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Customer Training

Customer Training: Benefits, Steps & Best Practices

Category: Knowledge Base Software

Last updated on Sep 24, 2024

Do you think your job is done after selling your product to your customer? Most SaaS companies face churn because of poor customer training. We need to train to retain customers, businesses are looking to invest more in customer training programs.

Onboarding them into new software stirs their curiosity. However, they remain oblivious to your product’s potential without proper training.

Our biggest mistake as product owners is believing our product is self-sufficient. Many times, we skip customer training and emphasize its features without explaining how it can help them.

That’s what customer training is about— walking through your customers via tutorial videos, knowledge bases, direct calls, and access to educational material on how your product can be a valuable extension of their daily operations.

Customer training gives your customers everything they need to use your product effectively; it’s like giving them a gadget with a manual book. It simply makes their day.

There’s more to customer training; we’d love to explain how it can benefit your business. Let’s dig in.

What is Customer Training?

Customer training is an essential part of customer onboarding. When you onboard a new customer, you educate them on using your product in the best way possible. It involves going the extra mile to ensure your customer or partner understands and can fully benefit from your offerings, upgrading their overall knowledge and experience.

If your product learning curve is high, customer training becomes your mandate. Since the product is complex, customers can get confused and drop it. This results in a high churn rate, and retention becomes difficult.  44% of SaaS businesses revealed that they generate 10% of additional revenue through upselling and cross-selling. It can get bitter as you miss on the other profit-making opportunities.

Customer training is the way to build long-lasting relationships with your clients, which in turn make them loyal customers to your brand. Customer training is the result of a fabulous customer experience. Usually, customer training comes under the job role of the customer success team, using resources like customer service knowledge basefrequently asked questions (FAQs)customer service policies,  knowledge base, and others, which we’ll talk about later in the blog.

Types of Customer Training

Four types of customer training help in elevating customer experience. Here they are:

1. In-Person Customer Training

This involves face-to-face sessions where trainers work directly with customers. These sessions occur on-site at the customer’s location or the company’s facilities. The interactive nature of in-person training allows for immediate feedback and hands-on practice.

2. Online Customer training, conducted

Conducted via digital training offers flexibility and accessibility. Customers can participate in webinars, watch video tutorials, and access online courses at their own pace, making it convenient for those with busy schedules or remote locations.

3. Hybrid Customer Training

This combines elements of both in-person and online training. Customers may attend live sessions while also having access to online resources. This approach provides the benefits of direct interaction and the flexibility of online materials.

4. Blended Customer Training

Blended training integrates various training methods, such as in-person workshops, online courses, self-paced learning modules, and virtual instructor-led sessions. This comprehensive approach caters to different learning styles and preferences, ensuring a well-rounded training experience. 

You can choose any training that’s convenient for you and your customer. If your customer insists on seeking training more than once, hesitate not and always stay open to answering your customers’ questions.

Training programs are not the end. Keep returning to your customers if there’s any unresolved doubt that prevents them from regretting their purchase. In the next section, we’ll highlight the core benefits of having a customer training program in detail.

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Benefits of having a Customer training program

Customer training is an ongoing process. It’s never enough on your customer training program. You need to keep updating it as the product feature gets updated.

Creating a training program isn’t easy; you need to strive to match your customers’ needs constantly.

If the existing customer base lacks product knowledge, may not even understand the benefits of a new feature or a better service tier.

Here’s why you need to have a pre-built customer training program.

1. Hassle-free customer onboarding

Companies that don’t onboard their customers with full information miss a valuable opportunity to create customer engagement and loyalty. If you win over a customer but fail to equip them with user onboarding guides, you’ve wasted all that sales and marketing efforts.

Guiding your customers through the first stages of your product is essential for activating them, retaining them, and building loyalty. When you provide customers with the training materials for success, your support team will receive fewer requests, lowering overheads and reducing the support burden.

2. Reduces Customer Churn and support cost

As we know, churn is not good for business health. Customer churn occurs mostly when customers feel the product is no longer useful and when they are tired of using a complex tool without any training support and self-help guides. In both cases, the customer training program can help reduce churn.

Customer training programs can cost your business an arm or leg. With new technologies, you can minimize this by implementing a self–service platform like a knowledge base to encourage self-training. Your customers help themselves with the knowledge base and how-to guides provided, which directly unburdens the load on customer support agents and helps you cut down on support costs.

3. Helps to expand your loyal customer base

Do you know loyal relationships with customers translate into cost savings?

Because serving long-term customers is cheaper than attracting new, long-standing customers bring in more profit each year they stay with a company.

For instance, a 5% increase in customer retention in financial services can lead to over a 25% increase in profit. This is because repeat customers tend to buy more over time, reducing your operating costs to serve them.

They also refer new customers and are willing to pay more to stay with a company they trust, rather than switch to a competitor.

When you focus on training materials, you keep your customers well-informed, welcomed, and loyal. This way, your customers retain themselves.

4. Reduce strain on support teams

Support agent resignation rates have ranged from 30% to 100%. Reason? exceeding daily call limits, dealing with emotional customers and frustrated customers.

