you need answers for, e.g.:-
Question to Ask to Form the Customer Training Program Implementation Team
- Who will upload the content and who will produce it?
- Who will consult with and employ specialists to aid in the LMS’s setup?
- Who will write customized code for the LMS (if permitted)?
- Who is in charge of marketing the new training system to your stakeholders—customers, staff, etc.?
We recognize that your company might have specific demands, so even if these are generalized questions to ask when assembling an implementation team, don’t be hesitant to add additional ones and make them more goal-oriented.
4. Define your KPIs (Measuring Learner Performance)
This step will make sure that as soon as your LMS is operational, your team will be able to assess learner performance right away. Moreover, your company and its trainers can quickly monitor learner progress by using analytics & reports in your LMS.
5. Familiarize Yourself With the LMS
In this phase, you’ve set a date when your LMS will be operational for registered users to access courses, and you’ve organized an implementation team.
The exciting phase is about to begin, Sit tight!
Entering the LMS. Depending on the size of your business, only a few members of your implementation team should be operating the LMS rather than the entire team.
6. Set Up Your Integrations
Integrations are one of the reasons LMSs are such in-demand training solutions for hybrid training of consumers, employees, and other audiences. Through integrations, your company can link external 3rd party programs with your LMS, so that they can support your training requirements.
Whether you utilize default features included in the LMS, it’s always worth checking with your provider to see if it can be connected while you’re setting up the integrations.
Common Integrations in an LMS
- Google analytics
- Facebook pixel
- Hubspot
- Salesforce
- Other webinar solutions include Zoom, GoToTraining, and GoToWebinar.
- Accredited single sign-on (SSO) (for storing CEU and certifications)
7. Establish User Roles
Your LMS needs a systematic approach that clearly defines the access permissions and responsibilities that your trainers and admins have for learners. Just like in universities, when students take tests that are graded by professors.
8. Set Up a Customer Portal
Customers Portals acts as an exclusive training ground for various user demographics you are educating. Therefore, you can skip to the next step if you’re utilizing the LMS for internal training and are not interested in segmenting training by the department.
But, in the case of B2B training, your team must create portals for each of your clients. While creating a portal, you should designate an administrator to run the training sessions for the group of learners being trained.
9. Upload Relevant Content
You have so far started building your training programs in the LMS and uploaded some learning resources, but you haven’t fully developed a course that is prepared for users to enroll in. If you faithfully adhere to this LMS implementation plan, your courses are currently in the form of outlines or drafts rather than finished products (training courses) that are prepared for distribution through internal and external channels.
It’s now time to complete your training programs in the LMS to get everything ready for launch.
10. Customize Email Notifications
If you’re using a cloud-based LMS, you might already have an email notification system built into your platform, depending on your LMS provider. What are these LMS notifications for?
4 Reasons Why to Use LMS Email Notifications
- Sending out notifications to users to tap their learning progress.
- Updating your learning about new resources or relevant courses.
- Enhancing learner’s involvement in a course.
- Promoting new training and courses.
The LMS can help you keep your learners more engaged and on schedule in completing their training programs. So, you must try to customize your email notifications according to your course requirements.
For example, a trainee who enrolls in a course using your LMS ought to get an email including their account and password. The ones who need to reset their LMS passwords also require an email.
11. White-Labeling & Branding
Since many LMSs are white-label platforms, you may replace any vendor ties by attaching your logo and brand assets to the platform. Your user may feel more at ease when your training LMS is visually customized representing your brand (colors, graphics, and unique pages & URLs).
Advantages of White Labeling:
- Enables a Learning Environment (customizable branded features)
- Hide vendor ties
- Provide personalized instructions
Since each LMS is unique, find out what your provider has to offer in terms of white-labeling before starting to customize.
12. Finalize Courses and Platform
In this step, many of you are ready to click “Publish” and onboard your users. But since there are many factors responsible for the training to be successful — invest as much time as you need to detail your road map.
After that, you can access templates to evaluate your training programs here, check that everything is functioning as it should, and polish all of your courses and learning materials.
13. Onboard and Enroll Users
The team manager feature sells online staff training courses in bulk directly to businesses’ LMS eLearning platforms.
Put your LMS to the test right now. Get your team managers to send out bulk direct mails to businesses “LMS e-learning platforms” and onboard them into the LMS system. Easily said than done, we understand, that’s why you might need a customer training onboarding guide to keep your process in flow.
Aye, high time to launch your customer portals as well if you’re conducting external training. Make sure you implement the best practices you can go about onboarding users into the system if you haven’t already.
Challenges for Making a Customer Training Academy
- Traditional customer training methods in different learning environments (Hybrid Workforce)
- Course promotion and Increased competition
- Lack of time or resources to finish objectives
- Failing to make a good first impression
- Using old training manuals
- Burning out your customer training team
Conclusion
Educating customers is a continuous process. You might face friction points while establishing your seamless training program, but setbacks are meant to let you restructure your entire process & re-create using tools & strategy to evolve your entire organization dynamics.
So, to ensure your customer training academy is helping your customers to understand your products & services better – Start with a Free LMS Demo to have a peek at how it shapes your training strategy in a personalized manner.
![5 Key Strategies To Scale Customer Education And Training Methods & Tools]](https://wordpress-1419667-5289097.cloudwaysapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/5-Key-Strategies-To-Scale-Customer-Education-And-Training-Methods-Tools.jpeg)
Customer education and training are critical components for success with any product or service. It gives customers the knowledge they need to use your product or service effectively, which in turn helps you to generate more revenue. There are many aspects of customer education and training – creating content, building messaging platforms, deciding on mediums and formats, and providing them with content that will be helpful to them and their team.
Key Strategies That Can Help You to Scale Your Customer Training Effort
- Automation: Automating your customer training and education can help you save time and ensure that everyone is getting the same level of information.
- Gamification: Gamifying your training and education can help keep people engaged and motivated.
- Social Learning: Leveraging social media can help you reach more people and provide a more interactive experience.
- Self-Paced Learning: Offering self-paced learning can give customers the freedom to learn at their own pace.
- On-Demand Learning: Offering on-demand learning can help customers access information when they need it most.
