Customer education strategy: Scaling success without expanding teams

As products and services become more complex, customers need support and guidance to explore their full capabilities and benefits. And as a company grows, providing this support on a one-to-one basis becomes harder.
The result? More pressure and workload on your Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and customer support teams.
For SaaS Customer Success Managers, customer education isn’t just about training customers. It’s the key to promoting product adoption, preventing churn, and deflecting support.
This blog post explores:

• benefits of customer education
• strategies for rolling out successful customer education initiatives
• best tools for the job

Benefits of customer education

A customer education program bridges the gap between a product’s potential and its actual use. Through on-demand resources and real-time sessions, customers understand and use products effectively. The impact on your CSM team as well as your business is significant.

Shorter time to value

Onboarding is the first stage of a customer education program, helping customers set up the product and get familiar with key functions. By reinforcing one-to-one onboarding with on-demand educational resources, like how-to guides and video tutorials, customers can start using their new asset faster without having to wait for a reply from your support agents or to book time with CSM.

Enhanced customer retention

Ensuring satisfaction and customer retention are top priorities on a CSM’s job description. An effective customer education program makes this job a lot easier, especially in SaaS environments where customers expect self-service on top of personalized support.

When you educate customers, you help them enjoy the product without hiccups and experience more value. Beyond that, they are also more confident in using the product without feeling stuck or lost among features and buttons. Higher satisfaction directly impacts retention.

Fewer support tickets

Providing self-service resources reduces the number of incoming support tickets. Customers can solve common issues independently, without relying on your team for basic guidance.

As a result, your support and customer success teams can focus on more complex, high-impact issues instead of repetitive questions. This not only improves response times but also helps you scale support without expanding headcount, reducing overall customer support costs while maintaining a high-quality customer experience.

Here’s what Katie Breaker, Director of Sales & Marketing at Birdieball said about her own experience:

Improved customer engagement

A well-planned customer education strategy includes opportunities for connection and interaction with other customers and your brand. This takes some of the burden off your CSMs who are traditionally in charge of customer relationship management.

Live webinars and community forums build a sense of community and increase brand loyalty, complementing and strengthening the relationship your CSMs have already built.

Higher Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Offering a customer education program helps expand the customer lifecycle and therefore secure repeat sales and renewals. It also makes it easier to drive upsells and cross sells without manual push from your customer success and sales teams, increasing the CLV.

Stronger brand reputation

Companies known for their customer education efforts gain a reputation for caring about their customers’ success, which enhances overall brand perception outside the limits of your exciting customer base.

Besides, customer education often goes beyond the typical product training. It’s often about sharing insights and thought leadership content about your industry, which helps you establish your brand as an authority in your field.

Shorter sales cycle

Positive word-of-mouth, reviews and testimonials, and the mere existence of a customer training program are great benefits to showcase potential customers. This makes it easier for your salespeople to close sales deals and CS teams more efficient in presales support.

Your 9-step guide to building effective customer education

Careful planning increases your chances of success. These nine steps will help you build a successful customer education strategy, from start to finish:

Step 1: Identify customer needs

Start by understanding your customers’ needs and pain points. Your sources of truth:

• Surveys and feedback forms
• Interviews
• Product analytics tools
• Support tickets

All these can help pinpoint common issues and knowledge gaps among customers so you can prioritize content creation accordingly.

Step 2: Segment your customers

Segment your customers to personalize customer education and offer them relevant content they will truly benefit from.

Common segmentation criteria to start with:

• Job role: A power user in BI will need different training than an exec who just wants high-level dashboards.
• Stage in the customer journey: New customers are onboarding while seasoned ones are expanding to new features.
• Use case: Are they using your product for sales enablement? Onboarding? Compliance training? That shapes what they care about.
• Company size or tier: Enterprise customers might get white-glove onboarding; smaller accounts might go through a self-serve path.
• Location/time zone: Useful for scheduling live sessions or localizing content to make it more relatable.

Pro tip

Use whatever data you already have in your CRM to build simple segments. Even basic tags like “Admin” vs. “End User” or “Onboarding” vs. “Expansion” go a long way.

Step 3: Define clear objectives

The objectives of your education program should be tied to your business goals. Knowing what you want to achieve will help you shape your customer education strategy.

