THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO CUSTOMER TRAINING Tips & tricks to transform customers into advocates

Barry Kelly

Joe Cannata Gordon Johnson John Leh

Pat Durante Craig Weiss Samma Hafeez Claire Schooley Michael Daecher THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO CUSTOMER TRAINING TABLE OF CONTENTS

Customers are No Captive Audience Chapter 6 by Barry Kelly ...... …...... ….…... i Design the Perfect Learning Blend for Customer Success Chapter 1 by Claire Schooley ...... …...... 17 Building a Customer Training Program That Starts to Work Even Chapter 7 Before the Sale 22 Ways to Promote Your Training & by Michael Daecher ....…....……..…….……..... 01 Turn Customers into Advocates by Gordon Johnson .………...... …...... … 22 Chapter 2 7 Steps to the Perfect Chapter 8 Customer Onboarding Program Strategies for Pricing & by Samma Hafeez ..…...... …...... ……...... 04 Packaging Customer Training by John Leh ...... …...... …...... …...... 28 Chapter 3 Customer Engagement, Chapter 9 Retention & Beyond Best Practices for by Pat Durante ...... …...... …...... …...... 08 Creating a Hot Certifcation Program Chapter 4 (that Makes your Product Stickier) Shifting Gears: Making the Switch by Joe Cannata ...... …...... …...... 34 from Employee Learning to Customer Chapter 10 Training Measuring the ROI/VOI of by Craig Weiss ..…...... …….....…...... 11 Customer Learning by Claire Schooley …...... …...... ….....…..... 38 Chapter 5 To Drive Customer Success, Chapter 11 Dial in the Right Mix of Application & How to Assemble a Great Technology Contextual Training Stack for Customer Success & Training by Barry Kelly ...... …...... …...... 14 By Barry Kelly ...... ……...... …... 44

Appendix: The Thought Industries Customer Learning Platform …..…..…..…..…..…..……... 49

About the Authors...... …..… 51 T o attract customers, capture them, and keep them requires you to produce a product they need or want and to persuade them over and over that it's worth sticking around. To keep them, you must continue to deliver value, not only to each individual user but also for their business. Training and behavior change is a key part of delivering value, and the process requires continual engagement throughout the lifecycle of your customer.

The importance of training in the customer success lifecycle can not be understated and starts as early as the presale period. At this stage, training can be leveraged to get prospects engaged. By showing one or two well-chosen benefits quickly, you can help uncover the key value to their business. Post-sale, a highly curated and effective onboarding program and training process will lead the customer to a better understanding of your program, which in turn will help them gain value for their investment as quickly as possible. This metric is called “time to value”, and it is a critical measurement at the early stages of the relationship. After the onboarding period, the goal is to continue to keep your Customers are customers successful with your product. As you can imagine, there are a lot of questions to No Captive answer when it comes to customer training. For example, will you make it free or should you Audience charge? How do you design a mix of learning that will help the customer succeed? If you're already delivering training to an internal audience or your external partners, how do you convert those materials and processes to customer-focused training? What kinds of technology do you need to run a successful customer training program? Should you plan on certification too?

In this ebook, we take on these questions and more with practical guidance to help you become a customer training expert as quickly as possible. By Barry Kelly i Customers are No Captive Audience

In the first part of the book, you'll learn how to will ultimately help generate the greatest build a training program that addresses each phase amount of value). of the customer lifecycle.

Chapter 1 lays out the basics of the first stage in In Chapter 6 , workforce development maven the customer education lifecycle—pre-sale—and Claire Schooley helps you design the perfect offers practical techniques for gaining traction learning blend for customer success by among your prospects, including one secret examining what elements work for which ingredient that will set your company apart from customers and offers four tips for refining your the competition. blend for the best outcomes.

Chapter 2, "7 Steps to the Perfect Customer Onboarding Program," shares seven techniques for Once you've strategized about the types of making sure you squeeze every ounce of benefit content you intend to deliver, it's time to turn from your onboarding efforts to help your your attention to marketing of your customer customers be successful with your product or training. Chapter 7 , written by marketing service from the moment they first come on your authority Gordon Johnson, shares 22 valuable radar. marketing ideas that will turn uneducated customers into highly-trained advocates "who Chapter 3 educates you on methods for keeping would never think of replacing your product customers engaged and provides three metrics to with anything else." help you measure how well you're doing.