- Blended Learning Approach: This means using a combination of online and offline methods to provide training. For example, you could use online video tutorials, along with in-person training sessions. This would allow you to reach more people with your education and training programs. One is through paid advertising. This can be in the form of online ads, traditional print or television ads, or even sponsoring events. Another way to create customer awareness is through PR and thought leadership. This involves getting your company and its solutions featured in the media and in industry publications. You can also speak at conferences and events to
- Create Detailed Manuals and Guides: Create detailed manuals and guides that customers can refer to when they need help. These should be easily accessible and easy to understand. They should also be updated regularly to ensure that they are accurate and up-to-date.
- Provide Customer Support Services: Provide customer support services that can help customers with any questions or problems they may have. This could include a phone line, email support, or live chat. By providing these services, you will be able to scale your customer education and training programs more effectively.
- Creating Customer Awareness: It is the first step to scaling customer education and training. Once you have created awareness, you can then start working on getting customers interested in your solutions. You’ve just hired a new customer service agent. Great! But now what? How do you make sure they’re getting the right training and education to help your customers?
It can be challenging to scale customer education and training, but it’s essential if you want to provide the best possible experience for your customers. That’s why we’ve put together 5 key strategies to help you get started.
Key Strategies That Will Help You Scale Your Customer Education and Training
- Online training
- In-person training
- Self-paced learning
- E-learning modules
- Social learning
Once you have a good understanding of who you’re targeting and what you want them to achieve, you can start developing your strategy.
1. Identify Your Audience – Objectives
Let’s start by defining your audience and objectives. Who is your target customer? What do you want them to learn? Be specific in your goals, and make sure they’re measurable. What type of customer are you targeting? What do you want them to know?
Once you have your objectives in place, it’s time to create a plan of action. This is where you’ll decide on the best way to reach your target audience and how you’ll measure success.
There are many different ways to educate and train customers, and the best approach will vary depending on your business, product, and target audience. But here are five key strategies that will help you scale your customer education and training.
2. Create Content Strategy – A Personalized One
You need a content strategy.
What does that mean? It means you need to come up with a plan for how you’re going to deliver your training and education materials.
It’s not enough to just wing it when it comes to customer education and training. You need to have a plan in place, so you can systematically roll out new content and make sure your customers are getting the most up-to-date information.
Which Things Customer Training Strategy Must Include?
- A content calendar
- A process for creating new content
- Guidelines for who creates the content
- A process for approvals
- A way to track how well the content is performing
- A guide for your content writers on what tone and style to use
- The types of content you’ll be creating (videos, articles, tutorials, etc)
- Who is your target audience?
- The channels you’ll use to distribute your content (social media, email, blog, etc)
- How often you’ll be publishing new content?
3. Select the Right Technology Platform – Checkout Tips to Find One
You need to select the right technology platform to scale your customer training and education. It needs to be easy to use and navigate, with a user-friendly interface.
With the right tools, you can make it easy for your team to access the resources they need and for customers to find the information they’re looking for. Plus, it needs to be scalable so that you can add more users and courses as needed. And it should be affordable so that you’re not breaking the bank.
Finally, make sure the platform you choose is reliable and has a good track record. That way, you’ll know you can count on it to help you deliver quality customer training and education programs.
When selecting a technology platform, you’ll want to consider factors like ease of use, scalability, and affordability. You also want to make sure that the platform you choose is compatible with your existing systems and that it can grow with your business.
The right technology platform can make a big difference in the success of your customer education and training initiatives. Make sure you select one that meets your needs and that will help you achieve your goals.
4. Implement an Assessment & Certification Program
How to Implement an Assessment and Certification Program?
- Define Your Objectives: What do you hope to achieve with your assessment and certification program?
- Choose the Right Assessment Tool: There are many different types of assessment tools available, so make sure you select the one that’s best suited for your needs.
- Create Your Assessment Questions: The questions you ask in your assessment will help you determine whether or not someone is qualified to be a customer representative.
- Assess and Certify Your Employees: Once they’ve successfully completed the assessment, certify them as customer representatives.
- Track and Maintain Your Data: Make sure you track the data collected through your assessment and certification program so you can measure its effectiveness over time.
5. Measure Your Success
Are you seeing an increase in customer satisfaction? Are more customers sticking around? Are they buying more products or services? You can’t improve what you can’t measure. That’s why you need to track the success of your customer education and training initiatives.
If you’re unsure where to start, there are a number of tools and resources to measure. Customer retention software, for example, can help you identify which customers are at risk of churning and then provide you with the information you need to coach them back to health.
Measuring your success is one of the most important things you can do when it comes to customer training and education. You need to be able to track how your team is doing, identify areas where they need improvement, and see what’s working well so you can replicate those successes.
There are a number of ways to measure your success. You can look at things like customer satisfaction rates, engagement levels, or the number of support tickets that are resolved. But no matter which metrics you choose, make sure you’re tracking them consistently and using that data to make decisions about your training program.
Conclusion
You’ve come a long way in your customer education and training initiatives. But as your company grows, so too does the need for a scalable solution. Here are five key strategies to help you get there. Automate where possible – Leverage learning management system (LMS) – Sync training across channels – Embed learning into your product – Gamify the learning process.
Until next time, keep improving 🙂
![How to Use Customer Education As a Marketing Tool [Tips & Checklist]](https://wordpress-1419667-5289097.cloudwaysapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/WhatsApp-Image-2022-07-21-at-12.25.06-AM.jpeg)
Customer education, in the simplest term, is a marketing strategy. This doesn’t mean other strategies are an unreliable fit to upscale your ROI. But with global disruption and customer thought-process shift — actively “pulling” information to support their purchasing decisions, you need a more inclusive marketing strategy.
Customer education solely depends on your objectives. Whether you want to increase product adoption, generate demand for your product, increase conversion rate (free to paid users), or even prioritize having a talent pool of qualified people that uses your product. If your priorities are amongst any of above mentioned, your education must report to marketing & sales reps. So, shall we start to know about how to use customer education as a marketing tool [tips & checklist].
Importance of Customer Education
![How-to-Use Customer Education As A Marketing Tool [Tips & Checklist]](https://www.wordpress-1419667-5289097.cloudwaysapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/How-to-Use-Customer-Education-As-A-Marketing-Tool-Tips-Checklist1.png)
In the digital-savvy and information-driven culture, customer education is a valuable asset for any marketing team. Gone are the days when worn-out sales pitches fueled the ROI of any organization. Because, nowadays, customers are putting their necks out to educate their buying decisions. So, it all drips down to how aware are the customers of your product and services.
