CXcherry

 How to Use Customer Education As a Marketing Tool [Tips & Checklist]

 Customer education, in the simplest term, is a marketing strategy. This doesn’t mean other strategies are an unreliable fit to upscale your ROI. But with global disruption and customer thought-process shift — actively “pulling” information to support their purchasing decisions, you need a more inclusive marketing strategy.

Customer education solely depends on your objectives. Whether you want to increase product adoption, generate demand for your product, increase conversion rate (free to paid users), or even prioritize having a talent pool of qualified people that uses your product. If your priorities are amongst any of above mentioned, your education must report to marketing & sales reps. So, shall we start to know about how to use customer education as a marketing tool [tips & checklist].

Importance of Customer Education                      

In the digital-savvy and information-driven culture, customer education is a valuable asset for any marketing team. Gone are the days when worn-out sales pitches fueled the ROI of any organization. Because, nowadays, customers are putting their necks out to educate their buying decisions. So, it all drips down to how aware are the customers of your product and services.

Recent research by New Century Media suggests that companies who invest in customer educational assets foster consumers 29 times, who are likely to buy. The best example of this is Hubspot Academy, the people who take their courses or even read their blogs are more likely to buy their offerings. So, it is not rocket science.

It is a question of consumer thought-process shift — actively “pulling” information to support their purchasing decisions. This shift in the digital culture has created a context in which consumers feel the need to engage with your products, and your services, through a deeper & meaningful, bite-size education.

Furthermore, Forbes former contributor, Steve Olenski, articulated in his Education-based Marketing blog that;

“Today’s consumers won’t do business with people they don’t trust.”

As consumers expect immediate gratification, it gets harder for them to buy unless it's on their terms and timetable. Hard fact, but true! So, for them to trust you, they need to feel assured that they are dealing with the right company that has their best interest in mind.

How to Implement Customer Education as a Marketing Tool?

1. Align Your Goals

To launch any successful customer education program, you need to understand the dynamics of the business impact it has. And to figure that out, you need to align your goals on every level of your company functions.

So, what are your priorities? To generate demand for your product? Increase your product use? Increase conversion rate (Free to paid users)? Or do you want to create a talent pool of qualified people to use your product?

After establishing above mentioned priorities for your organization — align your set goals within every hierarchy level of your organization.

Business Goals: Conduct a     whiteboard session with top leaders & decision-makers of your company     to discuss traction metrics such as customer acquisition, lifetime value     (LTV), and other metrics. Without the top-bottom sync, the customer     education program won’t get very far.

Departmental     Goals:     The impact of customer education is felt across different degrees in     different departments of your company, be it, sales, marketing, and customer     success team. To acquire proven results, you need re-assure what they are     using as proxies for customer success, currently. Therefore, customer     education will become a helpful user-level metric for them as well.

Team Goals: Team goals are     all about your sync impact. To create a win-win situation while     implementing customer education, you need to convey synchronous efforts —     think user-level metrics. Aligning a singular set focus & consistency     will bring a great impact on your engagement rates & course completion.

2. Allocate Resources

The bluntness about customer education is you’re not going to reach your dream state, right away. Optimizing your customer education program for your unique set goals & message will take time. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the first step. To create a solid foundation and reach an educational state like the academy, you might face hurdles like lack of resources & unsatisfied response gaps.

But focus on gains, not gaps. Avoid fixing your eye on global-class academies like Hubspot when you are just starting. Focus on your gains. Be it the smallest effort today, your needle should be moving in the right direction. Because, if you’re constantly peeking out on others’ examples, you’ll struggle on your grounds. That being said, it’s cool to have an idea of what’s going around about features and resources, it’ll help you to keep the tap on current trends.

Creating your academy doesn’t necessarily mean that the resources and tools required must come from your repository and budget. Allocate resources by borrowing useful material from other departments, that might have expandable resources, you can use. For example, for any subject matter topic, you can use your specialists to shoot a quick 5-min explanatory video session.

Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. Never underestimate the power of words. Have round-table sessions (virtual works too) with your teams weekly or monthly to discuss the progress. Host theme-based events to bring & connect different departments on the same page. Yeah, you can use event fliers & memes, and paste them around the wall to let the message roll. Eventually, the intent is to bring visibility to create momentum.

3. Create & Deliver

Now you already know what kind of goals sets and business outcomes you’re aiming to drive, so the question comes, what sort of objectives will help your customer achieve through your educational assets — that’ll eventually lead to your business outcome that you've identified?

In technical terms, this is called “Learning Objectives”. After you have nailed down your learning objectives, you can start laying out the entire journey that your customer will have to accomplish their objectives. Most importantly, when you are in this stage, consider the following:

Subject Matter: Subject     Matter is perhaps the most significant decision in your customer education     program, it means what you are going to educate your consumers about. As     the simplest example, let’s say you wish to educate your customers about     your products. But, don’t you think that’s a broad topic.

So, work with your subject matter experts to narrow down your content scope, at the start, and find priorities. Them be it in a specific feature or even a function you feel helpful.