If you already have an employee-focused training Of course, a big question to answer is whether program, you'll have a few things to "unlearn" and how to price your training. It may be that during your transition to customer-facing training. you decide to keep it free. But there are plenty In Chapter 4 , "Shifting Gears: Making the Switch of reasons to price it too. In Chapter 8 John from Employee Learning to Customer Training," Leh, CEO and lead analyst for Talented e-learning consultant Craig Weiss (who made almost a million dollars selling training that never Learning, drills down on the fundamentals of exceeded $25 a course) shares seven areas to help how to price and package customer training, you shift from a mindset focused on employee addressing such topics as balancing customer learning and development to a customer training success with a profit center, how to test free orientation. (He predicts you'll never look back.) content strategies against paid offerings, how to figure out your pricing scheme, the Next, the book explores from two perspectives how advantages of an all-you-can-learn model and to formulate the right blend of training more. components.

In Chapter 5 , I give my insights on two kinds of Another major area to consider for your learning—contextual and application—that are customer training program is whether to offer a essential and that you'll want to use as you flavor certification program. Chapter 9 digs into the your customer training content. training content. link between customer success and One kind helps the customer learn how to use certification, includes four tips for developing a your product; the other addresses the outcomes well-structured program, and provides details your customer is hoping to achieve (and that on an alternative that nearly any company can adopt as a lower-cost, lower-effort option.

ii Customers are No Captive Audience

Claire Schooley returns in Chapter 10 to About the author: investigate easy techniques for measuring the Barry Kelly is the CEO of Thought Industries, a leading learning management system company that recently return-on-investment and value-of-investment introduced the Customer Learning Platform, a system (ROI and VOI) of the learning you're delivering specifically designed to streamline the online experience and automate customer onboarding. to your customers. As an example, if you work in a software-as-a-service operation, your executives are probably interested in understanding the connection between the training they're investing in and rates of customer retention, product renewal, spend and satisfaction scores. Claire provides formulas and explanations about what to measure and how.

Finally, in Chapter 11 I show you how to assemble a great technology stack for customer success and training. This chapter does two things: First, it offers a lay of the land for the various kinds of software (and leading examples) you'll want to consider for building a solid foundation for your customer training business. Second, it shares guidance to help you make the right choices as you're building your technology stack.

This ebook was written and published for people who play a role in customer training. If that's you, it means your ultimate job is to help customers succeed. By doing so, you'll increase retention, reduce customer churn, and build trust among customers for your organization and its products and services.

We hope you'll let us know which of the numerous tactics, strategies, tips and techniques help you find success. Send your feedback to [email protected].

iii O rganizations that are authentically focused on the success of their customers are also the ones that will succeed themselves. This is especially true in the technology segment, where competition seems to abound for any given flavor of product or service. Before customers bother to invest in software, they want to make sure they're choosing a technology provider worth partnering with in the long-term (even if that term lasts just a year).

How are choices made? The customer experience plays an ever-bigger role. As Walker Information reports, nearly nine in 10 buyers (86 percent) "are willing to pay more for a better customer experience." In fact, by 2020, this customer consultancy asserts, "customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator."

One way to set yourself apart from the competition is in how you handle customer education. Leaders view customer learning as a lifecycle that starts a lot earlier and continues longer than you might think. This chapter lays out the basics of the first stage in the customer education lifecycle—pre-sale—and 1 provides practical techniques for gaining traction Building a among your prospects, including one secret ingredient that will set your company apart from Customer the competition. Training Program Attracting That Starts to the right attention In 2006 a marketing company surveyed 200,000 Work Even Before consumers who had participated in online education programs during the previous year. What the Sale they found probably won't surprise anybody: Individuals who participate in sponsored educational programs tend to view the sponsoring brand "favorably." And they're "very likely" to buy the branded products after their training.

By What astonished the researchers was this: Michael Daecher Compared to the impact that traditional advertising 01 Building a Customer Training Program Tha Starts to Work Even Before the Sale

had on the behavior of these consumers, people who fnished their training were 29 times more likely to buy the sponsor's products. Educational programs turned out to be a far better marketing Educational investment for companies than other kinds of Programs outreach mechanisms. The question is how to translate education into scalable practices that will help you attract prospect during Pre-sale attention and help them understand the value of your product. The goal: to get them to that What kinds of educational content work in the "Wow! moment," as venture capitalist David acquisition process? You can't approach customers Skok calls it—that recognition of the benefits they'll with a monolithic approach. They're all going to be enjoy if they use your product. in a different part of the lifecycle, have a different set of outcomes they care about and possess Many software companies use freemiums and trial varying levels of product understanding. periods to allow a prospect to test software. And numerous marketing experts have debated every The answer is to try a variety of content and see aspect of these: how long the trial should last, how what works. Thought Industries' Barry Kelly has much functionality the freemium should include, seen success with these: whether to require credit card information upfront, what a reasonable conversion rate should look like, Curated short-form, on-demand learning content, whether to force users through complex processes including online courses and curated learning (such as loading data) before they get to the good experiences; stuff.