Recent research by New Century Media suggests that companies who invest in customer educational assets foster consumers 29 times, who are likely to buy. The best example of this is Hubspot Academy, the people who take their courses or even read their blogs are more likely to buy their offerings. So, it is not rocket science.
It is a question of consumer thought-process shift — actively “pulling” information to support their purchasing decisions. This shift in the digital culture has created a context in which consumers feel the need to engage with your products, and your services, through a deeper & meaningful, bite-size education.
Furthermore, Forbes former contributor, Steve Olenski, articulated in his Education-based Marketing blog that;
“Today’s consumers won’t do business with people they don’t trust.”
As consumers expect immediate gratification, it gets harder for them to buy unless it’s on their terms and timetable. Hard fact, but true! So, for them to trust you, they need to feel assured that they are dealing with the right company that has their best interest in mind.
How to Implement Customer Education as a Marketing Tool?
1. Align Your Goals
To launch any successful customer education program, you need to understand the dynamics of the business impact it has. And to figure that out, you need to align your goals on every level of your company functions.
So, what are your priorities? To generate demand for your product? Increase your product use? Increase conversion rate (Free to paid users)? Or do you want to create a talent pool of qualified people to use your product?
After establishing above mentioned priorities for your organization — align your set goals within every hierarchy level of your organization.
- Business Goals: Conduct a whiteboard session with top leaders & decision-makers of your company to discuss traction metrics such as customer acquisition, lifetime value (LTV), and other metrics. Without the top-bottom sync, the customer education program won’t get very far.
- Departmental Goals: The impact of customer education is felt across different degrees in different departments of your company, be it, sales, marketing, and customer success team. To acquire proven results, you need re-assure what they are using as proxies for customer success, currently. Therefore, customer education will become a helpful user-level metric for them as well.
- Team Goals: Team goals are all about your sync impact. To create a win-win situation while implementing customer education, you need to convey synchronous efforts — think user-level metrics. Aligning a singular set focus & consistency will bring a great impact on your engagement rates & course completion.
2. Allocate Resources
The bluntness about customer education is you’re not going to reach your dream state, right away. Optimizing your customer education program for your unique set goals & message will take time. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the first step. To create a solid foundation and reach an educational state like the academy, you might face hurdles like lack of resources & unsatisfied response gaps.
But focus on gains, not gaps. Avoid fixing your eye on global-class academies like Hubspot when you are just starting. Focus on your gains. Be it the smallest effort today, your needle should be moving in the right direction. Because, if you’re constantly peeking out on others’ examples, you’ll struggle on your grounds. That being said, it’s cool to have an idea of what’s going around about features and resources, it’ll help you to keep the tap on current trends.
Creating your academy doesn’t necessarily mean that the resources and tools required must come from your repository and budget. Allocate resources by borrowing useful material from other departments, that might have expandable resources, you can use. For example, for any subject matter topic, you can use your specialists to shoot a quick 5-min explanatory video session.
Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. Never underestimate the power of words. Have round-table sessions (virtual works too) with your teams weekly or monthly to discuss the progress. Host theme-based events to bring & connect different departments on the same page. Yeah, you can use event fliers & memes, and paste them around the wall to let the message roll. Eventually, the intent is to bring visibility to create momentum.
3. Create & Deliver
Now you already know what kind of goals sets and business outcomes you’re aiming to drive, so the question comes, what sort of objectives will help your customer achieve through your educational assets — that’ll eventually lead to your business outcome that you’ve identified?
In technical terms, this is called “Learning Objectives”. After you have nailed down your learning objectives, you can start laying out the entire journey that your customer will have to accomplish their objectives. Most importantly, when you are in this stage, consider the following:
- Subject Matter: Subject Matter is perhaps the most significant decision in your customer education program, it means what you are going to educate your consumers about. As the simplest example, let’s say you wish to educate your customers about your products. But, don’t you think that’s a broad topic.
So, work with your subject matter experts to narrow down your content scope, at the start, and find priorities. Them be it in a specific feature or even a function you feel helpful.
- Content Mix: In this process, you need to conduct white sessions with your instructional designer to decide the type of content (or platform) you are going to produce. Most learners don’t respond to a heap of words, including videos, infographics, and slideshows to foster the fast-learning cognitive capacity of your consumers. The purpose is to create a dynamic learning environment, so the more creatively exciting mix it gets, the more easily it is absorbed.
- Content-Length: The concept of your perfect content mix works this far. The reality of consumers nowadays is that most of them don’t have time to sit back and invest hours at end to learn. This is why you need to find a short & snappy way to get into a 5-10mins window. Creating 7 short video sessions is way better than 1 long webinar session.
- Delivery Process: Once you align your goals, find ways to get the resources, and create the right mix & length of your content, and its delivery time. Delivery is about enabling a system that supports scaling your mapped-out customer education program. To make use of this, you need a tech stack integration to operate your education program while deploying the resources that you’ve developed earlier. Don’t forget to engage with your customer in their learning stages while you reach the last step to measure their progress.
4. Measure
Feedback time. Gather both qualitative and quantitative feedback to improve your customer education program. Your efforts here are to know what your customers think about your program, so keep your doors open for any kind of suggestions or feedback. You can embed survey forms at the end of each course completion section or even mail them up.
Keep on assessing your customer education progress at deeper levels, by looking into learning proficiency, operational impact, relationship growth, and even ticket cost.
5 Tips to Strategize Your Education-Based Marketing
1. Use Omnichannel Strategy to Spread Your Brand Message
To drive diverse audience interest, you need to have an omnichannel marketing strategy in place, to provide a myriad of multiple mediums (social media, website, direct mail, review websites, publicity, and even phone calls). Establish a meaningful and close connection with your consumers by reaching them where they are, mostly. An easy way is to fetch a Social Media Marketing (SMM) buyers persona in place, that will help you to segment your audience (gender, educational background, age, industry, goals, challenges, etc)
2. Ask for Reviews & Feedback from Your Learners
You got to encourage your consumers to leave feedback or review that will help to revamp your education program strategies & progress effectively. Remember to make it a fun activity by employing gamification instead of forcing their experience with your program.
