Everything to know about customer education

Customer education is one of the most effective strategies for attracting, engaging, and retaining customers. As a training provider, you can use customer education to keep your customers and create a loyal customer base that is continuously growing with you. Explore how this is possible in this article. 

What is customer education? 

Customer education is an organised learning activity whose purpose is to impart knowledge to prospective or existing customers. It is a strategic effort in that it equips customers with knowledge and skills to utilise a product or service that you sell in the hopes that it will encourage them to keep purchasing what you’re selling – and even buy more or something else. 

To maximise the value of customer education, you typically offer a wide range of content formats to new and existing customers, including course content, informational articles, downloadable templates, and much more. This will drive business growth and garner customer loyalty. 

Who is this beneficial for?

• SaaS companies who sell a complex product or service.
  
• Companies that sell products or services that require a shift in behaviour.
  
• Companies whose products or services need support. 

Customer education example: Offer online courses  

A common type of customer education content is e-learning or digital learning resources. We recommend that you think holistically about how to offer these online courses. For example, video content is highly engaging and valuable for existing and potential customers. You can combine this with text and image content, which will create the perfect balance between traditional course content and interactive, fun multimedia content. 

We recommend that you read our article on how to create an online course to get inspiration for how to offer online courses yourself and adapt this into your customer education strategy. 

Next, we will delve into the various customer education content formats and types that you can offer to your customers, with accompanying examples from how we offer customer education at FrontCore. 

What is customer education content? 

Your customers are probably already interested in your product or service, especially if they are already using it, but interest doesn’t necessarily equate to a purchase or high satisfaction or loyalty. The key to profit and loyalty is great content, which makes up the core of customer education. 

When producing customer education content, you should aim for it to be informational, inspiring, entertaining, and engaging. To fully get existing and potential customers hooked on your business, you must ensure that the content is relevant and fun to engage with. 

You can read a list of various content formats that are used in customer education below. 

Content formats for educational purposes

• Blog posts, articles, and white papers, like we offer on our FrontCore blog space that provide expert advice on training and learning, informational how-to articles, and much more
  
• Practical tools like templates and checklists, like we have a bunch of in our resource library ready to be downloaded and utilised to their full advantage. 
• Case studies, such as customer success stories like we share here
  
• Podcasts and webinars, like the ones we produce and share here. 

Content formats for product-focused training 

• Demonstrations, tutorials, and webinars that delve into the product or service. For example, we offer free demos of our LMS and TMS.
  
• Walkthroughs of the product or service by a representative.
  
• Online courses that delve into each feature of a product or service.
  
• Knowledge checks through quizzes or assessments after completing a course.  
  
• Guides that provide in-depth, specific information about the product or service. 

Why is customer education important?

Customer education enables you to establish long-lasting relationships with customers. In offering service and guidance through a wide range of content and content formats, you are building trust and demonstrating to your customers that you are invested in their progress. 

This is also something that you can capitalise on through seizing the opportunity to change people’s perception of your brand, company, or product and service. In the content, you can frame yourself in a different way than how you are or have been perceived by the market. Simultaneously, you increase the probability of becoming a thought leader in your industry. 

This is why customer education is important, and it crystalises in a set of benefits that impacts almost every aspect of your business.

Establishing a customer education strategy in 6 steps  

Align business strategy with customer education strategy 

Customer education is a part of your business strategy, and, thus, aligned with your business goals – or at least it should be. Ensure that you address how to get leads, or deal with challenges like churn numbers in your customer education process. 

Segment your customers 

Segment your audience into groups that you can target with different types of content. This will help you to guide your customer education process. 

Develop a content strategy

Developing a content strategy entails that you decide whether to produce new or reproduce existing content, address capacity for creating content, and have a decent workflow for pushing out content swiftly and effectively. 

Invest in training tools 

Invest in customer training tools such as a customer education platform. Read our advice for how to address this step in the next section. 

Don’t forget about marketing 

Promote your program across your social media channels and in your marketing channels. 

Get some inspiration in our article on how to market an online course. 

Measure and evaluate results 

Finally, measure results of your customer education efforts on performance, engagement metrics, CSAT scores, retention and churn numbers, or any other relevant metrics.

What to consider when choosing a customer education platform 

A learning management system (LMS) is the ideal customer education platform that encourages learning through a customisable learning academy. If you choose an LMS with all the features you would want to structure the customer education process – like the one we offer in FrontCore – then you are off to a great start. 

There is a list of requirements that this LMS should support. Explore these criteria below: 

Opportunity to scale aside training business growth 

You want your training platform to grow simultaneously with your overall business growth. Therefore, we recommend that you choose a platform that offers features for scalability. 

If it is cloud-based, offers a customisable set-up (including the management of several course programmes at once), has the necessary integrations to streamline workflows across software, and includes automation and compliance features, then you are good to go. 

Check out the full list of features in our LMS here. 

It is easy to navigate 

It should be easy for customers to set up and use the platform, because this affects their willingness to actually use the software. Therefore, ensure that you choose a customer education platform that is both user-friendly and intuitive. 

AI tools that work 

Content tools and AI tools are crucial to build engaging content in a cost-effective way. Built-in content editing tools, video editors, quiz builders, and interactive elements are essential elements to consider, in addition to AI course tools that allow you to repurpose and optimise said content. 

Interactive, engaging content elements 

Related to the previous point, and the overarching objective of customer education, the content must be engaging. Thus, support for videos, guides, podcasts, and other content types, and integrations with webinars or gamification elements are important. This is critical in order to create an overall productive and interactive environment amongst customers who engage with your content.

Integrate the LMS with training management 

In addition to an LMS, we offer an all-in-one Training Management System (TMS) built to support your training sessions. From handling enquiries and registrations to automating communication and tracking performance, it gives you the tools to manage participants and courses efficiently. 

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