Content Mix: In this     process, you need to conduct white sessions with your instructional     designer to decide the type of content (or platform) you are going to     produce. Most learners don’t respond to a heap of words, including videos,     infographics, and slideshows to foster the fast-learning cognitive     capacity of your consumers. The purpose is to create a dynamic learning     environment, so the more creatively exciting mix it gets, the more easily     it is absorbed.

Content-Length: The     concept of your perfect content mix works this far. The reality of consumers     nowadays is that most of them don’t have time to sit back and invest hours     at end to learn. This is why you need to find a short & snappy way to     get into a 5-10mins window. Creating 7 short video sessions is way better     than 1 long webinar session.

Delivery     Process: Once     you align your goals, find ways to get the resources, and create the right     mix & length of your content, and its delivery time. Delivery is about     enabling a system that supports scaling your mapped-out customer education     program. To make use of this, you need a tech stack integration to operate     your education program while deploying the resources that you've developed     earlier. Don’t forget to engage with your customer in their learning     stages while you reach the last step to measure their progress.

4. Measure

Feedback time. Gather both qualitative and quantitative feedback to improve your customer education program. Your efforts here are to know what your customers think about your program, so keep your doors open for any kind of suggestions or feedback. You can embed survey forms at the end of each course completion section or even mail them up.

Keep on assessing your customer education progress at deeper levels, by looking into learning proficiency, operational impact, relationship growth, and even ticket cost.

  5 Tips to Strategize Your Education-Based Marketing

1. Use Omnichannel Strategy to Spread Your Brand Message

To drive diverse audience interest, you need to have an omnichannel marketing strategy in place, to provide a myriad of multiple mediums (social media, website, direct mail, review websites, publicity, and even phone calls). Establish a meaningful and close connection with your consumers by reaching them where they are, mostly. An easy way is to fetch a Social Media Marketing (SMM) buyers persona in place, that will help you to segment your audience (gender, educational background, age, industry, goals, challenges, etc)

2. Ask for Reviews & Feedback from Your Learners

You got to encourage your consumers to leave feedback or review that will help to revamp your education program strategies & progress effectively. Remember to make it a fun activity by employing gamification instead of forcing their experience with your program.

3. Create an Engaging Content Mix (Blogs, Videos, Infographics, etc)

Your customer education program is simply to transform/create a perceptive about how you do business. So, don’t rely on heaps of information instead make it an exciting & engaging mix of content. (Employ Social Media Strategies aligning your content mix)

1. Have a mobile-friendly website interface (Optimize accordingly)

For any website interface to be mobile-friendly, you need to have a session with your UI/UX experts or try with your developers to fill out the gaps. Your consumer is expecting an easy-to-access & guided navigational journey, so remember to optimize your page loading time & navigable elements to be mobile-friendly.

2. Invest in building Education Applications

Applications are the safest way to produce proficient learners. It offers a sense of convenience in the learner’s journey. Creating an education-based app can help you maximize your ROI while building a community of talent - ready to use your product.

Customer Education Process

The customer Education program can take up many forms. As it's evolving with time — your approach should be unique like your product and services. As different companies have different objectives, customer education varies timely. Let’s say as we discussed your objective is to create a talent pool of proficient people that uses your product. So, options like instructional content, infographics, guidebooks, interactive weekly sessions, case studies, and product tours are super scalable educational resources to accomplish the above-mentioned objective.

Fundamentally, the question about the customer education process lies in both the educational & learning objectives. So, there is no such thing as the right format or process. Once you think about the user's journey, your customer education must shape that perceptive of understanding the stages that consumer goes through when they are using your product.

After you have decided “why” you want to educate your customers, it's time to understand “how” you’ll educate them. In this segment, you’ll need to consider different consumer journeys. If your ultimate goal is brand loyalty, there are likely various ways to get there.

All you need to create digitally-savvy and engaging educational resources and deploy them using the right technology.

Customer Education Process Checklist to Get Started

Set SMART goals

Create relevant     content (Mix to engage)

Strategize     before launch

Keep on     Measuring

Employ the right     technology

Evolve &     Progress

Why to Use Customer Education Software in SaaS Companies?

When you streamline your educational resources, you need a suitable technology that supports your academic foundation. Getting the right technology doesn’t mean the absolute “right” but it boils down to your right or suitable tech needs.

1.    Artificial Intelligence: Every consumer has a broad sense of understanding of different products & services they want to use/buy. So, to narrow down such a broad sense, you need an intuitive system to analyze your audience (wherever they are) & simulate your message without human error.

2.    LMS (Learning Management System): Customer education is not any lesser than conducting training sessions. Without a proper dynamic system in place, information is just like words with no purpose. So, from streamlining your content and segmenting your audience (learning goals, progress meter, gamification, and objectives) to deploying your educational program (insights, content authoring tools, simulations, and big data repository) — Learning Management System becomes a necessity for any success to happen.

