If you run a product-based business, and you want to see an exponential organic growth of your business, then this article is for you.
This article covers:
What is Customer Education?
Customer Education is a way to provide self-help tools and resources about your products to your customers to help them use your products effectively and take maximum benefits out of it.
6 reasons you should opt for Customer Education
Increases the usability of the products
You know everything about your products, but, your prospective customers are new to your products or solutions. Most users don’t like a long learning curve while using a new product. You need resources that will help demonstrate your products to your customers. This encourages them to explore more features in your products.
Reduces the burden on the support team
When you launch a new product or a new feature in the existing product, users may find difficulty while using it. And, hence many of them reach out to your support team. With the help of AI-based Customer Education tools, you can answer your customer’s queries before them having an actual conversation with your support team. This reduces the burden on your support team, and your team will be focused on more complex issues of the customers.
Increases customer satisfaction
Most customers stop using the products because the products didn’t help them achieve their goals. Most of the time this happens because the customers couldn’t use the products effectively. An effective Customer Education strategy can help the customers get maximum benefits from your products. This increases the level of satisfaction in them about your products.
Increases Word-of-Mouth publicity and brand advocacy
If your customers are fully satisfied with your products, they become your brand advocates who spread positive word-of-mouth. This in turn will help you acquire more customers organically.
Increases organic customers to your products via SEO
The content that you create in Customer Education naturally contains the keywords and long-tail phrases that are generally searched by your prospects. These keywords and phrases get indexed in the search engine directories. This can drive organic traffic of your potentials customers to your website
Increases the scalability of your business
Self-help customer education tools and resources can educate your customers on a large scale. The more customers you educate about your products, the more benefits they get out of it. This way you can scale you business easily.
Increases brand loyalty
Many Customer Support teams take more than 24-48 business hours to reply to the simplest queries. Products having the best Customer Education programs win the loyalty of the customers. The customers feel empowered when their doubts are solved immediately.
How top brands are using Customer Education as a strategy to increase brand loyalty and advocacy
Facebook: Blueprint
Facebook has created a tremendous amount of resources for Customer Education. For Facebook Ads, Facebook has created an online academy called Blueprint where you can learn everything related to Facebook Ads for free. This helps the advertiser leverage the potential to generate maximum results for their ads.
Google: Skillshop
Google also has created an online academy called Skillshop where you can learn how to use Google Products. Skillshop covers almost all Google products. They offer certificates that enable their customers to add to their expertise.
Apple: Support Portal
Apple support portal covers specifications, possible software and hardware issues, and other product-warranty related issues. Customers can go on the portal, select their device type and enter the problem they are facing, and several threads appear in front of them that may solve their issues.
Hubspot’s Academy
Hubspot is an excellent inbound marketing tool. Their customer education activities empower customers and enable them to be better marketers. They educate customers about inbound marketing and offer tools such as storytelling, content creation framework, SEO, etc. This in turn helps them win more customers.
DigitalOcean’s Community Portal
DigitalOcean is a VPS hosting company. They have created a community portal where they have put almost everything related to server management.
Why many companies still don’t invest in Customer Education
Not having enough time and resources
Customer Education requires many resources including but not limited to Content Writers, Video Editors, Subject Matter Experts, Graphic Designers, Website Developers, Software Tools, etc. And, it also requires someone to manage all these things. This can lead to increased costs and hence many companies prioritize product development than Customer Education.
The right approach is to start building resources while developing the product itself. E.g. The FAQs can be outlined while preparing the Product Requirement Documents in the initial stage of the product development.
Fear of competition
Many companies fear that their competitors will copy their ideas if they reveal too much information online in Customer Education related resources. There are a number of ways to handle this. E.g. Make specific feature-related resources available to premium users only.
Anticipating short-term outcomes
Customer Education tools show their effectiveness over time. It doesn’t give any tangible results in a week or month. You need to put consistent efforts for a considerable amount of time that can help you outperform your competition.
Assuming that the customers know everything
All your new customers are using your product for the first time in their life. They don’t know most of the things about your products. You have to put some effort to educate them about your products to enable them to use it effectively.
6 ways to implement customer education
Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs
You can create FAQs with the help of your Sales and Support teams. As they directly interact with your customers, they know what your customers ask frequently. Create a list of FAQs and post it on your website or prepare explanatory videos and upload them on Youtube.
Training Videos
Create training and demonstration videos and upload those on Youtube and/or embed those videos on your website.
Guided Screens or Walkthroughs
You can create guided screens or walkthroughs for your first-time users. Guided screens highlight each feature with descriptions and links. Walkthroughs simulate a live experience for your product.
Forums
Allow customers to put questions on the forums of your website. You can answer those questions and also encourage the existing users to answer those questions. Make these forums available to all the users. If a new user also faces the same issue, he/she will get the solution instantly by searching it in your forums.
Live or recorded Webinars
You can host Webinars frequently where you can demonstrate the product features. Or you can record a Webinar and send the link to your customers when they subscribe to a particular feature which is demonstrated in that webinar.
Create relevant case studies
You can upload different case studies on your website and send the links of those case studies to the relevant customers.
There are many ways you can implement Customer Education for your business. If you haven’t done it yet, start doing it now.
Conclusion
In essence, prioritizing Customer Education is not just a strategic choice; it’s an imperative step towards unlocking the full potential of your product-based business. By embracing the diverse array of tools and resources discussed in this article and learning from the successes of industry giants, you pave the way for increased customer loyalty, organic growth, and sustained excellence in a competitive market. The time to invest in Customer Education is now – a commitment that will undoubtedly shape the future trajectory of your business.
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