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Ann Parfenova

Corporate training solutions, Course creation, revenue growth & marketing · 8 MIN · 13.12.2024

Customer education strategy: benefits for business and best practices

Source: freepik.com
In today's economy, finding a unique selling proposition is hard. There are simply too many products. So, one of the main drivers for people to buy your product is customer experience (CX). To be precise, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for better CX. Customer education is crucial in improving CX and can give your company a competitive advantage. Here are some key statistics:
  • 68% of customers
    report using products more often after receiving training.
  • 7.6% is the revenue increase
    experienced by companies with structured customer education strategies.
  • 63% is the reduction
    in customer attrition rates for businesses implementing customer education.
Customer education has been vital for years, but its importance has only grown in today's landscape. Technological advancements and easier access to resources have become an essential strategy for businesses that want their customers to succeed. Customer education improves product adoption rates, increases customer lifetime value, and improves customer satisfaction.

In this article, we discuss:

What is customer education?

Customer education allows your customers to use your product's full potential, gain maximum benefits, and become loyal advocates for your brand. It helps onboard, train, and retain new and loyal clients. Customer education is not just a bunch of tutorials, instructions, and courses. It’s more of a guide that leads your customer step by step to becoming an expert and confident user.

Some products and services need customer education more than others. Customer training is essential in gaining loyal users for these products and services:
A product that takes time to get used to before it becomes useful

🔧
A product that asks users to adjust how they currently do things
🧬
A wide variety of users with different needs and responsibilities
🔄
Products that often receive updates with new tools and features
🛍️
A collection of products that can be sold together or enhanced with additional options
🤝
.Products that need a lot of customer support to help users.

Customer education could include hints in the interface, tutorials, guidelines, and other content that suits the strategy. The previous article discussed modern learning formats. One example of customer education formats is Seturon's guide on creating a blank course. You can check it out here: app.seturon.io/signup.

How does customer education benefit your business?

Effective communication is crucial, as about 85% of people prefer businesses that can anticipate their needs. When companies take the initiative to understand what customers might want, it demonstrates that they truly care about their experience and value their journey.

Educating your customers to use your product more effectively and simplifying their onboarding and adoption is one way to show them that you care about their comfort. Adobe indicates that nearly 79% of companies that provide education for their customers see an increase in the frequency of their products' use.

So, what can customer education bring to the table?
1
Time-to-First-Value
Good onboarding helps customers to find value in your product faster.

Apps, software, and even video games have onboarding.
2
Adoption
Customers need to get used to the interface and features when they find the value. Ongoing onboarding and different hints can support the adoption process and show customer care. Keep in mind that engaged customers bring a 23% higher share of wallet growth than the average buyer.

3
Renewal
The key to building a lasting relationship is how well customers take to a product and how much they use it.

Good guidance and attention to customers' educational needs create a pleasant experience and loyalty.
4
Lifetime Value
Lifetime value comes from having a solid group of active users genuinely interested in the product.

You can provide them with advanced and exclusive educational content.
Customer education can help you achieve different goals. For example, Figma’s open-source educational materials help build community and form expertise among professionals.
Figma
Another example is Raiffeisen Bank's financial education initiative, which aims to grow a new generation of customers with better financial literacy and complex financial needs for banking products.
Raiffeisen Bank
Or you can use customer training to reduce the load on the support team. For example, different tutorials on how to use GameMaker features.
GameMaker
This blog is also an example of customer education. We share our expertise to help you find better solutions, improve learners' experiences, and profit more from course creation.
Customer education can serve multiple strategic purposes within a business framework. It can be a marketing strategy, a tool for growing loyalty and retention, or an additional feature to increase customer experience and satisfaction. This focus on education ultimately contributes to a positive perception of the brand and drives higher customer satisfaction.

What do you need to consider while creating customer education?

Creating valuable education requires time and resources. You need to think through every step, from the specifics of making education for adults to the description of the courses. We’ve already covered a lot in the e-learning development process, so let’s discuss the specifics of customer education.

1. Analise the situation

The customer education strategy depends on the overall outcome you aim to achieve. You need to examine what’s happening right now.
  • Do you have some customer training? Is it effective? Is there any direction for improvement?
  • What resources are your customers using to learn more about the product? Why do they use them? Is anything missing in existing customer training?
  • What are the most frequently asked questions? Why do your customers usually reach the support team? What issues ruin the experience? Can customer education address these issues?

2. Set the goals

Once you research and analyse the current situation, you can see gaps that can be covered with customer education. It could be:
  • 🤷🏻‍♀️

    Lack of onboarding. Create a set of easy-to-follow courses designed to help new users get started with your product. These courses will guide them through each step, making it simpler for them to understand how to use it from the very beginning.
  • 💥

    Missed full product’s potential. Offer training sessions that highlight the more advanced features of your product, helping customers discover all the great things it can do for them.
  • 🌋

    High support queries. Provide a library with FAQs, instructions and different resources where customers can easily find answers to their questions.
Examining these gaps, you can come up with measurable goals and customer educational strategies. More about course creation you can find in a specific section of our blog, so let’s not dwell on this.

3. Monitor metrics and adjust

After you launch your strategy, you can gather feedback and examine its impact. It is important to track how well users are onboarding and adopting your product, and business impact metrics help you do this. You need to measure several metrics.
  • Engagement Metrics

    • Course Enrollment Rate
    • Course Completion Rate
    • Time Spent on Learning Materials
    • Drop-off Points
  • Behavioural Impact Metrics

    • Product Usage Post-Training
    • Support Ticket Volume
    • Adoption Rate of New Features
  • Business Impact Metrics

    • Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
    • Net Promoter Score (NPS)
    • Customer Retention Rate
This is not a complete list of metrics; it is just an example. Metrics vary based on goals and desirable outcomes.

Customer education best practices

1. Create valuable content

To increase customer satisfaction and improve experience, you need to add value to your product and your training. You must provide solutions for customers' problems and help them benefit more from your product.

One of the foundational steps in this process is to conduct a thorough analysis of your target audience for the training. Understanding their specific needs, preferences, and challenges will allow you to tailor your approach effectively.

2. Personalise education

Personalised education helps your customers get only the information they need right now. This targeted approach minimises the risk of individuals engaging in unnecessary or tedious courses, often leading to disengagement and frustration.

Platforms that focus on adaptive learning, like Seturon, analyse data and automatically adjust what content learners will see next.

3. Create community

Community is crucial for loyalty. Create forums, post educational materials and links on social media, support customers through the whole learning experience and give them tools to support each other. You'll create a supportive environment where everyone can thrive by nurturing a sense of community and encouraging interaction.

4. Adapt content to smartphones

94% of Gen Z use mobile phones for educational purposes. So, it’s essential to use solutions with a mobile-first approach. Focusing on mobile-first design not only enhances accessibility but also aligns with the habits and preferences of this tech-savvy generation, ultimately fostering a more effective and engaging educational experience.

FAQ

  • Ann Parfenova
    Learning experience designer
    With 7 years in Learning Experience Design, I’ve crafted 90+ interactive courses that prove learning can be fun! From gamified simulations to educational games, I’m all about making education exciting and engaging. Let’s make learning an adventure!

    All articles by this author
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