Customer training is essential in any organization to ensure that customers can effectively use what they’ve purchased, and help them to achieve their desired outcomes.
In this article, we’ll break down customer training, explain its importance and benefits, describe the different types of customer training, and discuss how to design, launch, and facilitate customer training programs.
So if you’re interested in learning more about customer training and how to leverage it for your business successes, let’s get started!
What is Customer Training?
Customer training is a process through which businesses provide their customers with the knowledge and skills they need to use their products or services effectively. For example every time you buy IKEA furniture, you also receive some customer training in the form of the assembly instructions. or when your mobile’s (phone) OS updates to a new version they often include a little walkthrough guide of the new features and how to use them and what this does is it helps to clearly establish in readers mind on the subject matter.
The main objectives of customer training are to improve satisfaction and retention, reduce customer support costs, increase product or service usage, avoid misuse and align customer expectation with product capabilities which equals a better experience.
When designing a customer training program, businesses should consider the following factors: the target audience, the content and delivery methods, the resources required, and the timelines involved.
Some common delivery methods for customer training include webinars, video tutorials, in-person sessions, step-by-step instruction, and self-paced learning modules.
Businesses should also keep in mind that customer training is an ongoing process that should be regularly updated and refreshed to ensure that it remains relevant and effective.
Why is Customer Training Important and Crucial?
Businesses must prioritize customer training to equip their clients with the necessary knowledge and skills to use their products or services effectively. Here are five compelling reasons why customer training is crucial for any enterprise:
Heightened Customer Satisfaction
By providing proper training, clients can gain a comprehensive understanding of the product, leading to heightened satisfaction levels. This, in turn, can minimize frustration, confusion, and errors that may result in dissatisfaction.
Reduced Support Costs
Through appropriate training, customers can learn to solve common problems themselves, reducing the need for customer support. Consequently, this results in reduced costs for the company and faster response times for customers.
Increased Product Adoption
Without proper training, customers may not understand how to use a product or service effectively, leading to underutilization or no utilization at all. Training can assist customers in overcoming any obstacles to adoption, enabling them to make the most of their purchase.
Improved Customer Retention
Clients who receive proper training are more likely to become loyal, long-term customers. They are also more likely to recommend the company to others and make repeat purchases, thereby enhancing customer retention.
Competitive Edge
Companies that provide excellent customer training can distinguish themselves from their competitors. By offering exceptional customer training, businesses can boost their reputation, brand loyalty, and market share.
Customer training is crucial for companies to maintain customer satisfaction, reduce support costs, increase product adoption, improve customer retention, and gain a competitive edge.
What Are The Benefit of Training Your Customers?
Implementing customer training programs can be highly beneficial for both the company and its customers.
These programs can deliver value to businesses in a multitude of ways, including:
Enhances onboarding experience
An effective customer training program can provide a seamless onboarding experience to customers, enabling them to use the product faster. By delivering great results quickly, customers can enjoy using the product, which can lead to increased satisfaction.
Encourages higher product engagement
Customers who have been trained on how to use the product are more likely to use it frequently. Effective customer training teaches users how to make the most of the product, while inadequate or no training can discourage usage and encourage customers to look for alternatives.
Creates loyal customers and brand advocates
Customers are less likely to be loyal to a product that is difficult or frustrating to use. With good customer training, users can appreciate the product’s value, receive impressive support, and recommend the product to their colleagues, ultimately leading to new customers.
When you take a look at the first three benefits above, you will agree with me that almost every one of us has had an experience with a product we have been using and felt, say “neutral” about; but then we learned about some other neat or valuable functions about same product or services and that simple thing and moment changes our outlook, reliance on, and engagement with the product.
Helps customers understand the product’s and it value
Customers must perceive the value of a product or service to develop loyalty towards it. Through effective customer training, users can quickly understand the benefits of the product or service, which can help earn their loyalty.
Boosts customer retention rates
Steep learning curves can lead to customers giving up on using the product, even if it could benefit them. By helping customers to understand how to use the product correctly, businesses can create a positive experience for them, ultimately leading to higher retention rates.
Reduces support tickets
Customer training can reduce the number of support tickets. When customers understand the product, they are less likely to need assistance from support staff, which can decrease support costs and allow them to focus on customers with more complex issues.
Boosts company revenue
Acquiring new customers can be up to 25 times more expensive than retaining existing ones. By providing smart and effective customer training, businesses can increase subscription renewals, encourage referrals from satisfied customers, and encourage upgrades, all of which can increase company revenue.
It is clear that developing a proper customer training program can benefit any organization operating in a competitive market. The better the training, the more likely customers are to understand the product’s value, and the more likely they are to become loyal customers.
Types of Customer Training Programs
There are a variety of customer training programs available to companies who want to provide their customers with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful.
