In our recent webinar with Isabel Swartz, Learning Manager at ClearCompany, Isabel explained how building an entire Customer Education program can feel like boiling the ocean – a vast and overwhelming undertaking. However, there are ways to use hard data and metrics to break down the Customer Education ocean into more manageable pieces and Isabel helped us understand how to identify and prioritize the elements of your Customer Education program that will have the biggest impact on your business, in the least amount of time.
At the end of the day, your company is a business and revenue drives the success of your organization. While Customer Education may not be a revenue-generating team, connecting your work to revenue targets, and prioritizing your initiatives based on their impact, is a great place to start when building or expanding your program.
Based on the goals and maturity of your Customer Education program, you may find that one or two of the below metrics float to the top as the primary pain points and business needs for company:
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)/Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Support ticket volume
- Time-to-Value
- Production adoption
- Churn
- Lead generation
Isabel also outlined four steps you can take to help you identify where you should focus your energy first.
Step 1: Big Picture Goals
- What are your organization’s targets for this fiscal year?
- Which targets do you have a measurable impact on?
Step 2: Department Goals
- For customer-facing departments, what are their objectives? What are the biggest barriers?
Step 3: Resources
- What do we have vs. what do we need?
- What kind of data do we have?
Step 4: Quick Wins vs. Perfection
- Prioritize projects with the fastest, most immediate impact
Once you’ve done this analysis, it’s likely that you’ve ended up with a business need that requires more resources, but the executives who hold the purse strings are bombarded with budget requests every day. Two things will help you succeed here: data and customization. Executive teams tend to speak in numbers – percentages, metrics, measurements, dollars, etc. Use this to your advantage by connecting your Customer Education initiatives with real numbers as much as possible.
Secondly, consider your executive team as individuals and tailor your presentations to their preferred style. Do they lose attention quickly? Are they visual learners? Keep these details in mind when deciding how to present your case.
At the end of her presentation, Isabel cautioned us against executing our initiatives against a plan and instead focus on an objective. As she explained, organizational objectives change and if we operate against a plan whose objective becomes obsolete, we are working against our organization’s broader strategy and becoming less valuable.
Ultimately, if you can put actual revenue numbers against your Customer Education program and initiatives and tie them to positive business impact, it will help you see your job the same way as your executive team does. From there, you can find ways to increase your value.
Interested in learning more about how to prioritize your Customer Education initiatives and gain executive support? Click here to access the full recording and check out our comprehensive online guide to Customer Education.
