What is Customer Education, and why does it matter?
Customer Education: What It Is and Why It Matters for Your Business is your guide to what it is and why it matters to your company.
Customer education is the process of instructing customers on
how to utilise and appreciate items. It helps clients at various phases of
their journey as a business function.
Customer Education educates buyers and influencers about the
industry and the goods prior to a sale. Customer Education follows the sale and
instructs customers on how to use the goods. This allows them to obtain the
greatest amount of value over time.
Customer education isn't about the acts you do to educate
customers; it's not about hosting webinars, offering training, or producing
articles. Yes, it frequently entails all of them. However, the role that a
Customer Education programme performs in your company is what distinguishes it.
Customer education does not refer to the actions you do to
educate customers, such as conducting webinars, providing training, or writing
articles. Yes, it frequently includes them all. What sets a Customer Education
programme apart from others is the position it plays in your organisation.
This description is intentionally vague about which programmes
are part of your portfolio. To attain the final aim, Customer Education
departments might employ a variety of programmes and tactics, and no two are
similar. Later in this book, we'll look at various popular formats and
applications.
Let's look carefully at the definition we offered to see why
Customer Education is vital.
Customer education is a role rather than an activity.
Customer education is a crucial company role, as we previously
discussed. It's more than a pastime. These are actions, not a Customer
Education plan, if you offer training or write articles. Customers are usually
educated organically by most companies at first. Everyone contributes to
customer training, writing support articles, and creating webinars and videos.
That is very understandable. Customer Education must, however, be formalised at
some point.
There are several reasons why Customer Education should be
considered a role rather than an activity. To begin with, you will not have a
Customer Education plan if no one owns it. Everyone will continue to
contribute, but the results may vary. You'll begin to waste time and effort by
duplicating activities. Worse still, your customer's journey will not be simple
A Customer Education approach also aids in your long-term
development. You'll eventually develop a programme portfolio. An online school,
a support centre, a public training or webinar programme, in-product education,
certificates or badging, and paid learning services are all possibilities. This
type of programme necessitates strict adherence to the rules. They'll have to
be administered as a department eventually. Consider them a portfolio of your
work.
Both accounts and individual users are served by Customer
Education.
Buyers, product owners, champions, admins, developers, end-users
– you name it! Customer Education affects a wide range of user personas. People
engaged in the purchasing decision are frequently educated by us. We also
provide training for people who will be using the product.
You may have numerous levels of education depending on whether
your product is B2B (business-to-business) or B2B (business-to-consumer). On
the one hand, you must educate individual users and assist them in discovering
the value of your product. It doesn't matter if you're a B2C or B2B company: a
product is only as good as the people who use it. However, when it comes to B2B
goods, you're usually training consumers inside the framework of an account.
This might imply that they'll all begin utilising your stuff at the same
moment. It might also imply that they tailored specific components of your product
to their needs. These kinds of choices can alter how you approach customer
education.
Customer education boosts development all the way through the
customer journey.
A comprehensive Customer Education plan considers not only what
material is provided and in what format but also how customers' maturity will
be increased along their journey. We must understand their goals and show them
how to accomplish them.
Different sorts of education will be included along the customer
journey based on your account and user persona mapping.
Pre-sales evaluation, purchase, launch, adoption, growth and
maturity, and expansion are just a few of the steps that an account will go
through. Further releases, adoption, growth, and maturity can all result from
this expansion. It's a virtuous loop in the best instance. Have you developed
any launch-specific instructional programmes? Have you considered what you'll
provide clients in the future to help them develop and mature
A journey is also experienced by a single user. They, too, will
begin by assessing the product. They'll begin acquiring more fundamental skills
once they understand how it benefits them. If people continue to perceive value,
their knowledge and advanced abilities will grow. They may even become a
product evangelist, encouraging others to use it. Do you have any education
initiatives in place for advanced users and champions, or only for your basic
users? Is your basic user programme incentivizing people to use your product to
its full potential? These are major issues to think about.
Customer education enhances the way people operate by changing
behaviour, removing barriers, and lowering costs.
If you ask a typical employee in your company what the aim of
education is, they would most likely respond "knowledge." They may
also mention "skills" if they have a training background.
True, Customer Education develops skills and knowledge, but for
what purpose? Customer education must be focused on assisting consumers in
discovering value. Each member of the team must have the appropriate abilities
in order to build an account. They must overcome impediments to value. They
should also, and probably most significantly, improve at what they do. What
could possibly be more valuable?
You're altering people's behaviour if your Customer Education
campaign is blazing on all cylinders. This might entail providing them with:
- The knowledge
that gives them power
- Skills that
allow people to get the most out of your product
- Inspiration
to utilise your goods in a variety of ways.
