*This post was updated on 6/18/18
In our latest webinar, a panel of experts from Avalara, Chromatic Content, and Quick Base shared their insights around driving engagement and retention through customer education.
Continue reading for a few key takeaways:
1. In your company, do you see customer education as a driver for engagement and retention? How do you know?
Julia Ormond from Avalara said she wants their customers to primarily see them as business partners. In other words, they want to be there when people need them, and not when they don’t. When they get that engagement level just right, their customers report high Net Promoter Scores (NPS). And customers who report a high NPS for customer training churn at a lower rate.
Liz McCann from Quick Base added that in addition to NPS, they track active usage at her company. In fact, they’ve found that training is a top driver for active usage throughout their customer base. With these points in mind, try taking a cohorted approach. How does the behavior of customers who take training differ from the behavior of customers who don’t?
2. What is the main goal or purpose of your program today? How do you see that evolving in the next year, and how can you surface those goals?
According to Liz, their main goal is to drive active usage. While they’re already doing that today, they’d like their program offerings to reach more of their customers. So, they need to create different offerings. For example, they’re introducing more intermediate webinars. They’ve also reduced the barrier to entry by removing the price point for all live online training events, and they’re constantly evolving their on-demand content.
To help surface these goals, Liz said she relies on the integration between Skilljar and Quick Base’s CRM. With this integration in place, their Sales and Customer Success teams can easily see what type of courses are being consumed. Complete visibility into your data is critical in driving customer success forward, and should be a priority for any customer training organization.
3. How can you tell whether content will engage your audience?
Jeff Allen from Chromatic Content said if you’re using video content, and someone can just hit play then walk away, there may not be value in the training dollars you’re investing. To better engage learners, think about your visuals. What story are you telling?
Note: even if you work in an “unexciting” industry, you can still engage your audience. Do they have a built-in incentive to engage? If not, keep in mind: the brain craves novelty. A combination of short videos, interaction sequences, tabbed content, PowerPoint motion graphics, and frequent knowledge checks can help maintain your students’ interest.
4. What are the key components of a technology stack that is supporting a training program designed for customer engagement and retention?
A customer training platform, like Skilljar can be used in combination with Marketo and other marketing automation systems to communicate with customers about your training program. Other helpful integrations for customer engagement include live training platforms, like GoToTraining, and a CRM like Salesforce.
Want to learn more? Click here to access the full recording and check out our comprehensive online guide to Customer Education.