Depending on the objectives you want to accomplish with your customer educational program, you can employ the right technology that suits your needs.

How Does Customer Education Impact on ROI?

Customer education has the potential to impact any organization's ROI with consistent efforts & strategies in place. In the recent studies, it was found that on average companies reported a 6.2% increase in revenue whereas a 7.4% increase in customer retention led to a 6.1% decrease in customer support costs.

While customer education is observed to boost marketing & sales results, it's just a matter of strategic effort that high-success companies leverage such educational strategies to outperform the average and low-scale companies in every category, by the whopping rate of 30%, in over a year or so.

Customer Education can have an impact in different degrees, not limited to sales, but resulting in brand advocacy and an increase in LTV.

So, after such compelling evidence, a customer-first approach is needed to boost to a 16X higher increase in customer retention/satisfaction rate.

Conclusion

Regardless of the nature of your business, or your industry, customer education is the competitive edge & need of the hour for every company to adapt to the global disruption. In this blog, if you have any queries regarding the right technology to get you started with your customer education program, do let us know, we’d love to give you a free demo.

About CXcherry

CXcherry is a modern, AI-enabled, purpose-built Best LMS for Customer Training. CXcherry Customer Courses Platform is on a mission to redefine the way you onboard, engage and retain your customers. CXcherry Customer Learning Software help you to accelerate your product adoption and increase customer retention through continuous customer education.

Leading organizations around the world trust CXcherry customer learning platform to manage & deliver their customer training and measure the business impact of their customer experience. CXcherry Customer Training Learning Management System is proud to be one of the important partners in your customer's success journey. CXcherry Customer Training LMS Software Online is used by many leading Small & Medium Enterprises, Start-up companies, Training Companies, SaaS, PaaS, and Software Product companies to train & educate their customers.

 It acts as the single suite for all your training needs. Some of the key benefits are-

1.      Easy Administration

2.      Intuitive User Engagement

3.      Easy Content Upload

4.      Built-In Certification and Assessment Engine

5.      Multi-Domain Functionality

6.      API Driven Third-Party Integrations

7.      Data Intelligence & Reports

8.      Enterprise-Grade Reliability and Security

9.      Powerful Integrations with WordPress, Zoom

Contact CXcherry

Address: 2603 Camino Ramon STE 200,San Ramon, CA 94582,United States

Contact No: (+1) 332-232-7494

Email:  [email protected]

Website: www.cxcherry.io

Follow Us

Here is the Procedure on How to Start With Your Customer Education Process.

Based on the extent to which customer education is important for a SaaS business, you might now be willing to know how you can start with the process. Well, given below is a basic step-by-step guide to provide you with an idea.

Step 1: Define Goals

By setting up the goals you wish to achieve through the training program, you will be able to define your objectives and measure the program’s progress.

Step 2: Situation Analysis

Based on your goals, perform an audit of your present learning material in case you have an ongoing customer education program. You must conduct an audit of your customer’s experience after purchasing as well.

Step 3: Check Resource Availability

Apart from your existing learning material, you will require several other resources. Allocate the budget and decide time boundaries as well.

Step 4: Consider Learning Styles of Users

Based on the kind of audience you have, think about the learning styles and spaces that will be the most suitable for them. Consider the amount of time they will spend, the tone of voice for content, and the requirement for visual elements.

Step 5: Decide Your Medium

Once you have understood the learning styles of your consumers, you are ready to decide on your medium of training. There is a wide variety of choices. For instance, it can be a YouTube video or an in-store demonstration.

Step 6: Regular Checks on Program

Set quarterly or annual checks on your training program to measure the progress that the customers are making. The metrics will help the program evolve based on the feedback and overall review.

By producing engaging content in varied formats based on the needs of users, companies can get many benefits, which are highly advantageous for their growth.

Importance of Customer Education in the SaaS Industry

While several businesses may not realize it, customer education can be highly profitable for their overall growth due to its positive influence on essential metrics from support contact rate, to the adoption of products and services, to marketing leads.

A more detailed illustration of the reasons for its importance is provided below.

1. Improved Customer Satisfaction

Higher customer satisfaction implies customer loyalty, which further indicates higher profitability. So by training customers, a company teaches them how to use their products and services, which increases the overall probability of satisfaction among customers.

2. Increased Customer Engagement and Adoption

A business’s customer training program directly impacts the following:

Customer satisfaction

Customer independence

Product usage rate

When the customers master the products and services of a company, the overall level of engagement and adoption augments.

3. Enhanced Expansion, Renewal, and Retention Rates

Several factors like competition and poor onboarding can result in customer churn. However, when a business invests in customer education, the customers get access to tricks and tips that offer them higher value.

Educated customers are more likely to expand and renew, thus, increasing retention rates.

4. Enhanced Product Development

When users raise support tickets, their questions will be of higher relevance to the kind of implementations and improvements that the product needs. Thus, their feedback will aid in product development.

5. Decreased Support Tickets

Investing in customer training can help businesses save on customer support tickets. The most common questions that are asked by customers can be provided to them in the form of help articles.