You should be able to compare how individuals utilise a product
before and after training or before and after instruction.
Focusing on behaviour modification also makes it easier to
figure out what is and isn't necessary to educate. "Awesome" features
that don't add value to the customer's experience? Please don't waste your time
trying to teach them. Customers who "simply get it" because of
features that are so basic? Don't spend your time once again.
So, what are your options?
Rather, focus on training clients on how to overcome obstacles
or improve their performance. In the end, greater value with less friction is
what most customers want. Let's imagine your product has hundreds of features,
but just five of them will allow your consumer to get up and running quickly.
Please don't waste time giving them a tour of the whole user interface;
instead, focus on those five features. Create documentation or in-product
education if you know there's a common mistake or support issue. Your efforts
will assist the client in avoiding or resolving the issue.
So, what alternatives do you have?
Instead, concentrate on teaching them how to overcome challenges
and increase their performance. The majority of customers want more value with
less friction in the end. Consider the following scenario: your product
contains hundreds of features, but just five of them will enable your customer
to get up and running quickly. Instead of giving them a tour of the whole user
interface, concentrate on those five features. If you know there's a common
error or support issue, create documentation or in-product education. Your
efforts will help the customer avoid or resolve the problem.
Finally, because Customer Knowledge is typically about assisting
customers in doing a better job, it is often much more than just product
education. Customers in new or emerging sectors (for example, Hubspot for
inbound marketing or Gainsight for Customer Success) would frequently need to
be educated on the industry and how to conduct their jobs successfully. This
opens up a lot of possibilities for expanding Customer Education's reach
through industry-specific education.
What is the value of customer education for a business?
Executives typically experience an "a-ha" moment after
investing in a real Customer Education strategy: Customer Education is a secret
weapon for the organisation. It's often done on the go, with different
employees from different parts of the company conducting different trainings.
When you invest in it, though, it becomes rocket fuel for the success of your
clients.
Customer education that is effective will result in genuine
business outcomes, especially if it supports consumers throughout their
journey. Customer Education, for example, may affect a variety of critical
KPIs, including marketing leads, product adoption, and support contact rate,
among others. Customer Education accomplishes a number of tasks at a high
level, such as:
- Gives your
customers a pathway to obtaining more value over time.
- Boosts the
market worth of your company's brand
- Allows your
Character types and support representatives to focus on higher-value
interactions by reducing the support burden.
Client Education, when done correctly, boosts customer lifetime
value and maturity, establishes your company as a category leader, and improves
self-service efficiency. Here's how Customer Education affects the KPIs that
matter most to SaaS companies.
Customer Lifetime Value
is increased
- Customer
Education has a big impact on two of the most critical KPIs in a
subscription business: revenue and retention.
- LTV (Lifetime
Value): the value you earn while they're successful CAC (Customer
Acquisition Expense): the cost of acquiring a customer
Because customers are costly to acquire, your company must
maintain them — and keep them expanding — in order to make a profit. This is
why, according to ProfitWell's blog, the Customer Acquisition Cost to Customer
Lifetime Value ratio is the "god statistic" for SaaS businesses.
Customer education may help you expand and support your sales
and marketing initiatives. But it's perhaps even better at maximising your
customers' lifetime value, ensuring that they stick with you and develop with
you over time.
CAC and LTV Definition:
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the cost of acquiring a new
customer:-This is the sum of your sales and
marketing expenses. It includes the people your business recruits, the tools it
buys, the campaigns it runs, and so on. Because this is a costly item, any
efficiency would assist. Customer education might help your salespeople answer
fewer inquiries over and over again. It also aids in the conversion of free
trials to paid programmes. Unrestricted knowledge about your product and
industry is recommended. This material educates buyers and provides resources
for your sales team to utilise throughout their transaction cycles.
LTV (Lifetime Value of a Customer):-The more value you generate from an account, the longer it stays
with you and the more they buy from you over time. Client education builds
trust and accelerates value, which helps to instil customer loyalty. Customers
discover new ways to utilise your product as you teach them. They'll be aware
of which characteristics to employ and how to do so. They'll pick up ideas,
methods, and best practices that will help them add more value to their work.
And these consumers are more inclined to renew or grow their subscriptions
rather than a downgrade. Informed clients are more likely to perceive the
benefit of sticking with you.
Customer Knowledge and Satisfaction Have Increased
While we're talking about Customer Lifetime Value... Customer
education is beneficial to your business because it encourages consumers to
remain longer, but it is also beneficial to your customers since it provides
them with the skills they need to succeed
Customer Maturity: Each company has its own definition of
maturity. However, this is usually a stage of consumer development after basic
acceptance. It's when you start to notice people using your product in
increasingly complex ways. Customers that are more mature can recognise the
road to long-term value. Many businesses employ maturity models to assess a
customer's present condition and chart a course to a desired future state.