3. Create an Engaging Content Mix (Blogs, Videos, Infographics, etc)
Your customer education program is simply to transform/create a perceptive about how you do business. So, don’t rely on heaps of information instead make it an exciting & engaging mix of content. (Employ Social Media Strategies aligning your content mix)
1. Have a mobile-friendly website interface (Optimize accordingly)
For any website interface to be mobile-friendly, you need to have a session with your UI/UX experts or try with your developers to fill out the gaps. Your consumer is expecting an easy-to-access & guided navigational journey, so remember to optimize your page loading time & navigable elements to be mobile-friendly.
2. Invest in building Education Applications
Applications are the safest way to produce proficient learners. It offers a sense of convenience in the learner’s journey. Creating an education-based app can help you maximize your ROI while building a community of talent – ready to use your product.
Customer Education Process
The customer Education program can take up many forms. As it’s evolving with time — your approach should be unique like your product and services. As different companies have different objectives, customer education varies timely. Let’s say as we discussed your objective is to create a talent pool of proficient people that uses your product. So, options like instructional content, infographics, guidebooks, interactive weekly sessions, case studies, and product tours are super scalable educational resources to accomplish the above-mentioned objective.
Fundamentally, the question about the customer education process lies in both the educational & learning objectives. So, there is no such thing as the right format or process. Once you think about the user’s journey, your customer education must shape that perceptive of understanding the stages that consumer goes through when they are using your product.
After you have decided “why” you want to educate your customers, it’s time to understand “how” you’ll educate them. In this segment, you’ll need to consider different consumer journeys. If your ultimate goal is brand loyalty, there are likely various ways to get there.
All you need to create digitally-savvy and engaging educational resources and deploy them using the right technology.
Customer Education Process Checklist to Get Started
- Set SMART goals
- Create relevant content (Mix to engage)
- Strategize before launch
- Keep on Measuring
- Employ the right technology
- Evolve & Progress
Why to Use Customer Education Software in SaaS Companies?
When you streamline your educational resources, you need a suitable technology that supports your academic foundation. Getting the right technology doesn’t mean the absolute “right” but it boils down to your right or suitable tech needs.
- Artificial Intelligence: Every consumer has a broad sense of understanding of different products & services they want to use/buy. So, to narrow down such a broad sense, you need an intuitive system to analyze your audience (wherever they are) & simulate your message without human error.
- LMS (Learning Management System): Customer education is not any lesser than conducting training sessions. Without a proper dynamic system in place, information is just like words with no purpose. So, from streamlining your content and segmenting your audience (learning goals, progress meter, gamification, and objectives) to deploying your educational program (insights, content authoring tools, simulations, and big data repository) — Learning Management System becomes a necessity for any success to happen.
Depending on the objectives you want to accomplish with your customer educational program, you can employ the right technology that suits your needs.
How Does Customer Education Impact on ROI?
Customer education has the potential to impact any organization’s ROI with consistent efforts & strategies in place. In the recent studies, it was found that on average companies reported a 6.2% increase in revenue whereas a 7.4% increase in customer retention led to a 6.1% decrease in customer support costs.
While customer education is observed to boost marketing & sales results, it’s just a matter of strategic effort that high-success companies leverage such educational strategies to outperform the average and low-scale companies in every category, by the whopping rate of 30%, in over a year or so.
Customer Education can have an impact in different degrees, not limited to sales, but resulting in brand advocacy and an increase in LTV.
So, after such compelling evidence, a customer-first approach is needed to boost to a 16X higher increase in customer retention/satisfaction rate.
Conclusion
Regardless of the nature of your business, or your industry, customer education is the competitive edge & need of the hour for every company to adapt to the global disruption. In this blog, if you have any queries regarding the right technology to get you started with your customer education program, do let us know, we’d love to give you a free demo.
Today, training employees is not enough for a company to succeed – training customers has become equally important. Yes, you read that right! That is why the point comes to know more about importance of training software in customer training.
Customer training has proven to be incredibly successful in customer retention. In fact, with the numerous benefits of retaining customers over acquiring new ones, customer training has become more important than ever.
Such a thing allows customers to be informed and educated about the products and services of a company and helps them make use of these to their utmost. When we talk about products, we are not referring to a pair of heels, and when we talk about customer training, we are not pointing out social media videos related to “How to carry your heels most comfortably?”
What is Customer Training?
Well, it is all about making maximum benefit from tech products and SaaS (Software as a Service).
Based on the complexity of the product, the training can be completely based on the customer’s pace and in an easy format, such as user forums and FAQs.
In case it is complex, the customers may be offered an on-site demonstration as well. If you wonder why businesses are so invested in training software for customer training, wonder no more. In this blog, we are going to discuss the importance of using such software for training customers.
By the end of this, you will have learned a lot about customer training, examples of customer training software, what to see when choosing the software, and much more.
So without delaying any more, let us dive right in to know importance of training software in customer training.
Customer training is a kind of program, specially designed to aid customers access and utilizing a company’s services and products most efficiently. This covers a range of things, including tutorials for product setup, the onboarding process, and much more.
The major aim of all kinds of customer training is to aid the customers to make maximum out of a service or product and to provide them with the most wonderful experience.
In some cases, customer training also includes external parties, like partners and suppliers. In such instances, customer training is offered to them to make sure that they can utilize the products and services effectively, conduct demonstrations, and share their advantages of these to the potential clients on the behalf of the business.
If you are thinking about the best method of training customers, considering the wide variety of these, let us tell you – there does not exist a wrong or right way for such a thing. It all depends on the medium you opt for. Based on your consumer demographics, create a custom training program for your customers.
Do You Know the Key Trends in Customer Training?
With companies realizing the increased need for customer training, here are some key trends that you must know before beginning with a customer training program.
1. Increase in Training Budget
For businesses that sell software, customer training has always been an essential component. However, a common practice followed by them is to cut down on the costs associated with customer training every time they fell short of budget.
With the changing expectations due to COVID-19, positive customer experience became a priority for all businesses. This is why companies are investing more in customer training this year.
2. Self-Direction & Engagement are Priorities
Companies are now focused on providing the best customer experience. Based on the technology investment priorities in customer training, the majority is directed toward customer experience, which is 34% of the total investment. Followed by this are:
- Virtual Reality (VR) / Augmented Reality (AR) – 24%
- Analytics Tools – 22%
- Content Management / Curriculum – 11%
- Personalization – 9%
3. Adapting to Hybrid Learning Environments
With the hit of the pandemic, hybrid working has become the norm. The same is the case with customer training as well. These programs will progressively take place in hybrid and blended learning environments.