Product guides and introductory learning The challenge is that complex products won't information to provide overviews and dive into the benefits of specific features; deploy or configure themselves, and prospects may not be willing or interested in having your Use of customer advocates and product experts, as consultants or sales engineers come into their references, to cultivate thought leaders and operations to load a program onto their systems. develop content for the knowledge base; Besides, in the sales process, it's one thing to say, "Here's our product, here's an important feature, Scheduled webinars, including expert and here's how it works." It's very different to be presentations and synchronous live learning events able to help your prospect understand what the to share advice and answer questions; and value of that particular feature is. A more important consideration than free trials and Scheduled weekly email guides, tips and custom learning content. sales pitches is what kind of educational experiences you can provide upfront, whether or not the prospect has your service or program These forms of content are especially valued by loaded and ready to run. prospects if the focus is on helping them gain skills and knowledge for doing their jobs better—with or According to Thought Industries CEO Barry Kelly, without your product. As the old advertising adage a particularly effective practice is to create goes, tell me about my lawn, not your grass seed. shortform, on-demand learning content—think video, in particular—that provides quick

walkthroughs of features leading to an outcome

02 Building a Customer Training Program Tha Starts to Work Even Before the Sale the prospect will value. "People don’t have a lot of experience with your technology. For example, if time," he says. "You want to walk them through a the person watches a short, introductory video all couple of steps, give them some information, a the way through to the end, the learning couple of ways to interact with the product. Those management system captures that data and can can be offered simply and easily." send a message suggesting a follow-up video with a

The more complex the slightly deeper or product, the deeper diferent exploration. If that educational the viewer gets stuck experience will have to The more complex the at a particular point, go. You may need to product, the deeper that the system could produce a whole series educational experience will recognize that and ofer of videos—along with immediate chat-based training webinars, have to go. help or give a prompt virtual instructor-led linking to explanatory sessions, case studies content. and whitepapers—with the idea that you're leading the prospect toward a better understanding of For people who work through a set of training your program, fostering engagement, establishing sessions, the system might reward them with a authority in the market, and encouraging trust. digital badge, a discount or a free consulting hour.

You can use the data you collect through the training experience to get a better understanding of the motivations of the prospect, identify knowledge The secret ingredient: gaps and provide a feedback loop to track where they are in the engagement process and guide them Data or coax them along in their journey. The goal: to Currently, here's what many companies do: tap into the endorphins that fire off when they buy Somebody comes to the website to view a pre- your product for the first time. recorded webinar or a whitepaper. He or she has to register and provide a bit of contact information to gain access. Almost immediately, an automated email will be generated and sent to the prospect as About the author: Michael Daecher is the Chief Marketing Officer at if it had just been thoughtfully composed by a Thought Industries and brings years of experience in salesperson, offering any kind of assistance growth startups and online learning. He first required. Or a salesperson might call and leave encountered Thought Industries while using the platform to launch the multi‐ million dollar online voicemail with the same offer. Frequently, these education business within Active Interest Media. responses come even before the prospect has had a chance to watch the webinar or read the whitepaper. It's not the best timing—and probably not the best way to determine level of lead interest.

What's a better approach? A well-designed customer learning program will help you reach out at the most effective points in that prospect's

03 A t first glance, you might believe that customer onboarding is that part of the buying process in which you teach new customers how to use your product—which buttons to click and how to navigate around the interface. After all, employee onboarding is the part of the hiring process where HR gets a new person outfitted with the equipment and training needed to do something productive.

Customer onboarding, however, is a bit different. It includes that productivity phase, but a customer isn't truly onboarded until he or she has achieved something of value.

That's especially important to understand when you have a SaaS business. The sooner the customer experiences success with your product, the greater the chance that he or she will buy and continue paying for the use of your software or service.