6. Higher ROI

Customer education results in customer retention since they value the products and find them useful once they understand their importance. So, when you spend lesser on gaining new customers through marketing and are rather focused on customer retention, your company’s return on investments or ROI is simply higher. Also, a satisfied customer is likely to make the business more profitable in the long run.

7. Quicker Customer Onboarding

By being able to provide a smooth onboarding process to your customers, you will:

Build the customer’s trust

Gain higher reputation

Educate several customers

Make sure that all users begin with the same information

Create a consistent understanding

Based on the level of knowledge of users, the complexity of products, target audiences, and the business’s goals, a company may provide customer training in varied formats.

Customer Training Formats

1. Knowledge Checks, like Quizzes

Knowledge checks help the company and the consumers both since they aid in measuring the consumers’ level of comprehension. Also, the scores can further motivate the users to remain engaged with the content for a longer period.

2. Slideshows

By uploading previously used content during in-person training, businesses can indulge the users greatly.

3. Infographics

To recycle current marketing content, infographics in the form of PDFs are helpful for companies and customers. Businesses can simply provide fast facts and overviews related to their products and services.

4. Recorded Screenshots

One of the best ways to train customers is by providing them with step-by-step instructions for complex processes and configurations.

5. Recorded Webinars

The most engaging content in customer training is through webinars. Customers can get an overview of the interface of a product.

By producing engaging content in varied formats based on the needs of users, companies can get many benefits, which are highly advantageous for their growth.

Customer education has the potential to impact any organization's ROI with consistent efforts & strategies in place. In the recent studies, it was found that on average companies reported a 6.2% increase in revenue whereas a 7.4% increase in customer retention led to a 6.1% decrease in customer support costs.

While customer education is observed to boost marketing & sales results, it's just a matter of strategic effort that high-success companies leverage such educational strategies to outperform the average and low-scale companies in every category, by the whopping rate of 30%, in over a year or so.

Customer Education can have an impact in different degrees, not limited to sales, but resulting in brand advocacy and an increase in LTV.

So, after such compelling evidence, a customer-first approach is needed to boost to a 16X higher increase in customer retention/satisfaction rate.

When you streamline your educational resources, you need a suitable technology that supports your academic foundation. Getting the right technology doesn’t mean the absolute “right” but it boils down to your right or suitable tech needs.

Artificial Intelligence: Every consumer has a broad sense of understanding of different products & services they want to use/buy. So, to narrow down such a broad sense, you need an intuitive system to analyze your audience (wherever they are) & simulate your message without human error.

LMS (Learning Management System): Customer education is not any lesser than conducting training sessions. Without a proper dynamic system in place, information is just like words with no purpose. So, from streamlining your content and segmenting your audience (learning goals, progress meter, gamification, and objectives) to deploying your educational program (insights, content authoring tools, simulations, and big data repository) — Learning Management System becomes a necessity for any success to happen.

Depending on the objectives you want to accomplish with your customer educational program, you can employ the right technology that suits your needs.

After you have decided “why” you want to educate your customers, it's time to understand “how” you’ll educate them. In this segment, you’ll need to consider different consumer journeys. If your ultimate goal is brand loyalty, there are likely various ways to get there.

All you need to create digitally-savvy and engaging educational resources and deploy them using the right technology.

Customer Education Process Checklist to Get Started

Set SMART goals

Create relevant content (Mix to engage)

Strategize before launch

Keep on Measuring

Employ the right technology

Evolve & Progress

In the purest sense, customer education is a marketing tactic. This does not imply that alternative approaches to boosting your ROI are unreliable. However, in light of the current state of the world and the way that customers are actively "pulling" information to support their purchasing decisions, a more inclusive marketing approach is required.

Your goals are the only factors that determine customer education. Having a talent pool of qualified people who use your product should be a top priority, regardless of whether you want to boost product adoption, create demand for your product, increase conversion rate (free to paid customers), or any of these things. Your education needs to be reported to the marketing and sales representatives if any of the aforementioned are among your priorities. Let's learn today [advice & checklist] how to use customer education as a marketing tactic.

Here are 5 Tips to Strategize Your Education-Based Marketing

1. Use Omnichannel Strategy to Spread Your Brand Message

To drive diverse audience interest, you need to have an omnichannel marketing strategy in place, to provide a myriad of multiple mediums (social media, website, direct mail, review websites, publicity, and even phone calls). Establish a meaningful and close connection with your consumers by reaching them where they are, mostly. An easy way is to fetch a Social Media Marketing (SMM) buyers persona in place, that will help you to segment your audience (gender, educational background, age, industry, goals, challenges, etc)

2. Ask for Reviews & Feedback from Your Learners

You got to encourage your consumers to leave feedback or review that will help to revamp your education program strategies & progress effectively. Remember to make it a fun activity by employing gamification instead of forcing their experience with your program.

