Talentedlearning is hiring: Podcast 97: Understanding the Evolving Customer Educ

EPISODE 97: The Evolving Customer Education Process

After helping companies choose customer learning systems for more than a decade, I can say one thing for certain. The customer education process is still evolving — perhaps faster than ever — as more businesses realize the benefits that come from educating customers.

Because this is a fairly new business practice, nobody has all the answers. Everyone is experimenting and sharing knowledge as we go. That’s why I always welcome new research from the community.

It’s also why I’m excited to welcome today’s guest, Frances Kleven , Senior Director of Customer Experience at LearnUpon . Frances and her team recently published an informative research report that provides a broader snapshot of what today’s customer education process looks like across various industries.

So, join Frances and me as we dig into key findings from this fascinating analysis on the Talented Learning Show …

THE EVOLVING CUSTOMER EDUCATION PROCESS – KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Educating customers is a process, not a destination. Each company travels its own journey toward success . To understand what’s happening on a broader scale, LearnUpon has been studying hundreds of programs. The result is a model that maps the customer education process to four stages of maturity.
• To measure customer education effectively, be prepared to look beyond standard learning engagement metrics. Choose measures that tie the customer education process to business performance.
• Despite the availability of many strong customer learning platforms , only 32% of survey respondents say their tech stack is “very effective.” Perhaps less satisfied companies haven’t clearly defined the business results they want to achieve. Or maybe they haven’t yet invested in the kind of solutions that will help them reach their goals.

THE EVOLVING CUSTOMER EDUCATION PROCESS – Q&A HIGHLIGHTS

Welcome Frances! For those who aren’t familiar with LearnUpon, could you start with a quick overview, and we’ll go from there?

Thanks so much, John. LearnUpon is a learning management system . Our customers are companies that train their customers and employees, as well as associations that educate their members.

As a customer experience leader, you make sure LearnUpon customers receive the education they need to educate their customers effectively, right? Tell us more about that…

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT

My background has always been in education — first, in academic environments, then at ed tech companies. And when I joined LearnUpon, I oversaw the customer success managers and implementation consultants who help our customers use our product.

To be honest, it took 2-3 years for me to understand that our customer education process was more than onboarding or product training. But now, customer education is part of my broader customer experience role, which includes oversight of our customer community and the training university built into our platform.

That’s great. You use your own tools to support customer education. Which, in turn, teaches you what’s working and what’s not, so you can improve your whole product…

Also, it’s humbling when you’re teaching people how to succeed with a customer-focused product while you’re doing the same thing. For instance, there are times when you may need to say, “This is really hard. We know we should be here, but we’re not yet.” Or, “We haven’t had time to improve that yet.”

Although it may feel embarrassing to admit we aren’t following a particular best practice, it is an excellent exercise in empathy.

Acknowledging what we haven’t done well has strengthened our customer relationships. We’re able to say, “We want to learn more about what you’re doing, because that’s better than what we’re doing.”

So, the way we work with customers creates a nice synergy. And that means our thought leadership is more of a collaboration.

We wanted to learn how companies are prioritizing and scaling their customer education programs. So, we worked with 602 customer experience leaders and practitioners around the globe, representing over 25 industries. And we asked about various things:

• What role does customer education play in their organizations?
• How is it positioned?
• How mature is it?
• Is it considered integral?
• Where would they like to grow these programs?

This helped us understand how organizations prioritize customer education. It also helped us define a maturity model, so we can help them move forward. Our goal was to understand where customer education is headed and also ground that analysis in what organizations are doing right now.

Find out how companies are achieving more with learning systems that create business value. Get inspiration from dozens of success stories in our free LMS Case Study Directory …

Awesome. I see 93% of these organizations increased their investment in customer education over the past 12 months. What do you think is driving that?

Several things. First, many of our customers are SaaS technology companies. They’re maturing along with the SaaS market . And now they’re putting all the pieces together they have bootstrapped over the years. That could include the onboarding team, customer support team, knowledge base articles and maybe a university.

It isn’t about starting things they haven’t been doing. Rather, it’s about investing more heavily in existing resources that will help customers use their products more successfully. The goal is to retain their customers.

And next, they want to develop an overall strategy for their tech stack, so those solutions fit under a broader customer education umbrella.

Another reason for the strong investment is the result of COVID. During that time, companies quickly realized they needed different ways to interact with customers. Now, customers have higher expectations about how to access services and how quickly companies should respond.

Yes. I’m sure the pandemic era raised the bar for digital customer experience. So, let’s turn to the maturity model you developed from this survey data. What does that look like?

Well, we see companies moving through four stages of customer education maturity:

• Ad Hoc
• Coping
• Emerging
• Mature

And how does the customer education process map to these stages?

Well, most companies start at the Ad Hoc level. That’s when you’re providing product-focused education but probably don’t have an overall strategy. You certainly don’t have a dedicated owner or dedicated tools. Instead, you’re sending emails with PDF attachments and things like that.

About 15% of people told us they’re at that level. I’m sure the percentage was much higher 3 or 4 years ago, but many have moved on to the Coping stage. In fact, the majority of organizations (35%) told us they’re at this stage now.

Coping companies might have a knowledge base, a customer community and an LMS. So, they’re using some tools designed for customer education and they’re repurposing content from customer success or sales teams. Also, they may have some shared responsibilities.

For instance, the implementation team may be responsible for creating customer university content. But at this level, organizations probably don’t yet have a dedicated customer education platform, or anyone with customer education in their job title.

But when you establish basic processes for how customers interact with customer education services, you’re moving to the Emerging stage. That’s where 33% of organizations are now, including our own.

And the final stage is Mature. That’s when everyone in your company knows about the program and what it does to drive leads, revenue and cost savings. So, customer education is a legitimate organization within the business, including dedicated staff and comprehensive strategies around your content and your results.

Currently, less than 20% of companies have reached this level.

Interesting. I’d love to see how these percentages shift toward full maturity over time…

Yes, and the standards are likely to change, too. For instance, the definition of Coping might change as standards get higher.

Right. So, let’s talk about measurement. Earlier, yousaid moving the business needle is the point of customer education. So, how are your customers measuring that?

Most of our customers say they focus on customer satisfaction. And if you unpeel that, it’s really revenue, because satisfied customers are likely to renew and pay more. So, companies want their customer education efforts to drive satisfaction, which ultimately leads to revenue retention and growth.

Also, there’s cost savings. People may be less comfortable talking about that. But many want customer education to reduce the level of face-to-face time their teams must spend, whether it’s about less contact with smaller freemium-type customers or reducing the number of support tickets they receive.

Regardless, when people tell us they want a customer education program, they’re usually looking to remove tasks — especially manual tasks — from whatever their teams are doing.

And what customer education metrics matter most to your organization…?

…For complete answers to this and other questions about how the customer education process is changing, listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts , on Spotify , on Amazon , or right here on our site.

Need an LMS to Support Your Customer Education Process? Let’s Talk

For independent advice you can trust, schedule a free 30-minute consult below with me, John Leh …

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John Leh is Founder, CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning . He is a fiercely independent consultant, blogger, podcaster, speaker and educator who helps organizations select and implement learning technology strategies, primarily for extended enterprise applications. His advice is based upon 25+ years of learning industry experience, serving as a trusted LMS selection and sales adviser to hundreds of organizations with a total technology spend of $100+ million and growing. John is active on social media and is happy to connect with you on X/Twitter or on LinkedIn .