surface-customer-training-goals

In this blog series, we’re drawing on the expertise of Skilljar’s very own Customer Success team. They’ve helped countless teams launch successful customer training programs, and have some great insights to share. Stay tuned for new Q&As each month!

So far, we’ve dug into what training teams overlook when launching an LMS, and traits you should look for when hiring a customer trainer. This month, the question is:

“How can you surface customer training goals across the organization?”

We’ve found that some of our most successful customers socialize customer training goals throughout their organization to further drive success in achieving these goals. Why are customers who surface customer training goals across the organization so successful? It’s simple! When each team within a company understands the organization’s customer training goals and how achieving those goals impacts the organization as a whole, as well as the teams within the organization, they have much more immediate buy-in. Internal teams are then more invested in backing the training program and associated goals.

If you’re looking to get buy-in across the organization, one of the best things you can do is dig into how customer training impacts other teams. Once you understand each team’s individual value drivers, it will be much easier to sell them on the goals of your program. For example:

1. Marketing: 

If your company offers free training, it can help your Marketing team drive lead generation. Specifically, prospects who are interested in learning more about your company’s area of expertise can sign up for coursework. Your Marketing team will then have their contact information, and can nurture them until the timing is right.

Another benefit: training can help establish your company as an industry thought leader, and differentiate your brand from competitors. This is especially valuable if your competitors do not have similar programs in place.

2. Sales: 

Does your company offer paid training? A common driver for monetizing training and adding it as a line item within your contracts is to increase your organization’s average selling price (ASP). Leveraging the advantages that selling training brings to a sales organization is key to getting team members on board with your customer training goals.

3. Product:

Increasing product adoption is a huge challenge for many companies. Thankfully, it’s one that can be addressed with a great customer education program.

Trained customers should spend more time in your product. They’ll be well-versed in how your product works, and how it can help them achieve success. To put this another way, customer education can help increase product “stickiness.” You likely have more than one user per account, and all of them need to learn how to use your product effectively. Training ensures they can get up to speed quickly and efficiently.

One final note

Once you have buy-in from key stakeholders, take advantage of every opportunity to spread the word. If your company has all-hands meetings, for instance, ask if you can have a few minutes to share your team’s successes, like Doug McDaniel suggests. Another option would be to introduce the program during your new hire onboarding process. As a result, you can reinforce the idea that customer training is truly a company-wide initiative.

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In this blog series, we’re drawing on the expertise of Skilljar’s very own Customer Success team. If you have a question you’d like them to answer, let us know in the comments!