Companies will continue to make impressive virtual encounters that involve potential consumers in-person as well as online.
4. The Rise in Analytics: Customer Training Insights
With companies investing in customer training, the higher authorities must ensure that the investment has a positive impact. Thus, to gain insights into these, the use of analytics is rising. The data gathered for the same include:
- Success rate
- Behavior and engagement patterns
- Usage trends
- Usage details
- Customer demographics
5. Mobile-Friendly Customer Training
According to a study, it has been estimated that in three years, about 72% of people will access the internet using their mobile phones. This is why companies have started to make their customer training mobile-friendly.
Why Do You Need Training Software in Customer Training?
If you are reconsidering your choice of opting for training software for customer training, do not worry. Mentioned below are some of the reasons why using this can turn out to be beneficial for you and your customers. After reading these, you will be sure about your choice.
1. Higher Security
Using a trustworthy vendor for training software means a lower risk of data breaches associated with confidential information associated with customers and the company.
2. Developed Reporting
When you opt for training software, you get advanced reports regarding several aspects of customer training, such as the total number of customers who finished the training, and the test scores. This will eventually aid in understanding the overall impact of training on the objectives of the company.
3. Better Accessibility
The right training software can help your customers undergo training via any device, including Linux, Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS. Higher accessibility further means that your clients can make training a part of their daily life as well.
4. Effective Learning Abilities
The up-to-date training software can offer dynamic learning abilities, which makes learning more useful, engaging, and exciting. These can include:
- Virtual machines
- Self-labs
- Two-way interaction through a live training that is led by an instructor
- Providing recommendations for learning based on previous activities
- Personalized learning paths
5. Intuitive UI
The most recent learning management systems offer a user interface that is intuitive, modern, as well as effortless to navigate.
Examples of Training Software in Customer Training
With continuous advancements in technology, various kinds of learning management systems and software are available for training customers.
So before we help you in identifying the best customer training software for your business, let us first have a look at some examples of customer training software.
1. Docebo
An e-learning platform that is scalable for meeting the needs of a business associated with customer training, Docebo offers a subscription-based Software as a Service plan. Organizations can also opt for a 14-day free trial to experience the working of the software.
2. CXcherry
Cxcherry makes use of an on-demand customer educational platform to enhance customer retention, generate potential clients, and build brand awareness. The AI-enabled LMS with consultative solutions, knowledgeable team, and Cxcherry culture offered by the platform is a one-stop-solutions for training solutions.
3. TalentLMS
TalentLMS is an eLearning tool, which is also cloud-based like Litmos. It provides an entire platform to businesses to help them grow and offer efficient training to their customers.
The software allows companies to perform a variety of tasks, such as offering certification tests, managing customers, carrying out virtual classes for external and internal clients, and even tracking their progress.
4. Paradiso
Paradiso is the software that is utilized by some of the major businesses in the world. It offers services associated with managed learning, course creation, and ready-made courses as well.
5. Litmos
The Litmos LMS software allows companies of all sizes to provide engaging training exams and courses, manage programs, and track the progress of learners. This learning management system is cloud-based and is rich in features, affordable, and easy to use.
6. UserGuiding
UserGuiding enables companies to onboard their customers with walkthroughs of products and services that do not need any kind of coding. The software allows the creation of personalized user segments, NPS surveys, resource centers, user onboarding lists, hotspots and tooltips, and engaging product tours.
Checklist for Selecting Training Software in Customer Training
With an extensive range of training software for customer training available on the market, it can be daunting for you to choose the right one for your business. To help you overcome this challenge, we have prepared a checklist for you, which is given below.
1. Identify Your Objectives
Ask yourself the 4W’s and 1H of the LMS – who, what, where, when, and how. The answers identify your business objectives associated with software training.
2. Determine Your Requirements
Think about what you require from an LMS. This will further aid you in determining the usability and features you seek in the training software. Once you are done with the process, make a list of features that your company requires in the software.
3. Shortlist LMS Software Vendors
Look for all the LMS software vendors, online and offline, and find out about their online existence, involving free trials and demonstrations. Some of the common parameters for judging a software vendor are:
- SaaS availability
- Features
- The ratio of pricing to features
- Mobile-friendliness
- Future upgrade plans
- Sustainability of the business
- The workforce of the business
- Client testimonials
- Case studies
- Functionality and form factor
- Service support
Based on these factors, narrow down the vendors that meet your requirements for training software.
4. Issue a Proposal Request
Based on the shortlisting of vendors, propose an RPF to them according to your company’s requirements. After obtaining a response from them, you can request a demo, wherein you must involve your team to acquire feedback on the software’s usability.
5. Evaluate the Vendors
Post using the demo software, evaluate the vendors based on these factors:
- Deployment model
- The simplicity of maintenance by the manager of training
- Support from vendor after deployment
- Software compatibility with the company’s resource files
- User interface
- Form factor
6. Negotiate
Once you have further narrowed down the list of software vendors based on their evaluation, negotiate with them regarding a discounted price or a better deal. Do not forget to discuss timelines for LMS deployment and constant support from their team.
Best Examples of Customer Training Platforms
Some of the best instances of customer training platforms are shared below, with brief insights into the “why” of them being the most satisfactory.
By getting to know the features of these platforms, you will have an idea of which software vendor offers a wide variety and which one you should opt for to meet your business requirements.
1. Hubspot
Hubspot offers a free certification program associated with marketing and inbound sales. The customer training platform has various segments:
- Topics, like SEO, social media, and email marketing
- Kinds of Content, like user guides, certifications, and lessons
- Categories, like design, marketing, and sales
2. Outreach
Outreach makes use of customer training for actively addressing support queries to obtain novel clients efficiently. The platform clambered its success associated with customers through the utilization of customer education to enhance how its team functions.
3. ServiceNow
ServiceNow is a platform that has changed various of its live classes to on-demand design. They provide a wide range of choices for learners, including public and private live classes’ led by instructors.
4. Zendesk
Zendesk provides paid as well as free customer training for onboarding their clients at scale. Their training program comprises the following:
- On-site training
- Custom training
- Virtual ILT (instructor-led training)
- eLearning
- On-demand content
Conclusion
Customer training is highly valued by most businesses because of its beneficial extent at both ends. While customers learn to make maximum use of the company’s products and services, organizations experience higher customer retention, resulting in better ROI.
