10 min read

Customer Training Guide: Everything You Need to Know

Raven360 Team : May 10, 2021

Traditionally thought just for employees, customer training has proven to be a valuable tool to attract new customers and retain existing ones. More common for SaaS and Technology products, customer training has become a critical differentiator between competitors.

Training methods differ between products, typically based on their complexity. For simple ones, self-paced and simple form efforts (FAQs, user forums) are generally sufficient; for more complex solutions, guided actions, user onboarding, demos, and more may be necessary.

This guide will explore the intricacies of customer training and examine its benefits, opportunities, and best practices.

An Introduction to Customer Training

A growing commodity, customer training has proven to be a key differentiator for solutions across the market. This section will examine what customer training is, its goals, and why it’s essential.

1. What is Customer Training?

Customer training is the process of educating consumers to utilize your product or service successfully. An ongoing process, customer training helps organizations attract consumers and grow brand experts.

2. Goals of Customer Training

While goals can be adapted to any organization’s needs or vision, the primary objectives of customer product training are:

Provide a smoother customer onboarding process
Increase engagement with product
Strengthen customer retention
Improved quality of support tickets
Improve upsell opportunities
Create brand ambassadors
Training-Led Growth

3. Why Your Business Needs a Customer Training program

Source: TSIA

Customer training services increase the overall customer experience by ensuring users can use a company’s product or service correctly. Consumers are more likely to become long-term users with better understanding and less frustration. According to findings by Talented Learning, 68% of trained users use products more regularly than untrained users.

Benefits of Customer Training

Customer learning academies can improve multiple facets of a company. The benefits of customer training include

1. Training-Led Growth

Training-led growth enables increased customer loyalty, retention, and profitability for a product or service. A primary focus of Raven360, training-led growth, is achieved with intentional customer education efforts, which grow the user’s understanding of the product.

2. Better Brand Positioning

The SaaS market is flooded with solutions for nearly every single problem; as a result, there is intense competition to differentiate their products and services. Offering customer training programs enables better brand positioning by giving potential customers the confidence that they will be able to utilize a company’s solution successfully.

3. Improves Client Retention

By addressing points of friction created by steep learning curves, customer training increases customer retention by ensuring clients know how to use a product properly. More educated users are more likely to continue utilizing a product.

4. Enhances Customer Onboarding Experience

Crucial to the success of the training process, customer onboarding sets the tone for the client's success. Intense and intentional training enhances the onboarding experience by educating the user, emphasizing the value of a product, and encouraging long-term use.

onboarding experience

5. Increases Revenue and Lower Costs

More experienced customers are more likely to upgrade products to higher plans; intentional training creates skilled users who would consider purchasing more products.

Additionally, better-trained clientele directly reduces support costs. Training prevents typical support requests and provides users with a library of pre-made tutorials, reducing overall customer assistance costs.

6. Creates Brand Experts

More skilled customers are more likely to become brand ambassadors - users who grow a product’s awareness through positive reviews and word-of-mouth advertising. Inexpensive and reliable, brand experts can be developed more significantly through intentional customer training.

Essential Customer Training KPIs You Need to Track

To create an impactful solution, companies should evaluate the effectiveness of their customer training program with key performance indicators.

Asked about the importance of these metrics, Donna Weber, the President, and Customer Onboarding Leader for Springboard Solution, stated:

“Don’t wait for a data analyst. Instead, start measuring your impact. First, understand what truly matters to your executives and the board… Next, explore how your efforts impact that master metric. Dig into existing systems to uncover influence. Don’t waste time proving causation or waiting a year to show higher renewals from onboarded customers. Rather, explore leading indicators.”

While there is no comprehensive list, some essential KPIs for learning academies are:

1. Training Retention

This performance indicator measures the amount of information users retain in the short and long term. By utilizing methods like quizzes and surveys, a company can evaluate the effectiveness of its training process and further develop a more engaging learning experience.

2. Impact of Training on Business KPIs

Whether to meet compliance requirements, better understand the market, or develop greater skill sets, training gives clients usable strategies and tools. Difficult to measure directly, the best way to study a training’s effectiveness is through evaluating broader key performance indicators, such as sales revenue or client retention; when evaluating training processes, companies should note quantifiable changes to critical metrics following the conclusion of related programs.

3. Engagement

Engagement measures how a consumer interacts with a product or service. Regarding customer training, engagement as a metric can be evaluated by monitoring participation in training or post-training product use.

Engagement as a Metric

4. Average Time to Complete

Time can be measured as a KPI by focusing on the training or the customer. When focusing on training, the average time to completion metric allows companies to understand the time-cost of their customer service.

Through the lens of the customer, average time measures the time spent investing in the customer.

To measure the impact of a training program or module, subtract the customer training cost (calculated from the average time) from projected revenue.

5. Total Competence by Department

Total competence by the department can be evaluated through the lens of employees or customers.

In employee terms, this is measured by how much training is required to reach total competency; companies can evaluate this metric with low-pressure evaluations like content reviews and a pop quiz.

Regarding the customer, competence is directly measured by their ability to use the product; the more qualified the user is, the more valuable they are.

6. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV measures the value of a customer in the long term, not just on a purchase-by-purchase basis. Understanding the lifetime value of a customer allows companies to develop better strategies to acquire and retain customers, including further investment in customer training.

7. Overall Cost of Training

The overall cost of training can be viewed through two lenses: internal and customer finances.

Internally, financial planning is required to run a training program successfully; evaluating the cost of training relative to revenue will allow companies to assess their programs’ overall value.

From a customer perspective, the cost of training must be lower than the perceived gain of knowledge. Companies can better understand their market and evaluate the perceived value of their product by understanding this perspective.

Picking the Best Learning Management Software (LMS) for Your Customer Academy

When selecting a Learning Management Software (LMS) for your company, there are many factors and features to consider. These include:

1. Seamless Experience With an Intuitive User Interface

While other industries have quickly adopted streamlined interfaces, the LMS environment has adapted slowly towards prioritizing seamless experiences for users. As a result, many top solutions are challenging to navigate and use outdated tools. When choosing an LMS platform, companies should consider how the interface impacts their ability to manage, create, and deliver their courses.

2. Flexible, Open Content Creation

Content creation capability differs between LMS interfaces, with each solution having its own set of tools. As a result, companies should select the LMS that best meets their content creation needs. Standard content creation tools include:

Integrated toolbox or interactive dashboard to add collaborative content to the project
Quick design for interactive course manipulation
Performance measurement tools
Activity overview and reporting features

Ideally, organizations would have the flexibility to create and share training information in any format or length. Additionally, administrators should be able to add relevant and valuable content from any source.

3. Fast and Helpful Customer Support

While the best customer training solutions offer plenty of autonomy for users, unforeseen problems do occur. As a result, fast and helpful customer support should be a significant consideration for any company looking to use an LMS product to host their learning academies. Quality of support differs by vendor and product.

Raven360 proudly offers excellent customer support services, prioritizing prompt responses, quality instruction, and actively updated resource centers.

4. Dynamic Learning Capabilities

Traditional LMS provides users with static lists of resources reminiscent of old catalogs. Dynamic learning capabilities, however, allow users to access specific resources and information with freedom and control.

Dynamic learning capabilities include tools such as:

Custom Learning Paths - Users are given pre-defined “learning paths” based on their needs. Customers can select content categorized by topic, category, skill, product, etc.
Recommended Learning Based on Past Activity - Users are shown additional content related to courses they are taking, recommended courses based on previous activity, and given personalized content tailored to their needs.
Live, Instructor-Led Training, and Two-Way Interaction - Users can access live, online video classes created by the company; customers can use the live class to ask the instructor questions and clarify information.
Self-Labs and Virtual Machines - Users are provided access to a virtual machine instance of your software within their browsers without downloads or installs. This lets customers get hands-on experience using your product without compromising accurate data.

5. Gamification

Gamification engages users by applying gaming principles, such as competitions, badges, and points, to learning activities. Companies can utilize gamification methods to grow engagement, monitor course participation, and increase course retention.

89% of LMS users report they would be more engaged with their eLearning solution if it had a points system.

6. AI and Automation

AI and automation features within LMS solutions allow users to create and publish content more efficiently and improve the management of their learning academies. Further, automated processes allow users to interact with a customer training program without speaking with a support team member. Digital assistance, powered by AI, gives users additional support services without needing physical representatives. Together, the two create a more democratized learning experience, empowering customers to use learning academies to fit their needs.

In addition to increasing the user experience, automation and AI have been shown to lower overall support and labor costs - making the features even more attractive.

7. Mobile Learning Options

Mobile learning options allow users to utilize their LMS applications on their mobile devices through a webpage or an app. Companies should identify their target customers’ needs and select the LMS with the appropriate mobile learning option.

Mobile Learning

8. Offline Learning Options

Offline learning options allow users to utilize their LMS applications without an internet connection, regardless of location. Companies should identify their target customers’ needs and select the LMS with the appropriate offline learning option.

9. No Limit on THE Number of Users

Varying by platform, specific LMS solutions limit the number of users who can enroll or actively participate in courses. The user limit is often commodified and used to differentiate pricing models; typically, the higher the cost, the more users can use the software.

Small organizations will likely be unaffected by user capacities but could find cheaper solutions tailored to their customers. On the contrary, larger companies should prioritize selecting software that meets the capacity of their more extensive user base.

10. Advanced Reporting

Most traditional LMS solutions provide basic reports on users’ test scores and the number of users who have completed a course. Advanced solutions, however, offer in-depth, customizable reports on subjects such as:

What impact training has on specific business objectives (customer retention, conversions from free to paid accounts, churn reduction, etc.)
How much time a user spends on any given course
What content was accessed by users (and which content is unnecessary)
Where in a course, users are getting stuck or confused
What knowledge gaps do users have, and where is additional training needed
Data visualization to help administrators identify patterns and trends

11. Security

Like all software solutions, evaluating the security capability of an LMS platform when considering using it is essential. Online training platforms, such as Raven360, typically provide the following security features:

Single Sign-On (SSO): users can securely access multiple applications with one login and password, managed independently.
Individual and Group Level Access to Content: Content can be assigned access on the individual and group level to keep the information confidential.

