Customer Education as the Scaling Engine of Customer Success

Businesses have a greater responsibility to their customers than simply delivering products to them. When a customer makes a purchase, they implicitly expect not only the product itself but also robust support mechanisms and avenues for continuous enablement and updates. Acquisition marks the inception of a relationship, rather than its conclusion.

On the other side of things, as a customer has committed to the product, it’s up to the business to support the new user and empower them to run the product successfully. And we all know; some products are more complicated than others. Some industries require more domain knowledge and involve a steeper learning curve. If that’s your case, then an excellent product experience simply won't cut it and your customer will require additional help throughout their lifecycle.

“Yeah, but this is where customer success teams step in, right?” Hmm, yes—and no. A customer success organizational function, just like sales, is a high-touch service. For hyper-growth companies serving an expanding customer base, relying on customer reps to handle adoption, onboarding, activation, and all of the maturity stages that follow is simply not scalable. So how can organizations scale without depending on ever-increasing teams of customer reps?

Welcome to customer education 1.0

Customers are 131% more likely to convert after engaging with early-stage educational content.

Customer education primarily focuses on ramping up new users to improve adoption metrics. It can be an especially valuable tool when integrated into an organization’s product-led growth efforts. If your product is already used to acquire users, educating people about it early on their buying journey becomes an additional way to expand your market beyond free trials.

However, customer education can evolve well beyond a go-to-market approach. An effective enablement program ensures clients are guided toward the product’s advancements and new features, increasing the likelihood of subscription renewals, upgrades, and even advocacy. Think of this as a strategic customer program to be overlayed on top of customer handling functions such as sales, support, servicing. This relieves significant pressure from customer success representatives, allowing them to concentrate on providing guidance across more critical touchpoints in a client’s lifetime.

Top of mind, the business metrics directly impacted by customer education initiatives will touch on:

  • Time to value is a key metric that shows how long it takes for a new customer to see value in your product or service. New customers expect to get what they paid for as soon as possible the faster, the better.

    There are several ways to measure time to value, yet one of the most popular is tracking onboarding time. In low-touch onboarding scenarios—such as assisted training or client academy workflows, this may be about the average time it takes for customers to create their first project and invite team members, or the percentage of users who do so.

  • Product adoption is the process of raising awareness over your product and its value proposition to get target customers to use it. A successful product adoption process is one that convinces users to move from trying it for the first time to subscribing and adopting it as a solution.

    In the case of digital products, measuring the feature adoption rate is essential to determine how much value customers get or leave untapped from interacting with your product.

  • When customers understand your product and are using it frequently, they’re more likely to share about it with their friends or coworkers. Plus, maintaining a high-quality online learning ecosystem—community forums, open registration courses, technical documentation and demos, can attract more customers who are searching for information about the kind of solution you offer.

What does customer education look like?

When discussing customer education, it's crucial to shift the focus from traditional educational methods to a more customer-centric approach. Various forms of enablement can seamlessly integrate into an educational strategy tailored to the needs of your clients. From informative articles and interactive webinars covering industry best practices to personalized advisory services on effectively conducting gap analyses, every resource your customers may seek or encounter on their journey to realizing business value can be leveraged by training experts to support clients effectively. Here are several common resource types:

  • Detailed guides, manuals, and documentation articles that offer comprehensive explanations of product features, functionalities, and usage instructions.

  • Platforms where customers can engage with peers, share insights, ask questions, and access valuable resources provided by community experts.

  • Dedicated online learning platforms that offer structured courses, tutorials, and certification programs designed to empower customers with the knowledge and skills needed to maximize the value of your products or services.

As the customer service landscape undergoes a profound transformation, the paradigm shifts to personalized learning and finely tailored educational experiences at every touchpoint in a customer's lifecycle. The mission is clear: to deliver effective insights and knowledge aligned with the client's engagement stage with your company or product.

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