Since training software has proven to be greatly useful in providing customer training, tracking clients’ progress, and analyzing the extent to which the company’s objectives are being attained, several businesses have switched to LMS software.
If you are looking for the most effective method of training your clients, you must look for the most suit. We hope that you get all information about the importance of training software in customer training.
A majority of individuals stop consuming a product or service not because they do not find it useful or because it is not capable of solving their issues. Rather, they stop consumption because they find it challenging to get habituated to it.
People look for products and services that are easy and capable of solving complex issues. And, as a SaaS company, you must cater to their needs. Regrettably, few such businesses have come to the realization and have been able to successfully implement it.
According to a recent study,
“About 40% to 60% of consumers who sign up for an unpaid trial are likely to utilize a company’s products and services and never return.”
It is just 2.7% percent of those who continue to stick to these services after the trial. So if a user abandons your company, either they have not used your product enough to like it or they didn’t like it at all. So in the cases where the problem is in your hands, you must try to address them.
When customers sign up for a service or a product, they do so only when they are sure about its capability of solving their problems. Thus, among the several reasons for users leaving, poor onboarding is one of them.
SaaS businesses tend to make several such mistakes while providing customer education, which overall decreases their ROI and reduces the value of their products among customers.
So, to prevent you from taking any steps that hinder the growth of your venture, we are here to share some of the key mistakes that you must avoid.
In this article, we will take you through the entire process of customer education and share some of the essential aspects associated with the same.
So, without any further delay, let’s dive in to know 4 Major Mistakes to Avoid During Customer Education For SaaS Companies.
What is Customer Education?
Customer education refers to the content that is created for onboarding, engaging, as well as retaining existing and novel customers. This content is delivered through on-demand and in-person channels, based on the requirement of the consumers.
Also called customer training, it aids the users to get a better comprehension of the services and products of a SaaS business and find reasonable value in the same.
Based on the level of knowledge of users, the complexity of products, target audiences, and the business’s goals, a company may provide customer training in varied formats.
Customer Training Formats
1. Knowledge Checks, like Quizzes
Knowledge checks help the company and the consumers both since they aid in measuring the consumers’ level of comprehension. Also, the scores can further motivate the users to remain engaged with the content for a longer period.
2. Slideshows
By uploading previously used content during in-person training, businesses can indulge the users greatly.
3. Infographics
To recycle current marketing content, infographics in the form of PDFs are helpful for companies and customers. Businesses can simply provide fast facts and overviews related to their products and services.
4. Recorded Screenshots
One of the best ways to train customers is by providing them with step-by-step instructions for complex processes and configurations.
5. Recorded Webinars
The most engaging content in customer training is through webinars. Customers can get an overview of the interface of a product.
By producing engaging content in varied formats based on the needs of users, companies can get many benefits, which are highly advantageous for their growth.
Importance of Customer Education in the SaaS Industry
While several businesses may not realize it, customer education can be highly profitable for their overall growth due to its positive influence on essential metrics from support contact rate, to the adoption of products and services, to marketing leads.
A more detailed illustration of the reasons for its importance is provided below.
1. Improved Customer Satisfaction
Higher customer satisfaction implies customer loyalty, which further indicates higher profitability. So by training customers, a company teaches them how to use their products and services, which increases the overall probability of satisfaction among customers.
2. Increased Customer Engagement and Adoption
A business’s customer training program directly impacts the following:
- Customer satisfaction
- Customer independence
- Product usage rate
When the customers master the products and services of a company, the overall level of engagement and adoption augments.
3. Enhanced Expansion, Renewal, and Retention Rates
Several factors like competition and poor onboarding can result in customer churn. However, when a business invests in customer education, the customers get access to tricks and tips that offer them higher value.
Educated customers are more likely to expand and renew, thus, increasing retention rates.
4. Enhanced Product Development
When users raise support tickets, their questions will be of higher relevance to the kind of implementations and improvements that the product needs. Thus, their feedback will aid in product development.
5. Decreased Support Tickets
Investing in customer training can help businesses save on customer support tickets. The most common questions that are asked by customers can be provided to them in the form of help articles.
6. Higher ROI
Customer education results in customer retention since they value the products and find them useful once they understand their importance. So, when you spend lesser on gaining new customers through marketing and are rather focused on customer retention, your company’s return on investments or ROI is simply higher. Also, a satisfied customer is likely to make the business more profitable in the long run.
7. Quicker Customer Onboarding
By being able to provide a smooth onboarding process to your customers, you will:
- Build the customer’s trust
- Gain higher reputation
- Educate several customers
- Make sure that all users begin with the same information
- Create a consistent understanding
How to Start With Your Customer Education Process?
Based on the extent to which customer education is important for a SaaS business, you might now be willing to know how you can start with the process. Well, given below is a basic step-by-step guide to provide you with an idea.
Step 1: Define Goals
By setting up the goals you wish to achieve through the training program, you will be able to define your objectives and measure the program’s progress.
Step 2: Situation Analysis
Based on your goals, perform an audit of your present learning material in case you have an ongoing customer education program. You must conduct an audit of your customer’s experience after purchasing as well.
Step 3: Check Resource Availability
Apart from your existing learning material, you will require several other resources. Allocate the budget and decide time boundaries as well.
Step 4: Consider Learning Styles of Users
Based on the kind of audience you have, think about the learning styles and spaces that will be the most suitable for them. Consider the amount of time they will spend, the tone of voice for content, and the requirement for visual elements.
Step 5: Decide Your Medium
Once you have understood the learning styles of your consumers, you are ready to decide on your medium of training. There is a wide variety of choices. For instance, it can be a YouTube video or an in-store demonstration.
Step 6: Regular Checks on Program
Set quarterly or annual checks on your training program to measure the progress that the customers are making. The metrics will help the program evolve based on the feedback and overall review.
Why use Customer Education Software in SaaS Companies?
When a SaaS company decides to use customer education software, it is opting for several benefits, which include the following:
1. Improved Security
If you want your business to keep growing, you cannot risk the personal information of your consumers and allow any kind of data theft or breaches. So when you use software for customer training through an authorized vendor, you get higher security.
2. Monetization
If your team of trainers possesses important knowledge associated with your products and services, you can sell it in the form of a course and thus, earn money.
3. Enhanced Reporting
The software will provide you with information regarding users’ progress, the content accessed by them, data visualization, the impact of training on users, and much more.