3. Create an Engaging Content Mix (Blogs, Videos, Infographics, etc)

Your customer education program is simply to transform/create a perceptive about how you do business. So, don’t rely on heaps of information instead make it an exciting & engaging mix of content. (Employ Social Media Strategies aligning your content mix)

4. Have a mobile-friendly website interface (Optimize accordingly)

For any website interface to be mobile-friendly, you need to have a session with your UI/UX experts or try with your developers to fill out the gaps. Your consumer is expecting an easy-to-access & guided navigational journey, so remember to optimize your page loading time & navigable elements to be mobile-friendly.

5. Invest in building Education Applications

Applications are the safest way to produce proficient learners. It offers a sense of convenience in the learner’s journey. Creating an education-based app can help you maximize your ROI while building a community of talent - ready to use your product.

In the digital-savvy and information-driven culture, customer education is a valuable asset for any marketing team. Gone are the days when worn-out sales pitches fueled the ROI of any organization. Because, nowadays, customers are putting their necks out to educate their buying decisions. So, it all drips down to how aware are the customers of your product and services.

It is a question of consumer thought-process shift — actively “pulling” information to support their purchasing decisions. This shift in the digital culture has created a context in which consumers feel the need to engage with your products, and your services, through a deeper & meaningful, bite-size education.

Customer education, in the simplest term, is a marketing strategy. This doesn’t mean other strategies are an unreliable fit to upscale your ROI. But with global disruption and customer thought-process shift — actively “pulling” information to support their purchasing decisions, you need a more inclusive marketing strategy.

Customer education solely depends on your objectives. Whether you want to increase product adoption, generate demand for your product, increase conversion rate (free to paid users), or even prioritize having a talent pool of qualified people that uses your product. If your priorities are amongst any of above mentioned, your education must report to marketing & sales reps. So, shall we start to know about how to use customer education as a marketing tool [tips & checklist].

Importance of Customer Education

In the digital-savvy and information-driven culture, customer education is a valuable asset for any marketing team. Gone are the days when worn-out sales pitches fueled the ROI of any organization. Because, nowadays, customers are putting their necks out to educate their buying decisions. So, it all drips down to how aware are the customers of your product and services.

It is a question of consumer thought-process shift — actively “pulling” information to support their purchasing decisions. This shift in the digital culture has created a context in which consumers feel the need to engage with your products, and your services, through a deeper & meaningful, bite-size education.

“Today’s consumers won’t do business with people they don’t trust.”

As consumers expect immediate gratification, it gets harder for them to buy unless it's on their terms and timetable. Hard fact, but true! So, for them to trust you, they need to feel assured that they are dealing with the right company that has their best interest in mind.

CXcherry is a modern, AI-enabled, purpose-built Customer Education Platform.

1. Use Omnichannel Strategy to Spread Your Brand Message

To drive diverse audience interest, you need to have an omnichannel marketing strategy in place, to provide a myriad of multiple mediums (social media, website, direct mail, review websites, publicity, and even phone calls). Establish a meaningful and close connection with your consumers by reaching them where they are, mostly. An easy way is to fetch a Social Media Marketing (SMM) buyers persona in place, that will help you to segment your audience (gender, educational background, age, industry, goals, challenges, etc)

2. Ask for Reviews & Feedback from Your Learners

You got to encourage your consumers to leave feedback or review that will help to revamp your education program strategies & progress effectively. Remember to make it a fun activity by employing gamification instead of forcing their experience with your program.

3. Create an Engaging Content Mix (Blogs, Videos, Infographics, etc)

Your customer education program is simply to transform/create a perceptive about how you do business. So, don’t rely on heaps of information instead make it an exciting & engaging mix of content. (Employ Social Media Strategies aligning your content mix)

1. Have a mobile-friendly website interface (Optimize accordingly)

For any website interface to be mobile-friendly, you need to have a session with your UI/UX experts or try with your developers to fill out the gaps. Your consumer is expecting an easy-to-access & guided navigational journey, so remember to optimize your page loading time & navigable elements to be mobile-friendly.

2. Invest in building Education Applications

Applications are the safest way to produce proficient learners. It offers a sense of convenience in the learner’s journey. Creating an education-based app can help you maximize your ROI while building a community of talent - ready to use your product.

About CXcherry

CXcherry is a modern, AI-enabled, purpose-built Customer Training LMS. CXcherry LMS for Customer Training is on a mission to redefine the way you onboard, engage and retain your customers. CXcherry Product Training Platform help you to accelerate your product adoption and increase customer retention through continuous customer education.

Leading organizations around the world trust CXcherry customer learning platform to manage & deliver their customer training and measure the business impact of their customer experience. CXcherry Customer Education Platform is proud to be one of the important partners in your customer's success journey. CXcherry Customer Training LMS Software Online is used by many leading Small & Medium Enterprises, Start-up companies, Training Companies, SaaS, PaaS, and Software Product companies to train & educate their customers.