Steps to Implement a Customer Training Program

Creating a customer training program for a product or service can be daunting. This section will overview some essential steps companies should take when developing a learning academy.

Implement Customer Training Program

1. Identify Program Goals

Before building a course curriculum, companies must identify the program's short-term and long-term goals. They should consider customers' needs and challenges to establish reasonable expectations with measurable outcomes.

2. Choose the Right Technology/ Platform

Established Learning Management Systems offer course delivery methods for new and retained users, while built-in content authoring tools expedite course creation. To create the best possible customer training programs, companies should select an LMS platform that best meets their goals and needs.

Choosing a platform should also consider the needs and wants of a product’s ideal customer. To do so, companies should seek feedback from their ideal customers through surveys and other methods.

Moving forward without consideration for the consumer can quickly become a costly mistake; as Diligent Corporation’s Kinda Nehlawi notes:

“It can be tempting to go ahead and purchase a great LMS or other costly learning tools, spend hundreds of hours building a polished online course, but later learn that your customer only needed a quick one-page cheat sheet to achieve their goal.”

3. Create a Customer Training Team

Members of the training team should be critical contributors to other departments. By having a complete range of skills and knowledge relative to a product, the team will be better able to provide the best possible training solutions.

customer training team

4. Work Collaboratively to Create New Training Materials

When establishing a customer training team, it’s essential not to utilize them strictly for products already developed. Instead, teams should be a part of the product development process. By being a part of the development process, the customer training team can incrementally develop content alongside the product team. As a result, users can access the courses the day new features and products come out.

5. Deploy, Test, and Improve Using Advanced Analytics

By understanding how customers interact with their training, companies can make informed improvements to their services. When comparing analytics tools, consider the following possible actions:

Using embedded tools to track how customers interact with the LMS solution
Reviewing support requests to identify areas of improvement
Comparing support requests with training taken; identifying the impact of courses
Measuring customer satisfaction to determine actual and perceived training needs
Asking customers directly what their pain points are related to training

Customer Training Frequently Asked Questions

1. What’s Included in a Good Customer Training Program?

A quality customer training program is comprised of many factors, including:

Seamless user experiences
Dynamic learning opportunities
Performance metrics supported by KPIs
Flexible content creation
Gamification capabilities
Quality customer support
Advanced reporting capabilities
Offline/Mobile learning opportunities
Secure platforms and servers

2. How Much Does Customer Training Software Cost?

There are four different standard pricing models for Customer Training services:

Per Learner, Per Month

The most common payment option, the amount of total users, determines the monthly subscription model’s cost in a system or the number of active participants enrolled in a course. Typically $5 or less per learner per month, this model is best for small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) looking for general training programs.

Per Learner, Per Use

A solution for LMS software with extensive catalogs of features, lessons, modules, and tools, this pricing model allows users to pay only for the services they use. Prices typically range from $1 to $10 per user, per use. This payment model is best for organizations that do not train employees regularly.

Per Course

Designed for employees needing special certifications for their industry or job function, this pricing model allows LMS users to pay per course taken. While similar to the per-learner and per-user models, the per-course option offers premium pricing options for specialized content. This payment method is best for compliance-focused organizations with employees that require certifications.

Licensing Fee

This model allows companies to purchase the license to install an LMS software. For mid-size or large businesses, costs generally range from $500 to $20,000, excluding additional setup costs. Payment plans vary by software, but most commonly are either one-time fees or recurring annual charges.

3. Who Is Responsible for Creating a Customer Training Program?

The responsibility for creating customer training is shared between the LMS platform and the company itself. While organizations are responsible for developing the courses and materials, it’s the responsibility of the LMS solution to supply the infrastructure to carry out the training effectively.

4. How to track the impact of my customer academy?

Companies can track the impact of their customer academy by evaluating pre-established key performance indicators, such as engagement and training retention. In addition to monitoring KPIs, users can assess their training program with built-in analytics tools in their LMS, like those offered by Raven360.

5. How Long Does It Take to Implement a Customer Training program?

Implementing a customer training program can vary in length depending on many factors. However, the best way to expedite the process is to utilize an LMS solution.

6. Should I Choose Online Training or Offline Training?

Offline training allows users to access learning academy materials without internet access. An uncommon feature in most LMS products, you should choose an offline training solution if you expect users to need your training platform while away from internet connectivity. To decide, assess your market and the behaviors of your primary targeted customers.

Customer Training Conclusions

Customer training is the process of educating consumers to utilize a product or service. A differentiator in almost every market, these programs can develop brand experts and advocates and improve client retention.

Daunting to create from scratch, the developmental process of customer training can be expedited with Learning Management Systems (LMS). These solutions provide companies with an infrastructure to build their learning academy quickly and efficiently.

Organizations should build training programs with established goals, the appropriate LMS platform, and collaboration across departments. To ensure quality results, companies should deploy, test, and improve their product using advanced analytics and user feedback to improve quality results, just like products themselves continuously.

Regardless of the industry, customer training revolutionizes the consumer experience. Start building your customer training program today with Raven360.