4. Choices for Offline Learning
Some vendors provide software that allows users to download and access content in offline mode as well.
5. Mobile-Friendliness
With a majority of the world’s population using smartphones to perform daily activities, the software training program must be mobile-friendly. By opting for such software, you will augment the users’ activity and indulgence.
6. Dynamic Education
Similar to the recommendation of videos on YouTube based on previous activity, training software suggests content to customers based on their learning. Also, the customers can define their learning paths, which cater to their necessities. This enhances retention and adoption of knowledge in the longer term.
Top Mistakes to Avoid in Customer Education for SaaS Companies
To make sure that your customers get the best learning experience and also begin to value your products and services like you want them to, these are the top mistakes that you must avoid.
1. Poor Relation Between Educational and Business Goals
Based on the goals of your business, you must set the goals for your customer education program. For instance, if the aim is to decrease the number of support tickets raised, you must make an FAQ section on your company’s website addressing the commonly asked questions.
2. Poor Customer Training Strategy
If your strategy is not clear and goal-oriented, it will be short-lived. Thus, to avoid this, you must form a step-by-step plan based on your goals and define the metrics that the company will utilize for measuring progress.
3. Disregarding KPIs and Metrics
When you disregard KPIs and metrics, you will never know the areas of customer education that need improvement. So, measure the engagement rate, net promoter score, customer lifetime value, and customer churn.
4. Poor Choice of Customer Education Medium
A poor choice of medium for customer education implies a waste of time and money. To avoid this, you must consider the type of audience, their educational needs, and your educational goals.
Quick Checklist to Educate Customers in SaaS Companies
Before beginning your customer education program, you must ensure that all the crucial aspects have been taken into consideration. For your ease, we have made a checklist for the same:
- What kind of customers do you have?
- What are the business goals?
- What are the goals of the customer education program?
- Who is responsible for ensuring the smooth functioning of customer education?
- What are the required resources?
- Which mediums will be used for educating customers?
- On what basis will the success of the program be evaluated?
- On what basis will the software be chosen?
- How will the Learning Management System be managed and implemented?
- How will the customers be informed of the LMS?
- Which teams are involved in educating customers?
Once you have answers to all these questions, you are ready to start educating your customers about the products of your company.
How Does Customer Education Impact ROI?
By educating customers, companies get loyal and satisfied customers. For these reasons, the rate of retention is high and so is the return on investments. Customer education impacts ROI in various ways, which are as follows:
1. Higher Rates of Customer Retention
Acquiring a new customer is five times more costlier than retaining an existing customer. By educating customers about the use of your products, you enhance value, which leads to customer retention.
2. Higher Customer Satisfaction
When customers have a proper understanding of the utilization of your products, they are likely to be more satisfied. And higher customer satisfaction means renewal of services, which leads to a higher ROI.
3. Word-of-Mouth Publicity
Happy customers are likely to recommend the company’s products and services to their friends and family. This method of advertising is highly beneficial for businesses since it does not require investments and the possibility of customer acquisition is high.
Conclusion
Customer education is a crucial part of SaaS businesses since it makes the users understand the proper use of products and services and makes them comprehend their value. However, the extent to which companies make mistakes while running a program of customer training makes it unworthy of time and money.
In this article, we discussed some of the most prominent mistakes that you must avoid to have a successful training program. By choosing the right software, and the most suitable mediums, valuing metrics and KPIs, and relating your business goals with educational ones, you can get great ROIs through customer education.
As a business owner, have you ever thought about what could be better than gaining a new customer? You might be wondering if anything could be better than this.
Well, the answer is customer retention.
Gaining new customers is alluring but retaining customers comes at a lower cost and has the potential to provide a higher return on investments.
So the question that now arises is how can businesses retain their customers for longer terms.
To do this, you will have to form a strategy for retaining customers that allows them to stay engaged and content.
In this blog, we will be sharing some of the best customer retention tactics. Best Customer Retention Tactics [Mini Guide + Checklist] will help you to retain your customers. What’s more, we will also discuss how to use software for the same.
So, let us get started…
What is Customer Retention?
“If a customer cannot be retained, then to what extent can you keep acquiring novel customers and let your business go on? “
As the term suggests, customer retention denotes businesses’ actions and activities to retain the maximum number of customers. This is commonly done through brand loyalty and customer loyalty initiatives.
When we talk about customer retention, the process begins from the first time a customer makes contact with the company and goes on throughout the whole period of the relationship. Overall aids the companies in reducing the total customer defections.
The key aim of customer retention is to engage current customers to continue purchasing services or products from businesses.
The best strategies for customer retention allow a business to form long-lasting relationships with customers. Their loyalty to the brand may even result in mouth publicity, further increasing brand awareness and building customers.
What is the Importance of Customer Retention for SaaS Companies?
SaaS companies spend money on raising brand awareness through various means, like social media, and thus, acquire new customers. This means that gaining novel consumers is expensive, due to the number of investments involved.
Moreover, if these customers are not retained, the ROI will also be lower.
Why SaaS Businesses Must Retain Customers?
- Customer Loyalty
Customers that are retained tend to spend more and purchase more often as compared to novel customers. This is because the retained consumers understand the value of a service or product and continue to visit repetitively.
- Word-of-Mouth Advertising
One of the most effective ways of increasing brand awareness is through word-of-mouth advertising. When customers share their satisfactory experiences with their friends and relatives, there is a higher chance these people give the products or services a try.
Through this kind of advertising, the companies acquire new consumers, and that too, without spending.
- Higher Return on Investment
Companies that have high customer retention have greater ROIs. If you are thinking about the extent to which this can increase company revenues, here is your answer:
“5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profit.” –Fred Reichheld
The major reason for such high returns is that return customers tend to purchase more products from a business over time.
Concerning the profitability of SaaS companies, the expected revenue generation is even higher. Based on research by Swagata Kumar, “Boosting B2B customer retention by 5% increases profits by up to 95%.”
- More Affordable
As stated earlier, acquiring novel consumers requires high investments in advertising, which is an expensive process. On the other hand, retaining an existing customer requires lesser expenditure. If you do not believe this, let’s see what Kate Silver said:
“Most of the research shows that it costs between 6 to 7 times more to get a new customer vs. keeping the customers you already have.”
- Higher CLTV
CLTV or Customer Lifetime Value refers to the overall revenue that an organization expects to earn from every customer.
