The secret to gaining loyal customers is to show them the same loyalty from your end and gradually earn their trust. When customers are well aware of the products and services offered by your company, they will be more inclined to purchase from you and also recommend your company to others as well.
Now you might worry that gaining customers’ trust, especially with so many other contenders around is not that easy but it is surely not impossible. To earn their valuable trust, you have to make use of multiple contents which will show them how your products and services can be used to solve their problems.
The main objective of these types of content is to lead your customers towards success and that is how customer education comes into the frame.
Why is customer education important?
When we design a product, we keep the customer’s well-being in mind but our job does not end at only designing and producing it. Letting the customer know of its proper use is also a big role in onboarding and retaining customers.
As a customer, I adore products that have a manual or instruction along with them that helps me make the best use of the product. These simple instructions not only allow one to understand the product but also improve user experience as well. And all these ultimately lead to greater customer success and customer lifetime value.
If you ask me, then these customer educational methods and programs are another marketing tool as it creates brand awareness and as a result, generate a bigger customer base. Ultimately you get to reach your goal which is to generate more revenue for your company.
Sounds great right?
Now let’s look at the ways of executing it. But before that, you need to realize that there are several ways to inform your customers, however; you need to make sure that these methods include the key elements which are engaging, informative, and conciseness.
CAUTION! Do not bore them. Keep it short and simplified so that they do get stuck in the process. Keep in mind that your goal is to make them find it easier to understand
Customer educational programs are most needed for modern and new businesses as their methods of using a product or service can be tricky and confusing. The crucial part of creating these educational programs is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. You need to identify the places where they can get stuck and require and then prepare the manual accordingly. When you’re finally done how to organize your tutorial then you can start creating it. This can take a lot of forms such as recorded videos, pictures, written instructions, infographics, online flip books, interactive courses, quizzes, product tours, instructor-led training, and plenty more. One key tool for improving your educational strategy is VEED’s software. For example, if you choose to use recorded videos for educating your customers, you can utilize VEED’s transcribe video to text feature. This allows you to convert your videos to text online at lightning-fast speed without sacrificing accuracy, thus making the content easily accessible for all customers. Furthermore, with VEED’s auto-subtitle generator, you can add subtitles to your video, enhancing the learning experience for auditory and visually impaired customers. In this way, you can ensure that your tutorials and educational content are inclusive and accessible to all, enhancing your customers’ overall experience.
Creating content for your customers needs to be strategized as well. You can’t just bombard their feed with videos and tutorials.
Continuing reading to learn about strategies to improve your customer education programs!
Focus on one at a time
As a customer success manager, your main responsibility is to solve your customer’s problems but then again you can’t manage all the problems at once. This will add more pressure and also thin out your resources. Hence focus on one category at a time. This way you can give in-depth knowledge to your customers, and use resources properly, and there are fewer chances of missing out as you’ll solely focus on one.
Examine your product’s post-sales ecosystem
Earlier we mentioned that you need to put yourself in your customer’s shoes to understand their problems. However; there are easier ways to do it and that is getting the needs analysis from the support team.
The first place where customers go to find answers to their queries is the support team. These people know when a customer usually faces a problem and the typical queries by them. That is why they are the perfect source for gathering information.
Identify Customer education roles
Your customer education team won’t look the same all the time. You have to appoint people in this team whose goals align with yours as well.
For example, you might have to appoint the customer success manager of your company if you desire to reduce the time to value of a product. Sometimes you might need a customer support manager too.
Using relevant technology
Customer education programs require you to be aligned with all the teams in a company as you need access to information from these to design your content. As a result, the relevant technologies such as LMS and CRM should also be in the sink with your team.
In this way, you can ensure that the actions you are taking align with the objectives of every team and hence provide the best value to your customers as well.
Breaking down siloes
As mentioned above you need to work with every team in a company to execute an effective customer education program. Burn a siloed team can keep you from achieving your set goals as there will be a communication gap and you won’t be able to generate proper content for your customers.
That is why you need to break down any silo team in your organization and always maintain communication to be in lockstep with them.
Regular feedback
Now you may find plenty of sources to gather information on how to improve your customer education program, but the most trustworthy and effective sources are the customers themselves.
It is not possible to analyze every single piece of data and come to conclusions. So the easiest way is to ask our customers and let them describe how they want to get information about our products or services.
This technique is beneficial for both your customers and your company as it can give a whole new outlook for your business as well. For example, if Jeff Bezos didn’t ask his customers about their preferences, then Amazon would still be an online book store and not a multinational company that deals with multiple business interests.
Marketing customer education program
Now that we have a well-built customer education program, we have to find out ways to let our customers know about it. These types of marketing can be segregated into 2 parts; internal and external.
Internal marketing is usually directed towards your employees so that they are well aware of the customer education program. This sort of marketing can be done by sharing the latest updates on Slack or distributing flyers to different teams around the office.
External marketing is for the customers so that they are informed about our programs. This has to be done by showing them the benefits of customer education programs in order to grab the attention of your customers.
Moreover showing them that they will be awarded certificates at the end of these programs. This can be a good motivator for them as well.
Hazel Edwards once said:
‘Ease your customer’s pain’
This saying says a lot about customer education programs and the reason for these to be introduced. When you set out to design your customer education program, keep in mind that your goal is to make their journey smooth and effortless.