 It acts as the single suite for all your training needs. Some of the key benefits are-

1.     Easy Administration

2.     Intuitive User Engagement

3.     Easy Content Upload

4.     Built-In Certification and Assessment Engine

5.     Multi-Domain Functionality

6.     API Driven Third-Party Integrations

7.     Data Intelligence & Reports

8.     Enterprise-Grade Reliability and Security

9.     Powerful Integrations with WordPress, Zoom

 Contact CXcherry

Address: 2603 Camino Ramon STE 200,San Ramon, CA 94582,United States

Contact No: (+1) 332-232-7494

Email:  [email protected]

Website: www.cxcherry.io

 Follow Us

In this blog, you will learn how to retain and delight customers by creating a successful customer onboarding program for your organization and also about a quick guide to successful customer onboarding.

Also, the factors about how crucial onboarding strategy is to your goals & customer overall experience.

To Know more click on this Link

As a business owner, have you ever thought about what could be better than gaining a new customer? You might be wondering if anything could be better than this.  

Well, the answer is customer retention.  

Gaining new customers is alluring but retaining customers comes at a lower cost and has the potential to provide a higher return on investments.  

So the question that now arises is how can businesses retain their customers for longer terms.  

To do this, you will have to form a strategy for retaining customers that allows them to stay engaged and content.  

In this blog, we will be sharing some of the best customer retention tactics. Best Customer Retention Tactics [Mini Guide + Checklist] will help you to retain your customers. What’s more, we will also discuss how to use software for the same.  

So, let us get started... 

What is Customer Retention? 

"If a customer cannot be retained, then to what extent can you keep acquiring novel customers and let your business go on? "

As the term suggests, customer retention denotes businesses' actions and activities to retain the maximum number of customers. This is commonly done through brand loyalty and customer loyalty initiatives. 

When we talk about customer retention, the process begins from the first time a customer makes contact with the company and goes on throughout the whole period of the relationship. Overall aids the companies in reducing the total customer defections.  

The key aim of customer retention is to engage current customers to continue purchasing services or products from businesses.  

The best strategies for customer retention allow a business to form long-lasting relationships with customers. Their loyalty to the brand may even result in mouth publicity, further increasing brand awareness and building customers.  

What is the Importance of Customer Retention for SaaS Companies? 

SaaS companies spend money on raising brand awareness through various means, like social media, and thus, acquire new customers. This means that gaining novel consumers is expensive, due to the number of investments involved.  

Moreover, if these customers are not retained, the ROI will also be lower.

Why SaaS Businesses Must Retain Customers?

  Customer Loyalty 

Customers that are retained tend to spend more and purchase more often as compared to novel customers. This is because the retained consumers understand the value of a service or product and continue to visit repetitively.  

Word-of-Mouth Advertising   

One of the most effective ways of increasing brand awareness is through word-of-mouth advertising. When customers share their satisfactory experiences with their friends and relatives, there is a higher chance these people give the products or services a try.  

Through this kind of advertising, the companies acquire new consumers, and that too, without spending.  

Higher Return on Investment 

Companies that have high customer retention have greater ROIs. If you are thinking about the extent to which this can increase company revenues, here is your answer: 

"5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profit." -Fred Reichheld 

The major reason for such high returns is that return customers tend to purchase more products from a business over time. 

Concerning the profitability of SaaS companies, the expected revenue generation is even higher. Based on research by Swagata Kumar,  “Boosting B2B customer retention by 5% increases profits by up to 95%.” 

More Affordable 

As stated earlier, acquiring novel consumers requires high investments in advertising, which is an expensive process. On the other hand, retaining an existing customer requires lesser expenditure. If you do not believe this, let’s see what Kate Silver said: 

“Most of the research shows that it costs between 6 to 7 times more to get a new customer vs. keeping the customers you already have.” 

Higher CLTV  

CLTV or Customer Lifetime Value refers to the overall revenue that an organization expects to earn from every customer.  

Since return customers are likely to avail of more services from a company due to their love for the services and hands-on experience, a company with a higher customer retention rate is likely to have greater CLTV.  

Customer Retention Process

To retain your customers, there is an entire process that you must follow: 

Step 1: Categorize Your Customers. 

The first step to retaining customers is through categorizing them based on the following aspects: 

Which customers are driven by     prices?

Which customers seek value?

Which customers are loyal to the     brand?

Once you have categorized your customers, you will know which approach should be used for which customer. For instance, a customer who has a good relationship will require an approach that is less salty.  

Step 2: Your Service: ABSOLUTE! 

When your services are top-notch, no customer would be willing to leave. Even though they might consider stepping back due to high prices, it would still be difficult for them to leave your company.  

So one of the most crucial steps in customer retention is ensuring that your services are as good as you think they are. If you are not sure, conduct surveys and ask for feedback from your customers.  

Another essential part of good services is talking the customer into availing services but not forcing them so much that they get irritated. A customer will only return if you keep him content.  

Step 3: Remember, Automate it!   

Make sure that the systems you use are working for your company. This may include the following: 

A good system for contacting     customers 

Automated mailers for season sales     including CTAs.  

