Train Your Customers on Your Product and They’ll Stay Forever

The key is to organize what you do have into a program that is easy for customers to use, supportive of every step of their journey, and can easily scale as your company grows. Companies often focus on how speeds up onboarding and decreases churn. On the flip side, there are also other benefits that ad often overlooked. These benefits include how having an active training program can drive customer success by lowering customer service costs, , enabling upsells, and improving overall customer satisfaction. customer product training extending customer lifetime value (LTV) Those are all valuable reasons to go all-in on developing a . However, it can be difficult to know exactly where to start. The good news is that you probably already have great content and resources. product training program for your customers What Makes A Good Product Training Program? By the time a customer pulls out a credit card, they’re already invested in their success with your product. They are buying your product because they believe it will solve a particular problem, and they want to understand how best to use it to achieve that result. But few customers have the patience for thick instruction manuals or hours to spend on the phone with customer service. Static training methods don’t allow for personalization in the customer training journey. In-person training and phone support provide a tailored and flexible solution but can be expensive and difficult to scale. On the other hand, customer training can help you . attract, onboard and retain customers Modern combine the personalization of instructor-led training with the scalability of a mass-produced instruction manual. makes product training immediately accessible to new customers who can then work through engaging and interactive materials at their own pace. This reduces many costs , shortens the timeline and provides support through all stages of the process. Learning Management Systems An LMS traditionally associated with onboarding 1. Start With What You Have Even if you’re just now formalizing your , you likely have existing content you can repurpose. Look for recorded training, blog posts, instruction manuals, slide decks and any other pieces of content that can help customers understand your product. product training program Organize it into materials that give customers the exact information they need, when they need it. just-in-time training Rather than trying to front-load customers with everything they might need to know about your product, a system of short courses will help them learn what they need at the moment. Support these courses with an accessible library of more in-depth resources for customers who want to dig deeper. Want to learn more about creating great training content? See our free ebook: Building Effective Customer Education Programs 2. Map Product Training To The Customer Journey Product training is essential throughout the . In the beginning, it supports smoother implementation and reduces churn. Later on, training can help you upsell new features and deepen use of your product. customer cycle The end goal is to support the entire customer journey with content. Start plugging your existing content into a to see where your strengths lie and uncover gaps. When you have assessed what you have, you’ll be able to prioritize what new content to develop. training content matrix Along with creating the actual content, develop a system to guide customers to the right courses at the right time. Set up email or text alerts with links to training content at certain milestones, such as not logging in for a while after they’ve signed up or after a few months of working together. You can to monitor the relationship and gain even deeper insights. integrate training data with a CRM such as Salesforce 3. Think Beyond Features — Train For Outcomes Product training should teach customers not only about the features of your product but also how best to achieve the . outcome they’re looking for If your product is an invoicing platform, for example, you’ll obviously want to teach customers how to create a user profile and run their first transaction. You can set your company apart by teaching customers to be savvier about finances and grow their businesses as well. Take this to the next level by teaching a skill that can be transferred across the industry and making your company the industry leader in it. For instance, HubSpot Academy [1] provides value even to people who aren’t HubSpot customers and has helped turn their way of thinking into the industry standard for inbound marketing. Creating a certificate program that captures your company’s widely applicable expertise will make you a thought leader in your industry. 4. Measure Outcomes And Be Prepared To Iterate A is a work in progress. Once your content has been out in the world for a while, you should plan to revisit it and use the improved version to support customer success even more. customer product training program To do that, establish an efficient system for tracking metrics from the start. When you can see how long users spend on each activity, you’ll get insight into what content is working. With a robust LMS, you can to get a better understanding of how your customers are using the training materials and where things need to improve. run reports about enrollment, course completion, and quiz scores 5. Plan For Growth: Invest In An LMS As your company grows, you’ll need a seamless way to expand your . An online training center supported by a is the most scalable way to provide personalized training for each of your customers. product training program cloud-based LMS allows you to manage user groups, create custom libraries of courses for certain levels of users and assign permissions that control access to content. Because the courses and learning materials are stored in the cloud, it’s also simple to make updates and publish new content. There’s no need to email a new batch of PDFs or print a mountain of new training materials for your instructors. An LMS is a challenge, but will make the process simpler and more intuitive. Creating an effective product training program a modern LMS Footnote: HubSpot Academy is a modern, easy-to-use learning management system for the rapid creation and contextual delivery of . Northpass branded training modules to your customers Originally published at elearningindustry.com on October 27, 2017.