7 Reasons to Create a Customer Education Academy

Like most organizations, you’re probably always looking for better ways to serve your customers. But what if there was a way to keep them coming back and turn them into advocates and champions for your brand?

A customer education academy is an effective way to show users and prospects you care about their success. By providing valuable resources, training, and support, you help them improve, excel in their roles, and ultimately, become better customers for you.

Plus, for every dollar spent on customer education, organizations earn $6.70 annually.

If you need to make a case for building a customer education academy, here are seven reasons you should invest in one, plus tips to create your own.

What is a customer education academy?

A customer education academy is an online training platform that helps users and prospects learn about your product or service and how to use it. The goal is to provide customer training, give users the information they need to be successful, and build a relationship.

Typically, customer academies offer courses and programs on how to use your products or services. Academies can also provide customer support and technical help.

Benefits of building a customer education academy

You may wonder why you should put in the effort to create an academy for your customers. It may seem like a big undertaking, and you may not be sure of the ROI.

But, 90 percent of organizations have seen a positive return on their customer education investments, and these organizations reap additional benefits from building a customer academy. 

Read more: 5 Benefits of a Customer Education Program

1. Improved customer retention

When existing customers are invested in your product and have a positive experience using it, they’re more likely to remain loyal, even when faced with competing products. 

Engaged customers are also more likely to refer other users, which helps you acquire new customers.

Business Impact 📈Companies with formalized education programs see an average 7.4 percent increase in retention. 

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

2. Increased customer satisfaction

Customer education helps users overcome common challenges and get the most out of your product pre and post-purchase. 

This, in turn, leads to happier customers who are more likely to stick around and recommend your product to others.

Business Impact 📈16X increase in customer satisfaction.

3. Higher customer lifetime value

A properly trained customer will get more value out of your product, leading to a higher lifetime value. Your customers and business will benefit from this since it can generate more revenue and profit.

Business Impact 📈Customers who receive product training have 7.1 percent higher lifetime value than those who don’t. 

4. Reduces customer support costs

You can help your customers solve common problems without contacting customer support by providing educational resources. Your customer support team will spend less time resolving issues, which means significant cost savings for your organization.

Business Impact 📈6.1 percent reduction in support costs on average. 

5. Better-educated customers

Customers who receive product training are more likely to buy than those who don’t. Because they know more about your product and how to use it, they’re more likely to buy it. 

Users enrolled in your customer education academy will have early access to new product features, changes, and updates. This allows them to provide feedback and suggestions before making changes available to the general public.

Business Impact 📈Educated consumers are 131 percent more likely to buy. 

6. Improves product adoption rates

A customer academy becomes the go-to source for product information and training. It can be especially useful for new customers unfamiliar with a product’s features and functionalities. 

Having a central source of information makes it easier to access learning material and understand how the product works. 

You can also offer certifications and rewards for completing training within your academy. When you recognize customers for their achievements, they will be motivated to adopt the product and stick with it over the long term. 

Business Impact 📈68 percent of customers report using products more after training, while 56 percent use more product features than they would if untrained.

7. Helps you stand out from the competition

Some 28 percent of customers are never offered training, and nearly half (47 percent) have yet to use training offerings. Many organizations have settled with only reaching half of their customer base, but you can reach more with personalized education paths. 

Customers are more likely to do business with a company that provides them with a great experience. Building an academy for your customers shows them you’re committed to their success. It can also help you develop long-lasting customer relationships. 

Keeping customers up-to-date and knowledgeable about your products and services can help you retain them longer and improve top-line metrics. 

Business Impact 📈An average 6.2 percent increase in top-line revenue.

Tips for creating your customer education academy

Understand your learners

Take the time to understand your customer’s purchase journey and identify pain points before and after the sale. Your program should be built on customer insights and meeting their needs.

For example, when customer service CRM Kustomer built its customer education program, it focused on users who’ve never worked with a CRM before and smaller customers with a big learning curve. This helped them determine what educational content to focus on. 

Create a formal customer education strategy

Organizations with a formalized strategy achieve 52 percent greater education utilization rates and are 70 percent more likely to show positive ROI than those without. 

Set clear goals for what you want to achieve and use them to develop content in a meaningful way. 

Read more: 7 Customer Education Metrics to Measure Your Program’s Success

Invest in a learning management platform

Make sure you have the proper learning tools so customers can easily access learning content. An all-in-one learning platform like WorkRamp can help you improve product adoption through customer education.

With WorkRamp, you can:

• Onboard customers at scale by creating academies with customized training content
• Educate and certify customers through various assessment tools
• Measure training ROI by tracking key metrics and revenue impact from training

“WorkRamp enables us to train employees and customers in a single platform. This allows us to share training materials across teams and provide an amazing education experience for our customers, without the added work of spinning up a new instance.”

Chauncy Ford, Director of Enablement at Quantum Metric

Make learning content engaging

Take the steps to create content that’s fun and interactive. A training course or eLearning can often be plagued by never-ending text blocks, endless lists of multiple-choice questions, and long videos that don’t engage learners. 

Casey Keenan, a senior L&D manager at Compass Grou recommends using a variety of content types to keep learners engaged, such as:

• Video
• Tactile click-throughs
• Podcasts
• Mock interactions 
• Images
• Games 
• Virtual activities

“At Qualified, we use WorkRamp + Iorad to help technical learners get hands-on with the product without having to provision demos for everyone. This enables our teams to be tactical and address a whole different group of learners. We also use training materials like videos and one-pagers and interactive WorkRamp features like Flip Cards.”

 -Tony Vaughn, Director of Customer Education, Qualified

Read more: Make eLearning Engaging in 7 Steps 

Bring in the experts

Working with subject matter experts (SMEs) is crucial in building a customer academy. If you have multiple areas of learning, have more than one SME weigh in on the content. 

For example, Kustomer found internal SMEs in implementation, customer success, and customer support to produce content for learners. That way, they get the best education possible.

Build your customer education academy with WorkRamp

WorkRamp is an All-in-One Learning Platform that can help you drive customer success through training. It comes with everything you need to create engaging customer education courses, including video, audio, and prebuilt content. 

Get in touch today to increase top-line revenue and show customers you care.