Reward systems for loyal     customers 

When you have your systems in place, you can stay in touch with your customers and they are likely to return, considering their liking and loyalty to your brand. 

Step 4: Update Your Oldies. 

Oftentimes, companies think that they do not need to sell their services or products to old customers and that being a salesman is necessary only for new consumers.  

Other times, organizations fear that pressurizing or trying to sell to old customers can make them lose their relationship with them. However, this is not the case.  

Even return consumers look for companies to bring them novel offers and ideas. So, as a business owner, you must ensure that you continue to sell to your customers to retain them.  

Best Customer Retention Tactics  to Ace Your Customer Retention Management

  Before we share with you some of the successful techniques of customer retention management, let us first understand what it is.  

In the simplest terms, customer retention management refers to the process through which customer satisfaction and customer experience are managed by a company. The key aim of this process is to acquire and retain as many consumers as possible. 

The process of customer retention management is led by techniques and strategies that vary from one company to another, based on their segmentation and customer experience goals.  

Customer Retention Management Techniques  

Implementing a Feedback Loop 

Several companies believe that they serve their customers well but sometimes, this is not the case. It is not necessary that the customers feel the same. So to ensure their retention, it is crucial to understand what they think about your company’s services so you have some scope for improvement. 

To do this, you must start getting customer feedback and share the same information with the members of the organization. Through a customer feedback loop, you can collect, analyze, and distribute surveys and reviews that customers undergo.  

Maintain a Calendar for Consumer     Communication  

Irrespective of the responses of your customers, your company must continue to communicate with them. In case you haven’t heard from them in a while, you must reach out to them and try re-establishing your relationship.  

Since you may lose track of days, a customer communication calendar can help you see when a customer last interacted with you.  

You can also consider sending them an email regarding the new offers in the store and adding a call to action.  

Encourage Your Customers with a Mission      

Not every brand needs to inspire their customers’ loyalty through systems and tactics - some may even inspire through mission, such as TOMS.  

The business model of TOMS is entirely based on making the world a better place, which is why several people are loyal to the brand.  

Consumers tend to be focused on the environment as well as the impacts of their purchasing habits. This means that doing good is also essential to them, which clearly explains their relationship with TOMS.  

Why Should You Use Customer Training Software? 

 Customer training refers to how the customers are educated regarding the successful utilization of company services and products. This includes providing them with information and materials they need to meet the company's objectives.  

The Four Major Aims that a Customer Training Software can Accomplish are as follows.

Increasing the impact of     your products and services. 

Enhancing customer     experience 

Augmenting the value of     products and services 

Acquiring and retaining customers at     each phase of the consumer lifecycle 

If you are still not sure why you should use customer training software, the research report by Brandon Hall Group may convince you. 

According to the Extended Enterprise Learning 2020 report, 45% of people surveyed claimed that they offer training to the customers actively. 49% of them agreed that it is capable of enhancing client relationships.  

Why Should You Use Customer Training Software?

Enhance the overall consumer     experience 

Produce recurring and extra     revenue 

Reduce expenses invested in     acquiring novel customers 

Enhance client relationships 

Develop brand awareness 

Enhance the value of products and     services 

Lowering costs involved in customer     support 

How to Retain Customers Quickly Using Customer Training Software? 

Do the tactics used by your company for customer retention encourage the long-term growth of your business and build trust? Do your products and services receive word-of-mouth advertising? 

If the answer to the above questions is not a confident “Yes!”, then you should consider opting for an LMS for customer training to quickly retain them.  

A learning management system or LMS aids in the creation of targeted training for customers to enhance the rates of retention. This is because their pain points can be rapidly identified and resolved, which leads to satisfaction among customers.  

Key Points to Focus to Implement the Retention Tactics with the Use of an LMS

  Emphasize Your Customers’     Needs  

Attract attention to how your services address the pain points of customers. You may use facts, testimonials, infographics, or case studies for the same. 

Monitor Engagement Levels 

Through an LMS, you can track and analyze the engagement of consumers. This will further provide you with an understanding of what your customers want the most and how you can engage them further. 

Make Video Tutorials 

The key aim of customer retention tactics must be the increment of customers’ knowledge to increase the value of products and services. Thus, through video tutorials, they can engage and understand better the innovative usages.  

Why Opt for CXcherry as a Customer Retention Software? 

 When it comes to choosing an LMS for customer training, CXcherry is extremely beneficial in retaining customers, as well as for the overall ROI of companies.  

Adaptive Customer Onboarding 

Help your novel customers to comprehend your products and services and adapt to them more quickly after a customized onboarding. 

Enhance Upsell 

Enhance upselling by allowing your clients to realize the actual value of your services and products and hence, obtain a higher return on investments. 

Brand Advocacy 

Through an LMS, customers will become brand advocates due to their level of satisfaction. 

Reduce Support Tickets 

By educating and informing the buyers with the necessary details about the products and services, you will receive lesser support tickets.  

