Customer training: Strategy and best practices

Complex products? Check.

Customers with short attention spans? Check.

Pressure to prove ROI? Got that too.

We’ve all faced this while trying to improve customer training.

Many leaders I talk to say they struggle with keeping users engaged and managing support costs. So what do they want? Client training that equates to real and measurable change.

According to Gallup, fully engaged customers represent a 23% premium [1] in share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth over the average customer. This marks the critical role training plays in long-term customer value beyond LMS metrics.

In this post, I’ll share practical tips that have helped me and countless others to make it through these exact challenges. I’ll help you create effective customer training that lets you retain customers, generate product success, and drive growth.

What is customer training?

Customer training is, or rather unites, all the education opportunities you use to teach customers how to use your product/service so they’ll achieve their specific objectives. This includes delivering educational content (eg learning resources, courses, webinars, tutorials) and even having one-on-one calls with customers to offer personalized support.

Generally, customer training is used to help customers uncover features, easily navigate the product, and troubleshoot fundamental problems. There are even more benefits to this.

The benefits of client training

Some of the main benefits of customer training include the following:

• Better feature adoption as users learn where to find and how to use additional product features
• A well-structured onboarding program can get your customers to use your product faster and with more confidence
• A successful customer training program keeps frustration and disappointment at bay
• You’ll reduce costs within your customer success team as they’ll only have to focus on trickier issues now
• Customer training programs, in general, are meant to create educated customers who have the power to bring in referrals and renew purchases, boosting your sales
• Client training makes people stick around more and engage more since they’re pros at using your tool
• Customer training programs contribute to improving a reliable brand name, as you get to prove your dedication to customer success

💡Keep learning: 11 benefits of customer training that drive business growth

What should be included in customer training programs?

One thing I always start with is keeping customer training programs simple, engaging, and actionable. To achieve this, I focus on offering a structured journey that can easily take customers from newbies to using advanced features as soon as possible.

Next is everything else I include in customer training programs to support customers:

• Clear learning objectives that link with both customer and business goals
• Videos, text, webinars, and interactive quizzes in different formats
• Hands-on use cases and examples that can validate the product’s value and show customers new ways of using the platform
• Customer support integration so support teams can offer immediate assistance when required

Optionally, consider community rooms or peer learning options for engagement and certification or completion badges to motivate and reward learners.

Examples of client training programs

For more inspiration, you can check out examples of real-life success stories, but the following three are musts.

Customer onboarding

Onboarding should always be a part of your training. This can look like a series of tutorials, an initial checklist to set up the tool, or live customer training to ensure customers are comfortable with fundamental features.

Product education

Product education is every type of training that happens after onboarding and is meant to help customers advance. Training materials here may include tutorials, interactive courses, or webinars for users to learn more about advanced functionality and best practices.

Certification programs

Certifications give customers accreditation when completing a training course. They inspire learners, drive participation, and also create trust and transparency for your product.

Building a customer training strategy

I always go into building a customer training strategy with thorough forethought, so much so that I can literally see what customers need and want. When you try to get to know them first, you’ll better understand their goals so you can prepare useful learning experiences they’ll enjoy.

After all, this is what will help you make a clear list of what you need to focus on in your customer training plan.

When starting, Gianluca Ferruggia, General Manager at DesignRush prepares you for a common pitfall:

“The most commonly forgotten piece of a successful customer training strategy is ongoing engagement after the initial launch. Many companies put the effort into a complete onboarding experience or tutorials to onboard customers, but then assume that their job is done. The reality is, customers need continual reinforcement, in-context onboarding support and easily accessible resources to be able to adopt your product and realize value.”

So let’s move on to how to create your first customer training plan for a stellar customer experience.

How to create a customer training plan

When creating a customer training plan, you need to take it step by step so that your training efforts are focused with both customer needs in mind as well as company goals.

1. Define your training goals and target audience

Start by setting clear training goals and identifying the target audience. Include everyone, looking at their challenges from the outside and leaving bias towards what you think they need.

Not sure? Ask them or go through your regular support tickets to understand what’s unclear or if there are underutilized features within your platform that need a bit of extra attention.

2. Identify key topics and desired outcomes for learning

From here, make a note of the key topics and learning objectives users have. That’s what you’ll have to add to your onboarding and subsequent learning materials.

3. Choose the right format and delivery methods

Selecting the right format and delivery methods also matters here. Start simple with help page articles and gradually add video tutorials, live webinars, or interactive modules to cater to the various types of learners.

4. Select a platform that supports your customer training needs

Choosing the right customer training tool to support the training experience is another essential step. What apps will support training materials creation? How will you manage users? Do you need any integrations with third-party systems?

5. Set up tracking and feedback mechanisms

To make sure the training sticks, I’d always add tracking and feedback systems to measure engagement and produce insights. This kind of regular feedback helps me improve content and provide timely learner support.

6. Pilot your training with a small group

Things don’t have to be perfect from the start. Try the program out with a test group before taking it public to notice any missing content or problems.

7. Launch your program to all customers and monitor results

When everything’s ready, it’s time to roll it out to everyone and make continual adjustments based on real data and feedback.

How to promote your program for training clients

As a marketer, I inevitably see plenty of opportunities to actually promote a customer training program among our users. When you don’t announce it to your customers, they won’t know about it.

Good promotion depends on who your customers are and how they prefer to consume training content, though.

Let me walk you through a couple of best practices for marketing your customer training program, but remember, you need to adapt these to your own target customers.

