Enhance your customer experience with an LMS for customer education 

Customer education (CEd) is a strategy aimed at helping customers get the maximum value from your product or service by providing them with additional knowledge, tools, and ongoing support. Customer engagement and customer training strategies are often overlooked as key drivers of business success. But they're the engine behind critical metrics like product adoption and customer retention.   

Engaging with customers continuously allows companies to keep pace with their changing needs and preferences. Using captured data and analytics is incredibly helpful in this process as they can help you identify important usage patterns and trends, which can inform strategic decisions and help you optimize your customer success strategies.  

By targeting specific outcomes with their customers using data, businesses can demonstrate their services' tangible value and ROI. Regularly assessing and refining customer enablement strategies will ensure these initiatives remain relevant and effective. Ultimately, a well-conceived customer enablement strategy enhances satisfaction, fosters loyalty, reduces churn, and drives revenue growth. It lays the foundation for long-term success and a robust, committed customer base.  

Is customer education unique?  

Yes. Different audiences might need to learn some of the same skills, but the training goals and approaches typically differ. Employee training focuses on developing skills and knowledge relevant to their roles within an org, fostering productivity and professional growth. Customer training aims to educate customers about a product or service, enhancing their experience and usage. While employee training often involves internal processes and systems, customer training focuses on external product understanding and usability. Both share the common goal of improving overall satisfaction but differ in content and delivery to cater to their distinct audiences. 

Strategic benefits of using customer education software 

 An extended enterprise Learning Management System is a tool designed to create customized learning paths for different external audiences, it simplifies how you handle training and offer consistent, scalable training materials.   

Customer focus 

Engaging customers as part of the extended enterprise allows companies to better understand and meet customer needs, improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, and ultimately generate greater revenue. Using an extended enterprise LMS to engage customers lets businesses provide them with important training and resources. This not only makes customers happier but also builds their loyalty and trust. Customers who know more about your services and culture are more likely to become invested buyers and champions of your brand. 

Operational efficiency 

The 2023 Customer Success Leadership Study from ChurnZero showed that budgets for customer-facing teams are tightening across industries. So, it is no wonder customer success and L&D teams everywhere are looking for ways to boost their team’s efficiency. 

Many want to improve the experience for HR, L&D, and other administrators who need to build, deliver, and report on CEd. Other enterprises are looking to give their customers the ability to troubleshoot basic issues on their own with self-service FAQs and knowledge bases. This frees up support team resources so they can focus on high-touch customer issues. 

Competitive advantage 

An extended enterprise LMS improves brand awareness and fosters a stronger brand perception in an external audience. This can create a compelling competitive advantage in a crowded market. 

An LMS can also help you leverage a small advantage into a larger one by supporting growth. With a lower support burden thanks to LMS self-service options, your organization can take on more customers faster. 

How an LMS for customer education benefits learners, admins, and the wider business

Learning Management Systems (LMSs) have become an essential tool for HR and L&D teams, but they’re also the best customer education platform. Their comprehensive suite of features benefits everyone, from learners to administrators and the business as a whole.

Benefits for learners  

•  Personalized learning experiences—Modern customer training platforms enable the delivery of personalized content tailored to the needs and learning paths of individual customers. This approach ensures that customers receive relevant, engaging, and effective training, which can significantly improve their understanding of and satisfaction with your services.  
• Flexible access—An LMS allows learners to access educational content anytime across different devices. This is particularly beneficial for customers who may need to fit learning time into packed or unpredictable schedules. They get to engage with content at their own pace.  
• Interactive and engaging learning—With features such as gamification, interactive quizzes, and video-based content, LMS platforms make extended learning engaging and interactive. This improves knowledge retention and enhances the overall learning experience, making it more enjoyable for customers and more likely to stick.  

  Benefits for administrators  

• Streamlined content management—LMS platforms offer powerful tools for creating, managing, and distributing educational content from one central location. Administrators can easily update and publish new materials, so customers always have access to the latest information and resources.  
• Efficient training delivery—An LMS simplifies the process of delivering training to large numbers of customers and monitoring their progress. Administrators can monitor engagement, assess performance, and identify areas where learners might need additional support, all from a centralized dashboard.  
• Scalability—As the business grows, so can its customer education efforts. A cloud-based LMS can easily scale to accommodate an increasing number of learners without sacrificing the quality of the training or requiring significant additional resources.  

Benefits for the business  

•  Enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty—Businesses can significantly improve customer satisfaction by providing customers with the knowledge and skills they need to use a product or service effectively. Well-informed customers are more likely to become loyal advocates for the brand, leading to increased customer retention and positive word-of-mouth.  
• Reduced support costs—Educated customers require fewer support resources. They're less likely to require ongoing or intensive support as they better understand how to use products and resolve common issues on their own. This can significantly reduce support costs and free up resources to be invested elsewhere in the business.  
• Data-driven insights—An LMS generates valuable data on customer learning behaviors and preferences, providing businesses with insights that can inform product development, marketing strategies, and future training initiatives. This data-driven approach enables continuous improvement and innovation in customer education efforts.  

Make customer education a strategic priority for your enterprise 

Learning for the sake of learning has immeasurable benefits. But in a corporate setting you need to make sure that learning delivers outcomes. Here are some of the outcomes you can achieve when you take a customer-centric approach and empower your customers: 

• Streamline customer onboarding – The quicker you get them up and running on your product or service, the quicker they can start to see the value you bring.  
• Reduce support escalations – Proactively addressing common issues empowers customers to troubleshoot on their own, leading to a more informed customer base, fewer support inquiries and lowering the need for escalations. 
• Drive account expansion and increase lifetime value – Educated customers who’ve had a great experience with you are more likely to see the long-term value of doing business with you and be more open to any other products or services you offer.  
• Increase product adoption and stickiness – Clear, accessible resources that address common pain points and help customers understand the different features, functionalities and capabilities can boost their confidence and encourage them to use your offering to it’s fullest. 
• Start monetizing your content – If you’ve created premium educational courses, why not use them to grow revenue? A certification program or access to advanced content can attract learners who are willing to pay for enhanced learning experiences. 

Check out this resource where we cover:

• The fundamentals of L&D for external learners
• Why learning powers the customer lifecycle
• How to build a customer-centric culture via your LMS
• Questions to ask yourself before building or updating your customer education program, plus worksheets to help guide you