"There's a lot of data out there around adoption timeframes," notes Thought Industries CEO Barry Kelly. "If customers don’t really adopt the product and see traction with it quickly, the 2 chances of gaining traction later is less likely." 7 Steps to the Perfect Your customer is more likely to use your product or service Customer if they have actually seen it Onboarding add value to their lives—and quickly. Program This chapter shares seven techniques for making sure you squeeze every ounce of beneft from your onboarding eforts and help your customers be successful with your product or service from the moment they frst come on your radar. Although many of these examples are from software companies (because onboarding is such a critical part of their success), most of the tips can be applied By to any type of company that wants to get better at Samma Hafeez retaining customers. 04 7 Steps to the Perfect Customer Onboarding Program

Exploit your customer Map training to your personas—every one of customer’s unique pain 1 them 2 points and goals

How a customer values your software will vary Being selective means a couple of different things. from role to role. On any team being onboarded, First, don't try to teach every important feature of there might be multiple departments represented, your program. It goes without saying that you must each with its own needs for the product, its own spend some time on how to use the software. You uses, and its own way of evaluating whether the should also spend equal or more time on how to program meets those goals. It's important to make succeed in reaching the goal they're adopting your sure you deliver first-time value for each of those software for in the first place. Give your customers key personas. enough help to get them moving in a specific direction that will have impact for them and meet The goal is to develop a deep understanding of their needs. Being able to satisfy their workflows personas to better understand the business at- and use cases is more important than simply large, which ultimately helps to build deep learning to use a feature. horizontal and vertical relationships and socialize your product across an organization. Second, make the training succinct. "Customers don’t have time to waste. They're extremely busy," Let's say you always host an onboarding training observes Pat Durante, president of CEdMA , the webinar for new customers. While your Customer Education Management Association, and presentation may hit most people's needs, pay close senior manager of training and enablement at attention to those who ask the questions that come Synopsys a pioneer in software security and across as "out in left field." Those inquiries may quality. "If your web event is wandering all over the offer clues about what that person (or that type of place with a demo, that's a waste of the customer's role) will value in your software. Also, consider time—especially if they can get that same content in reaching out directly to people who ask no a five-minute video that shows them exactly what questions at all. If they haven’t yet found value in that new feature is and how it would be of value to what you offer, they may give up before your them." product gets a fair chance. By sending them an email, even if it’s only semi-personalized, to As Durante explains, your philosophy should be encourage them to take a moment and tell you what customer-centric: "Get me there fast. Teach me they're thinking, you might be able to keep them exactly what I need to know. Don’t give me any engaged and ultimately convert them to a believer. fluff. Get right to the point." That's especially true, These nuggets of information could also help build he adds, for the YouTube generation. "Tell me what out personas you hadn’t previously considered I need to know right now and then get out of my while offering insight into new ways to relay way, so I can do it myself." benefits of the program to new groups of users.

It’s important to point out that the key decision makers should be involved in identifying the core users/personas and help to set training goals. Without early executive buy in and continued executive visibility, the success of onboarding is in peril.

05 7 Steps to the Perfect Customer Onboarding Program

Turnbull, "have brought back hundreds of users Don't hide behind who, for one reason or another, hit a snag in their automation; talk to your early days with Groove." 3 customers Outreach could also include results of recent customer surveys, best practices, trip reports from You can't expect software to do all the heavy lifting online and in-person customer events, and regular in customer onboarding. Reach out for personal access to baseline data compiled anonymously from contact with customers for feedback on why they among all users. have decided to sign on and pay for the software, why they've decided to relinquish the program after a trial, what they hope to achieve with your product, and how they plan to evaluate their Measure success success. These conversations—whether by phone, and fine-tune email, online "office hours," or some other method 5 —can help you tune your onboarding activities to make them more effective. Kelly recommends specific key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the success of your Alex Turnbull, the CEO of Groove , a SaaS onboarding experiments—and, really, it's all an company that produces help desk software for experiment. Sound obvious? According to a survey small businesses, set out to talk with " every single shared by Harvard Business Review , less than Groove customer ." What he learned, he said, half of executives (49%) reported that their firms "amazed" him. "Not only did I better understand use data to understand or predict higher—level where people struggled and what we needed to do customer needs. to increase retention and reduce churn, but we learned valuable insights about the words that are A primary metric to pay attention to is "time-to- important to people." As an example, in those value," a concept that measures how long it takes discussions, a lot of customers asked about "filters." for a user to gain success or value. How do you It was no wonder they couldn't find the filtering recognize when this has happened? Well, first, it capability in the program—the company called it needs to be based on something that's measurable. "rules." For instance, at Natero , a customer success platform, the company identifies the ways that successful customers (those who continually renew) are leveraging the product capabilities as compared to those who "struggle or churn." The Build a strategy with main aspects they monitor are the features being well-timed touch-points used. From there, they create onboarding tasks that 4 and milestones guide new customers to try similar successful behaviors. This is particularly important in early days. If Other useful indicators include engagement (as somebody isn't logging in, follow up. Groove has measured by social activities, for example), level of found success when they do just that. The company demand for training, and interest in add-on sends a friendly email that asks the recipient, products or services. Often, the specific KPIs that "What's been keeping you from getting going with will matter for you may be unique to your product. the app?" It ends with a P.S. that offers a “quick For example, an accounting service may want to Skype session” if the user needs help with the track the number of statements sent out through program. "That email and others like it," writes

