Signs it’s Time to Invest in a Customer Education Program + Checklist

An effective customer training program has several benefits for your users and your organization and can turn new and existing customers into long-term advocates. Sixty-six percent of customers expect companies to understand their needs, and businesses that prioritize customer experience grow 1.7x faster than those that don’t.

However, part of creating and implementing a successful system is understanding the best time to invest in a formal program. This article provides some simple steps to help determine if a customer education program is right for you.

What are the benefits of a customer education program?

Customer training empowers your users to get the most out of your product and ultimately excel in their roles. An effective customer education program can impact long-term business goals by increasing customer satisfaction and boosting product adoption and customer retention.

A customer education program can also help you:

• Increase revenue
• Decrease costs
• Increase customer engagement
• Strengthen customer retention and lead to upsell opportunities
• Reduce support costs

Read more: 5 Benefits of a Customer Education Program

Your program can also help you reach your long-term business goals and turn your users into brand advocates.

“We want customers to market for us; they should be shouting from the rooftops about our product,” according to Tony Vaughn, Director of Customer Education at Qualified. “Customer education is a type of marketing we can’t pay for. Your program can drive product adoption and build brand awareness.”

Read more: Why Customer Education is Important Now More Than Ever

Customer education is on the rise

Customer training is still relatively new, but organizations are doubling down on their efforts. Based on a survey from 2021, 90 percent of customer education programs grew within the last two years, and 60 percent of respondents increased their investments by more than 30 percent. 

“In times like these, organizations are looking to identify cost centers to be efficient about spend. It’s more important than ever to invest and be able to do more with less.”

 

-Tony Vaughn, Director of Customer Education, Qualified

As programs and methods evolve, assessing your needs for a program in your organization is vital. Discover the key indicators that can help you determine if it’s time to invest in customer education for your product or service.

When is the right time to invest in a customer education program?

Whether you’re seeking executive buy-in and resources to create a new program or looking to expand your current offering, there are some factors to consider.

To help you make the best decision for your company, we’ve listed three signs that indicate it may be time to start investing in a dedicated program.

Customer onboarding

It’s important to scale your customer training efforts to help your users get the most value out of your product. If you have new and existing customers who need to learn how to best use your products and services, you may have difficulties keeping up with customer onboarding and servicing.

This is a good indicator that you need to start looking for a solution that will allow your training to scale along with the business.

Rate of product innovation

Rapid software delivery is a  good problem to have, but it also means that customers may be unable to keep up with all the new features and functionalities. And while being able to allocate several hours to provide personalized learning experiences would be ideal, training customers 1:1 is not feasible for every business or team. 

Consider the rate of product innovation and how this may affect your ability to train customers.

Learning investment

Invest in your customers, and they will invest in you. You may have invested in training for other areas of the organization (onboarding employees or upskilling with career development), and customers deserve the same love! 

Your business relies on strengthening long-term customer relationships, so offering an inviting experience is important. This includes easy communication and an efficient system to address their questions. 

As you integrate new software into your operations, you can stay ahead of the pack and offer more value than competitors by having the right resources, like building a certification program or customer education academy to accelerate learning. 

Read more: 5 Customer Academies That Drive Product Adoption

Customer education checklist

It’s vital to understand the benefits of a customer ed program and assess the signs that it’s time to invest. This free downloadable checklist will help you take a closer look at these indicators and how they apply to your product or service.

Click here to download our checklist: Assess Your Needs for a Customer Education Program.