Boosts Service Adoption Rate 

CXcherry helps in boosting service adoption by delivering trackable, comprehensive, consistent, and updated training.  

Congratulation!!! You’ve reached here.

Several businesses tend to hesitate when it comes to opting for new software or strategies for better overall functioning. However, it is crucial to understand that stepping out of your comfort zone can sometimes be highly beneficial.  

Consumers buying whatever is being sold to them is a thing of the past now. Nowadays, their behavior is immensely influenced and prejudiced by technology and its advancement. There has been a significant shift in consumer behavior.

As a result, most company leaderships face a never-ending challenge to meet the customers' expectations. One way to mitigate this challenge is to use the technology to develop a customer education strategy.

In recent years, the customer education service has boomed, and most companies are incorporating this strategy. A recent study conducted by Conductor stated that 131% of the consumers are ready to buy the service or the brand immediately after customer education.

Thus, the figure showcases that the customer education market is becoming a critical factor in creating brand awareness and driving the required conversions.

As mentioned earlier, the best way to educate the customer is to leverage technology. But how to choose the right technology for the customer education, since the market is floodedwith many. This article will provide you with five essential tips in choosing the right technology for customer education.

However, before we jump into that, let's briefly discuss what customer education is. It is important to note that it is not marketing.

What is Customer Education?

 It is vital not to mix customer education with marketing. The components of both can tie in with each other, but certainly, they are not the same.

Advertising and marketing aim to persuade the consumer on an emotional level for the product or service, elaborating on its features and benefits. Customer education is catered towards giving the consumer all the needed information about the product/service.

At the core of customer education platform is how to offer customers the knowledge to use the product/service and solve and mitigate problems related to the product/service.

A customer education program can be viewed as arming the customers with the necessary resources and tools to give them the best and hassle-free experience in using the product/service.

Critical Factors in Developing Customer Education

 Some of the key features that will dominate 2021 in developing the best customer education program are

Goals: Analysis of your end goal with     the customer training program. It will help you in determining what you     want to achieve.

Strategy     and Implementation: Develop     the strategy, and then implementing it is the key to success. But you need     to have that scope in the strategy to improve as you progress with the     program and change as per customer's feedback to make it better.

Proactive     Program: Instead     of waiting for customers to ask you the question, start communicating     proactively by addressing common questions and issues.

Content-Type: Your content for the program     should be determined by two factors, your product/service and the type of     consumers you have to offer the best result.

Marketing: Once the program is created,     you need to market it well so the customers are aware of the education     program.

Technology: How you want to impart the     customer education program using medium and technology is crucial in its     success. New technologies are available and can help you to be more     effective.

Focusing on all these factors while developing the customer education program is essential. However, today, where technology is becoming the key in every aspect of our lives, it will significantly influence the customer education market.

When you want to achieve the target and be the market leader effectively and efficiently with the customer education program, you have to choose the right technology.

 Top 5 Key Tips to Choose the Right Technology for Customer Education

Let's begin by saying you need to automate your customer education platform unless you want to serve just a handful of users. The simple reason is that the manual effort will overwhelm you soon and hinder your progress even before you are off the ground.

Here are 5 key tips to choose the right technology for customer education, that will help you with the education program.

 In the market, there are different types of technologies available to ensure the successful training of the customers.

1. Artificial Intelligence: When you want to streamline and personalize the customer's experience while giving them the freedom of understanding and adaptability, this can be your answer.

2. Big Data: If you are using a large volume of information, want to track and have insights into the customer and the impact the training is having, Big Data will help you develop the material better.

3. LMS: It is the heart of digital customer training, also known as LMS (Learning Management System). The system enables view alerts, notification on engagement, receiving evidence of customer learning, and communicating with them. The features offered by this software are:

Content authoring tools for creating     lessons with graphics texts, videos, audios along with simulations and     scoring.

A repository to keep videos,     lessons, pdf, and other resources

A hand-on training feature with the     embedded 'virtual lab

Data management to capture user     engagement, delivery, and consumption of the training

Management for certification and     automated issuing of credentials

E-commerce component to bundle the     material to sell them online

Analytics to keep learners informed     of their progress

4. Customer Lifecycle: While this focuses on collecting information, managing the leads, and marketing them, they can also help with training. The features it offers are:

Customer relationship management

Marketing automation

Customer success

Customer service

5. Seamless collaboration & Communication: A real-time non-concurrent collaboration and communication are offered via this software. Often the features include:

Meetings for virtual classrooms,     conferences, and seminars, led by virtual instructors

Chat windows to get help and     training about the product you purchased.

Community software is mainly     targeted for the social media platform where customers and the company     connect, educate and share additional insight.

Blog software is the place to share     the information and regularly update the customers with new case studies     and advice.

Depending on what you want to achieve with your customer training program, you can use the right technology for customer education that suits you. Several other tips can help you to select the right technology.

Final Words.

Irrespective of the business or industry you are in, providing customer education is essential to keep an edge over your competitors. By following these tips, you can find the technology that suits you the best in developing and offering the customer education program.