Since return customers are likely to avail of more services from a company due to their love for the services and hands-on experience, a company with a higher customer retention rate is likely to have greater CLTV.
Customer Retention Process
To retain your customers, there is an entire process that you must follow:
Step 1: Categorize Your Customers.
The first step to retaining customers is through categorizing them based on the following aspects:
- Which customers are driven by prices?
- Which customers seek value?
- Which customers are loyal to the brand?
Once you have categorized your customers, you will know which approach should be used for which customer. For instance, a customer who has a good relationship will require an approach that is less salty.
Step 2: Your Service: ABSOLUTE!
When your services are top-notch, no customer would be willing to leave. Even though they might consider stepping back due to high prices, it would still be difficult for them to leave your company.
So one of the most crucial steps in customer retention is ensuring that your services are as good as you think they are. If you are not sure, conduct surveys and ask for feedback from your customers.
Another essential part of good services is talking the customer into availing services but not forcing them so much that they get irritated. A customer will only return if you keep him content.
Step 3: Remember, Automate it!
Make sure that the systems you use are working for your company. This may include the following:
- A good system for contacting customers
- Automated mailers for season sales including CTAs.
- Reward systems for loyal customers
When you have your systems in place, you can stay in touch with your customers and they are likely to return, considering their liking and loyalty to your brand.
Step 4: Update Your Oldies.
Oftentimes, companies think that they do not need to sell their services or products to old customers and that being a salesman is necessary only for new consumers.
Other times, organizations fear that pressurizing or trying to sell to old customers can make them lose their relationship with them. However, this is not the case.
Even return consumers look for companies to bring them novel offers and ideas. So, as a business owner, you must ensure that you continue to sell to your customers to retain them.
Best Customer Retention Tactics to Ace Your Customer Retention Management
Before we share with you some of the successful techniques of customer retention management, let us first understand what it is.
In the simplest terms, customer retention management refers to the process through which customer satisfaction and customer experience are managed by a company. The key aim of this process is to acquire and retain as many consumers as possible.
The process of customer retention management is led by techniques and strategies that vary from one company to another, based on their segmentation and customer experience goals.
Customer Retention Management Techniques
- Implementing a Feedback Loop
Several companies believe that they serve their customers well but sometimes, this is not the case. It is not necessary that the customers feel the same. So to ensure their retention, it is crucial to understand what they think about your company’s services so you have some scope for improvement.
To do this, you must start getting customer feedback and share the same information with the members of the organization. Through a customer feedback loop, you can collect, analyze, and distribute surveys and reviews that customers undergo.
- Maintain a Calendar for Consumer Communication
Irrespective of the responses of your customers, your company must continue to communicate with them. In case you haven’t heard from them in a while, you must reach out to them and try re-establishing your relationship.
Since you may lose track of days, a customer communication calendar can help you see when a customer last interacted with you.
You can also consider sending them an email regarding the new offers in the store and adding a call to action.
- Encourage Your Customers with a Mission
Not every brand needs to inspire their customers’ loyalty through systems and tactics – some may even inspire through mission, such as TOMS.
The business model of TOMS is entirely based on making the world a better place, which is why several people are loyal to the brand.
Consumers tend to be focused on the environment as well as the impacts of their purchasing habits. This means that doing good is also essential to them, which clearly explains their relationship with TOMS.
Why Should You Use Customer Training Software?
Customer training refers to how the customers are educated regarding the successful utilization of company services and products. This includes providing them with information and materials they need to meet the company’s objectives.
The Four Major Aims that a Customer Training Software can Accomplish are as follows.
- Increasing the impact of your products and services.
- Enhancing customer experience
- Augmenting the value of products and services
- Acquiring and retaining customers at each phase of the consumer lifecycle
If you are still not sure why you should use customer training software, the research report by Brandon Hall Group may convince you.
According to the Extended Enterprise Learning 2020 report, 45% of people surveyed claimed that they offer training to the customers actively. 49% of them agreed that it is capable of enhancing client relationships.
Why Should You Use Customer Training Software?
- Enhance the overall consumer experience
- Produce recurring and extra revenue
- Reduce expenses invested in acquiring novel customers
- Enhance client relationships
- Develop brand awareness
- Enhance the value of products and services
- Lowering costs involved in customer support
How to Retain Customers Quickly Using Customer Training Software?
Do the tactics used by your company for customer retention encourage the long-term growth of your business and build trust? Do your products and services receive word-of-mouth advertising?
If the answer to the above questions is not a confident “Yes!”, then you should consider opting for an LMS for customer training to quickly retain them.
A learning management system or LMS aids in the creation of targeted training for customers to enhance the rates of retention. This is because their pain points can be rapidly identified and resolved, which leads to satisfaction among customers.
Key Points to Focus to Implement the Retention Tactics with the Use of an LMS
- Emphasize Your Customers’ Needs
Attract attention to how your services address the pain points of customers. You may use facts, testimonials, infographics, or case studies for the same.
- Monitor Engagement Levels
Through an LMS, you can track and analyze the engagement of consumers. This will further provide you with an understanding of what your customers want the most and how you can engage them further.
- Make Video Tutorials
The key aim of customer retention tactics must be the increment of customers’ knowledge to increase the value of products and services. Thus, through video tutorials, they can engage and understand better the innovative usages.
Why Opt for CXcherry as a Customer Retention Software?
When it comes to choosing an LMS for customer training, CXcherry is extremely beneficial in retaining customers, as well as for the overall ROI of companies.
- Adaptive Customer Onboarding
Help your novel customers to comprehend your products and services and adapt to them more quickly after a customized onboarding.
- Enhance Upsell
Enhance upselling by allowing your clients to realize the actual value of your services and products and hence, obtain a higher return on investments.
- Brand Advocacy
Through an LMS, customers will become brand advocates due to their level of satisfaction.
- Reduce Support Tickets
By educating and informing the buyers with the necessary details about the products and services, you will receive lesser support tickets.
- Boosts Service Adoption Rate
CXcherry helps in boosting service adoption by delivering trackable, comprehensive, consistent, and updated training.
Congratulation!!! You’ve reached here.
Several businesses tend to hesitate when it comes to opting for new software or strategies for better overall functioning. However, it is crucial to understand that stepping out of your comfort zone can sometimes be highly beneficial.
In this case, adopting CXcherry for customer retention can reduce expenses to a great extent along with giving high ROIs.