06 7 Steps to the Perfect Customer Onboarding Program the trial period or pilot. If the number hasn't grown over 90 days, that may be an indication that Recognize that support for the service has flatlined and needs onboarding is a attention. A different company may choose to track 7 continual cycle the feature usage score among customers or new bookings. Here's where understanding the goals of your customer will come in handy. The things that When a customer first adopts your service into they've expressed as adding value to their their organization, you may be driving multiple experience should form the essence of the metrics people through the onboarding process you need to track. simultaneously as they integrate your product. After that initial push, new hires or replacements who are brought in will need onboarding as well, which presents a new challenge. Some vendors will Nudge your users provide webinars or other digital forms of training 6 during onboarding to help bring new users up to speed. Others will make training and resources for new hires available at an additional cost. Like a coach talking into an earpiece to urge the cyclist through the next phase of the race, you need Kelly prefers to use those situations as an to find ways to nudge users through activities that opportunity for building up the relationship with will help them find success with your product or the customer and "re-onboarding." The message: service. Approaches that have found success "We'd like to bring back the whole team for training include: and product updates. It's been a year and we've released a lot of new features and updates. Why ● Offering a certificate of recognition for completing training within a specific window of don’t we take you all through a half-day of training time after sign-up to get everybody re-acquainted and up to speed on ● Giving an immediate discount on the next all the new stuff?" The work invested in that is a renewal whole lot easier, he points out, than starting from ● Delivering a "tip of the day" the beginning with a new customer. ● Offering free consulting time for each person who completes the training within a certain deadline About the author: Samma Hafeez is the Vice President of Customer As a example of what this looks like in practice, Success at Thought Industries and has more than a Thought Industries has a team of onboarding decade of experience in customer success, leading specialists. Each enterprise is assigned a dedicated and scaling industry‐ recognized teams in the delivery resource who answers questions in weekly webinar of technology and services around the world. meetings over the first 12 weeks of usage, guiding them from sign-on to launch. Along with that, customers receive access to specific kinds of training and a "bank of hours" for additional training in their specific areas of interest.

And most importantly, Customer Success Managers should be working to turn users into rock stars who get promoted and recognized within their organizations for solving business problems with your product.

07 O nce you've attracted a customer and helped them onboard, your job has just begun. Now it’s time to focus on helping them stay happy by keeping them engaged and coming back for more. Gallup research has found that, when compared to the average customer, customers who are "fully engaged" represent a 23 percent premium "in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth." The same survey revealed that companies that successfully engage their business-to-business customers enjoy 63 percent less customer attrition, 55% more "share of wallet," and 50% greater productivity.

Engagement matters—more than simple customer satisfaction, more than big sales promotions or lower prices, more than loyalty programs—because it helps your company hold onto the customers you have. Gallup calls engagement the "emotional connection between your customers and your company." The organizations that do it best focus on helping their customers in ways that matter to the bottom line—not their bottom line, but that of their customers.

3 In this chapter, you'll learn techniques for keeping Customer customers engaged and three metrics that help you measure how well you're doing. Engagement,

Retention The two roles of customer & Beyond learning—and a challenge Customer learning has two roles in engagement. The first is to help people understand how to reach their goals—to advocate for them. The second is to help them understand how to use your technology more effectively.