When your customers are well trained, they will likely choose the customer support route less. They can resolve their queries using troubleshooting docs, FAQs, and chatbots for surface-level queries. This, in turn, reduces the load on your customer support teams

All in all, customer training is the linchpin of your customer experience. It benefits internally by lowering the burden on teams and externally by providing good word of mouth.

As we move forward, we’ll explain how to develop a successful customer training program.

Also Read: Proven Strategies to Reduce Training Costs

Steps to Create a Customer Training Program in Your Organization

Now that we’re on the same page and learned the benefits of the customer training program.

It’s time to help you understand how to build one.

The first step would be to invest in a KMS system like Document360. If you already have one or looking to transit. It makes your customer training easier.

Step 1: Get to know your customers

Designing learning materials is not only a time-consuming process but also a tedious process. You should know what topics to cover in the training program. Staying in constant touch with your customer support team can identify common doubts, requested information they’re looking for, and knowledge base upgrades — all the things customers can potentially ask. This will help you design your course index.

Conducting a customer survey is a good idea if you want to go the extra mile. Potential audience who are already using your product and can spread good words about it.

Step 2: Outline Your Customer Training Content

Break down the training content into key topics or modules that cover different aspects of your product or service. For example, you might have modules on getting started, advanced features, troubleshooting, and best practices.

Develop a detailed outline for each module. Include subtopics, key points, and the order in which the information will be presented.  Use a mix of formats to cater to different learning styles and keep the training engaging.

Design assessments such as quizzes or practical tasks to evaluate the customers’ understanding of the material. Outline a process for regularly reviewing and updating the training content to keep it current with product updates, new features, and customer feedback.

Step 3: Identifying Necessary Tools for Training Program

Now that your designing part is done, you choose the tools for the training program. In the process of creating customer training programs, you need tools like

To publish the content, you need tools like knowledge base software. A well-updated knowledge base equips customers with the information they need to transition smoothly from the consideration to the action phase. It allows companies to increase customer satisfaction. When customers can get solutions to their problems without waiting in long queues, it positively impacts how they see your company.

With Document360, you unlock more opportunities for self-service. It acts as a central repository for your training resources, troubleshooting guides, and user manuals. Its AI-powered search makes it more interactive with users, allowing them to quickly find information. It also auto-suggests relevant articles to continue their learning journey.

Also, check how to create a knowledge base for more steps.

  • Survey and Feedback Tools, ( SurveyMonkey, Google Forms)
    These tools are crucial for gathering customer feedback about the training content and delivery. Feedback helps you understand the effectiveness of your training program and identify areas for improvement, ensuring continuous enhancement.

  • Customer Engagement Platforms (Zendesk): Platforms like Zendesk facilitate customer interaction and support with training staff. They enable customers to ask questions, receive timely responses, and engage in discussions, enhancing the training experience.

Step 4: Continuous Improvement through Feedback and Metrics

As we mentioned above, customer training is ongoing. You should provide support until your customer goals aren’t achieved. Once your training program is effective, it reduces churn. Reach out to your customers to provide feedback on your training material. If there’s any gap in it, try to improve through feedback.

Also Read: Top 10 GenAI Tools for Customer Service You Must Explore

How can Document360 help you train customers?

Document360 allows you to create, edit, and publish articles more structurally. It also stores product information centrally and shares restricted access with customers. It offers version control features so you can update the information with recent updates and keep track of all the changes.       

With AI assistance, Eddy helps readers quickly interact and land on more relevant information. Article summarizer helps readers save time by not reading lengthy articles. Instead, they can read a condensed article as a summary, thus making the learning journey more efficient.

Moreover, it helps you design your workflows to streamline the creation process of your training documentation. And if you are looking for integrations, Document360 doesn’t disappoint you. It offers more than 30+ integrations and a 24/7 migration option, allowing you to switch their tool to better options immediately!

An intuitive AI-powered knowledge base software to easily add your content and integrate it with any application. Give Document360 a try!

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Wrapping Up

This is your sign if you are still hesitant to invest in knowledge-based software. When your customers are well-read and well-updated, they stick to your brand longer. Add a Knowledge base software to your profit-making strategy, as it’s the most underrated way to retain your customers.

A Knowledge base software like Document360 ensures flawless customer training programs. It allows you to create training programs at scale with lots of features, engage customers, and help measure the metrics of training programs.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What is the value of customer training?

    Customer training enhances user satisfaction and loyalty by empowering them to use your product effectively. It reduces support costs, minimizes churn, and increases upsell opportunities by fostering a deeper understanding of your offerings.

  • Customer service training should include product knowledge, communication skills, problem-solving techniques, and empathy training. It should also cover handling difficult situations and using customer service tools effectively.

  • The objectives include improving customer satisfaction, reducing response times, enhancing communication skills, increasing product knowledge, and fostering a positive customer experience. The aim is to equip agents with the skills needed to resolve issues efficiently and empathetically.

  • Provide comprehensive onboarding, ongoing training sessions, role-playing scenarios, and real-time feedback to train customer experience. Use customer feedback to identify areas for improvement and incorporate tools like KMS and analytics to track progress and effectiveness.

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