Use the SMART methodology to set goals:

• Specific: Clearly define what you want to achieve, without vague or broad terms
• Measurable: Make sure you can track progress and success with quantifiable metrics
• Attainable: Set goals that are realistic given your resources and constraints
• Relevant: Align your goals with broader business or learning objectives
• Time-bound: Assign a clear deadline to stay on track

SMART goal examples:

• Reduce intro-level support tickets by 20% within six months by launching an onboarding course that covers top support topics
• Increase the percentage of users who complete onboarding within 7 days from 40% to 70% in the next quarter by introducing a guided onboarding course

Step 4: Choose your tools

You’ll need to invest in one or more tools to build, deliver, manage, and measure the impact of your customer education program. Now is the time to research the market and test-drive top contenders.

In the next section, we share in-depth information about the best tools supporting your customer education strategy.

Step 5: Develop educational materials

Create a variety of educational content and content formats to address different learning styles and preferences. These can include:

• Recorded demos and walkthroughs
• In-app tooltips
• PDF guides
• Support articles
• Videos
• Webinars
• Quizzes
• Case studies

Tips for better engagement

• Think micro: Break content into 2–5 min modules for faster, more flexible learning
• Gamify it: Add badges or rewards to boost motivation
• Offer a certification: Turn learning into a shareable achievement
• Go mobile: Make sure your content is easy to access and consume on mobile

Step 6: Use a mix of delivery channels

Deliver your educational content on different delivery channels, such as:

• Training academy for structured learning paths
• Customer portal or help center for quick access to how-to guides and FAQs
• Resource hub or blog for practical resources and broader educational content
• Social media for bite-sized content and community building
• Email for sharing tips or directing customers to relevant resources
• In-app for contextual help

Think out of the box:

Repurpose and use the same resource across multiple channels. For example, turn a blog post into a social media carousel, or a help article into a script for your educational video.

Learn how we turned help articles into video scripts with the help of AI for the LearnWorlds Academy, saving tons of money and resources. Watch our webinar now.

Step 7: Promote the program

Make sure your customer education program gets the visibility it deserves using:

• In-product nudges to announce new content when it’s most relevant
• Customer-facing teams to promote it directly to customers
• Website and blog to feature it prominently for new visitors
• Social media to share highlights and new content releases
• Email campaigns to drive engagement

Reminder:

Promotion isn’t a one-time marketing campaign. Make it part of your ongoing comms.

Step 8: Create space for interactivity and peer learning

Create opportunities for peer learning and direct support:

• Live webinars to explore broader topics and live product walkthroughs
• Q&A sessions to interact with customers in real time
• Discussion forums or groups where customers share experiences and tips

Bonus benefit:

A strong community reduces low-level support tickets and builds advocacy.

Step 9: Measure and optimize

Track performance regularly using different methods and channels:

• Learning/engagement metrics like course completion, quiz scores, and number of certificates issued
• Business KPIs like adoption, activation, and renewal rates, volume of support tickets
• Customer feedback via CSAT/ NPS surveys and in-course ratings will help you understand what’s working, what’s confusing, and what’s missing

Keep it dynamic:

Use data and feedback to reshape your customer education strategy. Be open to adjusting not just the content you create but also the channels you deliver it.

Tools to deploy a successful customer education strategy

Building a robust customer education program requires leveraging the right tools to create, deliver, manage, and measure content effectively.

Here are popular types of tools that can help you develop and enhance your customer education strategy:

1. Online course platforms

Online course platforms, like customer education platforms designed specifically for customer training or Learning Management Systems (LMSs) that serve multiple educational purposes, are the most comprehensive solution for your customer education strategy.

Pros

• Fewer admin headaches. Manage your users and your academy from one centralized location. Leverage automations and bulk actions, segment and tag users easily, and build multiple academies from one account.
• More autonomy and efficiency in content creation. Built-in authoring tools and AI allow you to build, edit, and repurpose content with fewer or no external tools.
• Rich learning experiences. Most platforms support all the types of content and delivery methods required for a customer education strategy. From self-serve educational materials like videos and quizzes to live webinars and communities.
• Customization. Integrations, flexibility to tweak the design, and white labeling allow you to build your academy to meet the specific needs of your business.
• Scalability. LMSs are suitable for businesses of all sizes. They can accommodate unlimited users and content, allowing you to start small and scale as needed.
• Reporting and analytics. All LMS platforms provide insights into learner engagement and course performance.