The type of customer training program that are right for your company will depend on your company’s products or services, your customer base, and your goals for the customer training program.
Below are few of several customer training programs we will touch on:
Product training
This type of program is designed to teach customers how to use your company’s products or services. Product training can be delivered in a variety of ways, including online courses, in-person workshops, or through printed materials such as user manuals or how-to guides. And this is by far the most common type of customer training. In addition, almost all products involve “Product Training”
For example, a very simple products it’s easy (e.g. put frozen pizza in the oven at 225 and bake for 15min) and for product that has more features and complexity so does the level of training required. products such as software often require tutorials and comprehensive instructions and can take the form of short courses with examples.
Onboarding training
Onboarding training is designed to help customers get started with a new product or service. this type of training requires a structured approach with clear goals, and careful consideration and planning of how to achieve them given the demographic of users, their needs and abilities, as well as the products intended purpose, features and workflow.
The training may include a series of videos or tutorials that explain how to set up the product, navigate the interface, and access important features but must be well structured as said earlier.
Customer support training
Customer support training is focused on helping customers effectively troubleshoot and resolve issues with a product or service.
This type of training can include documentation, videos, or live training sessions, and may cover topics such as problem-solving techniques, communication skills, and product-specific knowledge through FAQ portal and articles when appropriate.
As this is sounding more like onboarding, yet it’s different because customer support training typically happens when there are updates made to the product, or after the customer has “graduated” from basic to more advanced usage and overall training is ready to help them along these different phases.
No matter what type of customer training program you choose to implement, it is important that you design the program with your customers’ needs in mind. Your customer training program should be customer-centric and tailored to the specific needs of your customers.
See how one of our customer Solita, Automate Complex Customer Training Using Claned
How to Design and Facilitate a Customer Training Course
Customer training is a course or program that helps customers learn how to use a product, service, or system. The goal of customer training is to help customers be successful in using the thing you’ve sold or built, and to improve customer satisfaction and retention.
When designing and facilitating a training course, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Who is your audience?
Think about who will be taking the course. What are their needs? Level of knowledge and skills? What are their learning preferences? Answering these questions will help you design a course that meets your students where they’re at.
What do you want them to learn?
Be clear about what goals you want your students to achieve by the end of the course. This will help you determine the structure and content of the course.
How will you deliver the content?
There are many ways to deliver customer training courses, such as in-person, online, or through a self-paced eLearning platform. Each delivery method has its own advantages and disadvantages, so choose the one that makes the most sense for your audience and content.
What resources do you need?
To develop and deliver a customer training course, you’ll need access to instructional designers, developers, trainers, and other subject matter experts. You’ll also need access to learning management systems (LMS), LXP (Learning Experience Platform ) or other technology platforms
Making sure to have a good structure in mind for your customer training course – this is a critical component of successful programs it’s not just learners, content, platform, goals and you’re done. impact is in the design, or who this is all structured, communicated and supported.
A MUST READ:
How to Facilitate an Online Training Program at Scale
How to Build a Super Successful Complex Product Training
Tips On Measuring Customer Training Program Success
When it comes to measuring the success of your customer training program, there are few important element to pay attention to.
Here are a few tips on how to do just that:
Define your goals and objectives before starting the program. This will help you create targeted metrics that accurately reflect the success of your program.
if we want to measure impact of a customer training program, you need measurable goals – this will often be different than the learning goals. e.g. one goal may be “train users in platform operation” – which is difficult to measure and unreliable. so a measurable goal here would be something like “see a 40-60% drop in support tickets related to platform operation over 6months” now you have a measurable goal tied to a learning goal.
Which gives a better understanding of the difference between learning goal with and impact or outcome goal of your training program.
Pay attention to both customer satisfaction surveys and customer retention rates. These two metrics will give you a good indication of whether or not your program is successfully meeting customer needs.
Use data from your program’s existing learning management system (LMS) to track progress and performance. This data can be very helpful in gauging the effectiveness of your program.
Keep an eye on social media channels for customer feedback on the training program. This can be invaluable in understanding how customers are perceiving the program and its effectiveness.
Aways include a feedback mechanism in your training. this can be a form/survey, learning data
The above tips will ensure that you are well on your way to measuring the success of your customer training program in a way that accurately reflects its impact on your business goals and objectives.
How to Launch a Customer Training on LXP (Learning Experience Platform)
When it comes to customer training, there are a few different ways that you can go about it. You can launch a customer training program on your own, or you can use a learning experience platform (LXP) to help you out.
That is where Claned LXP comes to play. We have lots of experience in this offering learning design materials and assistance to get you crafting effective training programs and not only that, we have strong data and analytics tools that allow you to better measure performance and lot more. Get in touch or book a demo with our sales team sales@claned.com