• Use in-product notifications and banners to notify users while they’re using your product or struggling with a specific feature
• Email campaigns to announce the training program or use a series of drip emails to share tips one-by-one
• Use your website and blog to feature the program
• Encourage sales, customer success, and support to drop links to training materials in conversations
• Host webinars or live demos that can redirect customers to your training program for more advanced best practices
• Reward customers with certificates, badges, or exclusive content to motivate them

How to measure customer training success

Start tracking the success of your customer training program by measuring the KPIs that reflect learning engagement and business success. These KPIs can be course completion rates, learner engagement, customer satisfaction scores, retention rates, and lower support ticket numbers.

Apart from engagement and satisfaction, calculating the return on investment (ROI) of your training programs will further help you showcase tangible business value. ROI measurement means associating training activities with business results such as sales growth, customer lifetime value, decreased cost of acquisition, and decreased churn.

It can definitely be difficult to pinpoint the direct influence of training. But by monitoring financial KPIs over time, you’ll actually be able to justify your customer support resources investment.

Customer training best practices

To be transparent, it always pays off to be unique when picking your go-to customer training methods. Still, there are a couple of things customers expect. I’m talking about standard formats, clarity, and the following best practices.

Set clear learning objectives

Always begin by identifying learning objectives that describe what customers will be able to do after going through the training. When you have too many goals for a single training material, you risk confusing users and they’ll only end up reaching out to your support team again.

Make content accessible and inclusive

Another priority is making the content accessible and inclusive. I always try to develop online learning resources that suit different learning styles and abilities so everyone gets an equal opportunity to use the knowledge within the app.

Use feedback to improve your program continuously

I also really appreciate having rolling feedback from learners and being able to iterate on the program, keep it current, and make it better.

Sure, in most cases, people will hesitate to share feedback as they’re often caught up with their own work. In this case, though, simply go through your support tickets to get a good feel of what you’re not clear enough about in training.

Personalize the learning experience

Feedback is also great for personalized training. 81% of customers prefer companies that offer a personalized experience. The more we can customize the learning experience (based on role or skills), the more we can get customers to engage and win.

And, this is backed up by Veronika Karubian, the Founder & CEO at BioPup:

“To save time and cut costs, businesses often produce generic training content that doesn’t address the specific use cases of individual customers. Thinking of every customer as the same, and making assumptions that focus on what you want to teach rather than what they need to learn, are missed opportunities in building trust and long-term loyalty.”

Structure content for microlearning

You don’t need a complete academy from the start. Start by designing microlearning content, breaking down complex subjects into manageable, bite-sized units that accommodate people’s busy lives and can help with customer retention.

And I’ve got just the right customer training tools to help you with this all.

Best tools for a successful customer education academy

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

Below are some popular types of virtual training platforms that can help you develop and enhance your customer education strategy.

1. Online course platform

Customer education platforms, which are designed specifically for customer training or Learning Management Systems (LMS) that serve multiple educational purposes, are excellent solutions to deliver, track, and manage educational courses and training programs.

LearnWorlds stands out as a top solution for customer education. It serves diverse use cases and is consistently ranked high by users due to its ease of use, wealth of features, and advanced customization and scalability, all this at a fair price that’s not restrictive to SMBs.

2. Content creation tools

Content creation tools are software applications used to develop multimedia learning materials, such as videos, tutorials, presentations, and interactive courses. They enable educators and trainers to design engaging and professional-quality content for various learning purposes.

Again, this is why going with an all-in-one customer training platform like LearnWorlds is the most stress-free option that saves you from the trouble of juggling between tools.

💡Watch a demo of LearnWorlds

3. Webinar and live training platforms

Webinar and live training platforms are online services that facilitate real-time virtual training sessions, workshops, and presentations. They offer features like screen sharing, audience interaction, and session recording to enhance live learning experiences.

4. Community and collaboration platforms

Community and collaboration platforms are digital spaces that allow users to engage in discussions, share knowledge, and collaborate on projects. They foster interaction among users, offering learning through peer-to-peer support and knowledge sharing.

5. Course marketplace platforms

Course marketplace platforms, like LinkedIn Learning, are online platforms that offer a wide range of courses from various providers. They provide learners with access to diverse educational content, allowing for personal and professional development across multiple subjects.

What to look for in software for customer training

If there’s one thing you need to prioritize when choosing customer training software, it’s making sure it’ll help you accomplish your goals and make learning easy and fun.

Here’s what I mean by this.

Look for software that provides a friendly UI/UX to create an easy learning experience.

Pick a tool that will let you create and upload different types of content (eg videos, quizzes, PDFs) to make the experience rich on top of that.

Strong analytics and reporting are also important to monitor learner progress, activity, and know where you need to improve.

Integration options are another part of the package to make your own team’s life easier with faster workflows.

You’ll also want to make sure your customer training platform is mobile responsive or, even better, has a native app.

💡Keep learning: How to make an app for online courses

LearnWorlds: The ideal customer training platform

A good customer training strategy starts with the right tool. LearnWorlds has all the features you need to build an engaging customer education academy.

With intuitive content authoring and a superlative website builder, to multiple schools, custom branding, branded mobile apps, and advanced AI capabilities, LearnWorlds provides a smooth learning experience and makes sure your customers stay fully engaged so they’ll succeed in using your tool.

Discover LearnWorlds with a 30-day free trial today.

Sources

Alexandra Cote

Freelancer Writer & SaaS Growth Marketer

Alexandra Cote is a SaaS growth marketer and online instructor who's worked with dozens of brands in the MarTech, HR tech, and productivity space. She's also a strong supporter of staying happy at work and choosing a healthy career path.