Loyalty or Customer Sentiment:-Customers
that are strong supporters of your product are more likely to renew and expand
over time, which is typically quantified by Net Promoter Score (NPS), those
0-10 "Would you recommend this product?" questionnaires. By
empowering consumers and linking them with others, Customer Education helps
them become committed advocates.
Product Implementation: Getting a product to be used in a
meaningful way is analogous to developing a habit. Brushing your teeth is a
good analogy. Customer education explains why users should do something and
then helps them develop a habit around it. Over time, you'll be able to drive
more complex usage. User sophistication is a term used to describe how well
individual users perform in a product. Customer Maturity, on the other hand, is
a measurement of an account's maturity.
Increased marketing and brand effect
New clients are difficult to obtain, as we have stated. As a
result, Customer Education may help make things go more smoothly. For years,
common wisdom held that providing too much public instruction or documentation
was a bad idea. Why? Because it would give the competitors too much
information.
The benefits of investing in public-facing Customer Education
now exceed the dangers. Both in terms of brand value and lead creation, this is
true. Because customers and prospects frequently seek knowledge before speaking
with a representative (up to 70% in some surveys! ), you want to be the first
to educate them when they do.
Your salespeople's lives are made easier by customer education.
Your business will be seen as an authority in your field if you provide an
excellent education.
Differentiation of brands:-Your
brand will be recognised as an authority if you are the "education
champion" in your sector. This facilitates purchasing decisions while also
increasing client loyalty. It's more difficult to win in your category if you
can't show that you know more about the subject than everyone else.
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Marketing Identification: Assume you create instructive content that customers may access
before making a purchase. This will help your business produce more leads.
Before speaking with a salesperson, today's buyers frequently conduct
self-service research. What exactly are they looking for? Not only in official
brochures and marketing materials. They want to see articles in the help
centre, product videos, and other educational tools.
Support deflection and more efficient self-service
Customers dislike having to phone in for help. Your CSMs and
support reps, on the other hand, are unlikely to enjoy addressing the same
queries over and over. It's a lose-lose situation in such a case.
Self-service Customer education not only lowers support expenses
but also reduces customer annoyance.
The average number of support tickets sent per customer or per
100 customers may be calculated. For knowledgeable clients, this number should
be far smaller.
Revenue augmentation
By offering Education Services, many Customer Education
initiatives create cash. Larger Education Services groups, at the very least,
have a profit and loss statement. As a result, they should be able to recoup
their operational expenses.
You'll gain the right to charge for your instructional materials
as you produce more valuable material. Customers will also pay for your courses
to be delivered in a more private or personalised manner.
For your business, a Scale Engine
By recruiting enough people and throwing them at the problem,
you can accomplish practically any of the KPIs listed above. A squadron of
support agents can answer all of your customers' inquiries; a company of CSMs
can provide live training on-demand, and a whirlwind of marketers can create a
tornado of content. However, for most firms, this is neither practical nor
efficient. It's frequently a waste of such people's abilities and capabilities.
You won't be able to grow and service hundreds or thousands more
customers without hiring additional costly people if you utilise expensive
humans to conduct recurring education duties, such as answering the same
support queries or giving the same training. This is especially true when you
service consumers from all over the world, necessitating the hiring of
additional local employees.
You'll design a plan that scales with the expansion of your
organisation using Customer Education. Help materials and in-product education
address common support questions. Virtual courses and online academies evolve
from repeatable training. You're now creating a more consistent learning
environment. Then your customer-facing staff may become more strategic. Instead
of being the sole source of success or failure, they will now fill in gaps and
give additional assistance.
We're coming to a close...
As you can see, Customer Education has a lot of advantages, but
you won't be able to perform all of these tasks right once. All of these KPIs
aren't prioritised by even the most advanced Customer Education programmes.
Starting with a Customer Education plan that is aligned with your broader
company and product is critical.
Identify which metrics are most critical to driving with your
executives. Consider the following three stages of a business:
You could be more focused on marketing and product adoption KPIs
if you're in hypergrowth mode.
Companies that are maturing: you may be more concerned with
maturity and scalability, as well as client retention.
Well-established businesses: income may be expected, and your
department may operate on a profit and loss statement.
As you develop your Client Education course, it's critical to
have a strategy. This should be done before you start developing material or
choosing an Institution.
Check out our first episode on launching a Customer Education
programme if you're just getting started. Then, to establish a successful
Customer Education programme, read our Customer Education Manifesto and Six
Guidelines.
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