What is Customer Enablement & Why Does it Matter for Your Business?

Enabling your customers means ensuring they get the most out of your products. If you enable customers, they will be more likely to return, refer, and spend more with your business.

Businesses that help customers achieve their goals are more likely to get repeat business. 

According to a Zendesk report, 81 percent of buyers say a good customer experience makes them more likely to buy again. 

Yet, 79 percent of B2B companies neglect customer enablement, despite increased focus on customer retention. 

How can you ensure customers are happy and stick around? The answer: putting a customer enablement strategy in place.

Customer enablement vs. sales enablement 

Customer enablement and sales enablement both aim to boost an organization’s success. 

However, there are two big differences. Their objectives are different, and they target different parts of the customer journey. 

In short: 

• Customer enablement helps customers use your products and services. It offers live chat and email support. As part of the post-purchase phase of the customer journey, it can include personalized onboarding and best practices
• Sales enablement gives your sales teams the resources to sell your products and services. The goal is to optimize the sales process and drive revenue growth.

Customer enablement vs. customer success

Customer success is all about ensuring your customers get what they want.

It involves proactive account management, setting goals, checking in regularly, and tailoring strategies to achieve customer satisfaction. Customer enablement plays a crucial role in customer success.

Read more: Customer Success vs. Customer Support

Why is customer enablement so important?

Customers are always learning new things. They know how to solve problems and become pros with your product. It happens throughout the entire customer journey. 

Without your help, customers will educate themselves. If you aren’t guiding them through the product, they may learn the wrong things and not adopt it. 

Read more: Signs it’s time to Invested in Customer Education + Checklist

Benefits of customer enablement 

A customer enablement strategy can benefit your organization in the following ways. 

Adoption rates 

The more proficient customers are with your products and services, the more likely they will adopt them. Getting people to adopt your product is hard if they’re waiting for support or misusing it. 

“We have built a help menu everywhere within our product,” says Chauncy Cay Ford, Director of Customer Enablement at Quantum Metric. “So if our customers are overwhelmed or can’t remember what happened at that demo, no big deal, this help menu is always there for them.”

With Quantum Metric University, Chauncy was able to evangelize customers. Nearly 75 percent of customers completed training in their academy and were working towards becoming product champions. 

Engagement and satisfaction 

Providing tailored educational content, support, and guidance increases customer engagement. A personalized approach results in a more complete understanding of your products and services, increasing satisfaction. 

Spinify found that after building customer curriculum with WorkRamp, learner satisfaction increased to 95 percent in just seven months. 

Loyalty and retention 

Investing in customer enablement fosters long-term relationships, which translates into higher customer loyalty and retention rates. 

Sabena Carim Vibhakar, former Director of Effectiveness and Enablement at MikMak, shares how certifications helped retention rates. 

“We’re really looking to increase retention and renewals, to maximize the value of our customers over time,” she said. “By encouraging customers to become MikMak certified with WorkRamp, we’re helping them get maximum value from their investment, building brand equity within our buying centers and inspiring customer loyalty.” 

Read more: Why You Should Create a Customer Certification Program

Resource optimization 

Effective customer enablement allows you to optimize resources by reducing the burden on support teams and lowering support ticket volume. 

Studies show that customer education drives a 6.1 percent decrease in support costs, enabling you to allocate resources more efficiently.

Improved revenue and profits 

Customer enablement drives business growth and success by empowering customers. It also positively impacts revenue and profits through upselling and cross-selling opportunities. 

Overall, investing in customer education has been shown to increase bottom-line revenue by 6.2 percent. 

Customer enablement strategies and best practices 

Now that you understand the basics of customer enablement, let’s look at a few top enablement training best practices and strategies to try today. 

Work with a customer enablement platform

Customer enablement platforms provide a centralized location for customers to access educational resources, support materials, and community forums.

Learning Management Systems (LMS), which offer on-demand tutorials, webinars, and product documentation, are examples of customer enablement platforms. 

With the Customer Learning Cloud from WorkRamp, you can:

• Scale onboarding, training, and certifications with a customizable customer academy
• Use learning paths and robust assessment tools to educate customers on your product
• Design partner certification programs to ensure customers are up-to-date on their training

The best part? You can also track success metrics and determine the revenue impact of customer training through WorkRamp’s Salesforce integration. 

💡Take action: Select an online learning platform that meets your customers’ needs and regularly update it with relevant, high-quality content to drive customer success.

Coordinate with sales enablement teams  

Collaboration between customer enablement and sales enablement teams ensures a seamless customer journey from pre-sale to post-sale support.

By aligning their efforts, they can create a comprehensive plan that includes product training, access to relevant resources, and ongoing support. All customers get the same level of guidance, no matter their size or complexity, so they can get what they want faster and easier.

💡Take action: Establish communication channels and regular meetings between both teams to align strategies, share insights, and drive continuous improvement.

Provide great customer service

Efficient customer service is crucial to resolve issues quickly, ensuring customer satisfaction, and fostering loyalty. Plus, 93 percent of customers will likely make repeat purchases with companies that offer excellent customer service.

Support teams that respond promptly and effectively to customer inquiries using live chat, email, and phone channels demonstrate a commitment to customer success.

Train customer support staff in product knowledge and communication skills, and provide them with the necessary tools to deliver exceptional service.

Read more: How to Create Effective Customer Service Training

Implement customer feedback

Actively seeking and incorporating customer feedback demonstrates a commitment to continuous improvement and customer success.

You can gather feedback through surveys, social media, and community forums to refine product features or develop new resources.

Customers want to know their ideas are being taken seriously. Create a roadmap for future changes to enablement programs so everyone is on the same page. 

Promote customized upsells 

Personalized upsell opportunities help customers win by offering them additional products or services.

Based on a customer’s usage patterns, suggest upgrading to a higher-tier plan with advanced features tailored to their needs. 

Let’s say you sell project management software to other businesses. One of your customers, a mid-sized marketing agency, often exceeds its subscription plan’s user limit, which causes disruptions.

You suggest upgrading to a higher-tier plan with advanced time tracking and resource management features. Providing a customized solution helps the customer streamline their processes and improve their efficiency. 

Bottom line: Use customer data to identify upsell opportunities, and create personalized offers that fit your customers’ needs.

Turn loyal customers into brand advocates

Loyal customers can become powerful brand advocates, driving word-of-mouth referrals and strengthening your reputation. A company might create a referral program, rewarding customers for recommending their products or services to friends and colleagues.

Identify your most loyal customers, and provide them with incentives and opportunities to share their positive experiences, such as through testimonials, case studies, or social media engagement.

Implement the best customer enablement strategies 

Customer enablement plays a pivotal role in ensuring customer satisfaction and retention. By implementing a well-rounded strategy that includes a robust LMS and customized upsells, you can help customers maximize the value of your products and services. 

The Learning Cloud from WorkRamp can help you create on-demand training, improve adoption rates, and optimize resources.

Want to learn more? Contact us to schedule a free demo.