Cons

• Complex setup: Implementing an LMS can be complex and may require technical expertise and several weeks to be completed.
• Learning curve: Some LMSs are rather hard to figure out since they have so many features and capabilities.
• Cost: Some systems can be expensive, especially for small businesses or those with limited budgets.

2. Content creation tools

Content creation tools help you develop multimedia learning materials, such as videos, tutorials, presentations, and interactive courses for your customer education program.

Pros

• Engaging content: Create high-quality videos, ebooks, quizzes, and more interactive content to keep learners engaged.
• Ease of use: Most content creation tools are user-friendly and require minimal technical skills to master.
• Versatility: Content creation tools help a wide range of content, from videos to infographics and presentations, allowing you to create diverse customer training materials

Cons

• Not an all-in-one solution: Using content creation tools doesn’t solve the problem of centralizing and streamlining your training efforts.

3. Webinar and video conferencing platforms

Webinar and live training platforms are online services that help you educate customers in real time through webinars, workshops, and product walkthroughs. They offer features like screen sharing, audience interaction, and session recording to enhance live learning experiences.

Pros

• Real-time interaction: Web conferencing platforms support live training sessions with features like screen sharing and audience engagement tools, such as polls and Q&A.
• Wide reach: Video conferencing tools are ideal for global training sessions, enabling you to reach a large audience simultaneously.
• Recording features: Sessions can be recorded for later use and turned into a valuable resource for your audience.

Cons

• Technical issues: Connectivity issues or audio problems are common in live events and can disengage some people.
• Engagement challenges: Keeping participants engaged in a virtual environment can be hard, especially when it’s a one-sided session.

4. Community and collaboration platforms

Community and collaboration platforms are digital spaces that allow users to engage in discussions and share knowledge.

Many companies complement formal customer training courses with community forums as they help build stronger bonds with a brand while enhancing learning.

Pros

• Enhanced learning: Peer-to-peer learning and knowledge sharing are effective ways to learn effortlessly in an informal environment.
• Increased engagement: Providing a platform for customers to interact with your brand and each other enhances engagement and brand loyalty.
• Peer support: Offers a space for users to seek help and share experiences, reducing the load on support teams and customer support costs.

Cons

• Require moderation: Active management and moderation are necessary to ensure a positive and productive community environment.
• Clunky and not agile: Community platforms can take a while to update and tend to be hard to maintain when it comes to new content and sunsetting older content.

5. Analytics and feedback tools

Analytics and feedback tools help you understand how effective your efforts have been. These tools capture learner progress, quiz performance, feature usage, and even direct feedback from learners.

Pros

• Course performance insights: Your LMS provides built-in analytics that help you monitor training effectiveness. Track completion rates, quiz scores, certificates issued, and more, to continuously improve course design.
• Learner engagement insights: Some advanced LMS platforms track how users interact with your learning materials. See how long they spend on each page, or where they pause or drop off to understand which content engages them and which not.
• Product engagement insights: Product analytics tools enable you to measure how training impacts real product behavior. Common metrics you can track are activation, session duration feature adoption, and time-to-value.
• Customer feedback collection: With survey tools and embedded article feedback widgets (“Was this helpful?”), you can gather direct input on the clarity, usefulness, and gaps in your training content.

Cons

• Data overload: Requires clear goals to avoid getting lost in metrics.
• Tool fragmentation: You need multiple tools to combine qualitative and quantitative insights.

Ready to build a winning customer education strategy?

For CSMs under pressure to drive adoption and retention without growing headcount, customer education is the multiplier. Audit your current CS processes: where can customer training replace repetitive 1:1 support?
Follow this advice to build a customer education strategy that has it all: easy to build, effective, and scalable.

LearnWorlds gives you the tools to put it into action. Create engaging content, track learner progress, and build a self-serve training hub your customers actually use and your CSMs will thank you for.

Start your 30-day free trial now.

Androniki Koumadoraki

Content Marketing Manager

Androniki is a Content Writer at LearnWorlds sharing Instructional Design and marketing tips. With solid experience in B2B writing and technical translation, she is passionate about learning and spreading knowledge. She is also an aspiring yogi, a book nerd, and a talented transponster.