“The investment in engagement has ‘measurable value’," says John Leh, technology consultant, because it feeds into keeping that customer. And the cost of keeping a customer is far less than it is By to find a new one, he points out. Pat Durante 08 Customer Engagement, Retention, and Beyond

How do you accomplish this level of "continual The forms these pathways take can be as varied as touch," as Leh calls it? There's no one best practice, the companies providing them. For example: but a bunch of them. The aim is to be as proactive and relevant as possible. Rather than helping ● HubSpot Academy features core learning pillar; people prepare "for something that might happen ● MailChimp’s learning resource center helps in the future," you'll want to look for opportunities customers at all levels achieve their goals; to assist them with something they're struggling ● Salesforce TrailHead offers a number of learning pathways; and with right now: new regulations, new trends for ● Roland Academy provides in-person, online and their specific industry, new technologies they'll virtual training programs. want to understand, and new demands from their own customers that they need to address.

As you provide those types of help, you can also Three measures of keep them informed about what your own product offers to assist them in their efforts. By tying engagement together their needs with your software, you As with the other phases of the customer lifecycle, become a go-to source for authentic guidance on the success of your engagement efforts can be two fronts. measured by analyzing the data. The biggie here is "churn," the loss of a customer. While Kelly Engagement can also be targeted by creating mentions that customers may stop using your outcome-based learning that focuses on using your product for reasons that are "sometimes inside product for specific purposes. Salesforce, for your control and sometimes outside your control," example, does an enviable job of catering to specific he notes that it's still important to stay on top of verticals—banking versus non-profit versus churn as an indicator of the overall health of healthcare. engagement with a customer.

Then there's the usual Here's a simple form of continual touch: As you provide those types of example. If you start email newsletters that the month with 100 offer questions of the help, you can also keep them customers and you lose day, tips of the week, informed about what your 25 of them by the start and more general how- of the next month, your to assistance. own product offers to assist customer churn would them in their efforts. be calculated like this: One challenge during this phase of the customer learning Lifecycle is addressing the (100 customers - 75 customers)/100 customers different levels of interest and experience for = 25 customers/100 customers customers. Some users have a lot of practice with = 25% customer churn the product you're selling and others don't. Some are highly experienced in the field you're serving However, customer and revenue churn are rarely while others are fairly new. the same in the real world because companies have multiple product lines and different levels of Barry Kelly of Thought Industries recommends the customer buy-in. While you may see a fairly development of "pathways"—learning paths that consistent level of customer churn, revenue churn will likely vary over time. It is, logically, dependent help individuals understand what's next for their learning, no matter where they are in their usage on the revenue you were generating from those and understanding. specific customers who have churned. 09 Customer Engagement, Retention, and Beyond

Another vital measurement to track is "negative churn." This represents your ability to offset churn metrics by increasing the amount you are able to generate from other customers through upselling. If you lost two $500/month customers in a given month and you were able to increase the SaaS fees from another customer by $1,000/month, you've nullified that particular churn metric. That additional buy—in is also a signal that your engagement efforts are working for that customer.

One important non-numeric metric to consider is "referenceability"—how willing your customers are to serve as references for your company. A number of marketing and promotion techniques are much more effective when the voice of your customer is present, whether that’s by offering a quote for a press release, being part of a case study for your website, or fielding a phone call from a prospect. The willingness of a customer to stick with you— and speak on your behalf—says a lot about the level of service your organization delivers month in and month out and the strength of engagement they believe they're getting in return.

A common way to measure this engagement is through Net Promoter Score surveys. They are used consistently across industries because they are easy to put in place and provide solid data.

About the author: Pat Durante is the President of CEdMA and is the Senior Manager, Training and Education at Synopsys. He is an education executive with significant experience managing sales, customer, partner, and employee training initiatives for global technology companies.

10 A s an organization, you likely have your employee learning program running smoothly. Now, your company has decided to deliver customer training—free or paid—as part of expanding into new markets. It’s important to be aware that the modality, approach, and techniques for customer training are quite different from those you may be used to in employee training and development. As such, you'll need to change your mindset and current approach to how you provide learning. It's not as easy as it sounds. Your whole way of doing things, your focus on skills related to job role, compliance offerings—all must go.

The move into customer training isn't as simple as turning on a new light. It requires shifting gears in several ways: going modular, thinking like a customer, focusing on data, and pursuing a blue ocean strategy.

The five truths explored in this chapter will help you shift from a mindset focused on employee learning and development to a customer training orientation. Once you get there, you'll never look 4 back. Shifting Gears: Customers bounce around Making the 1 within courses Eliminate the requirement that end users must Switch from complete your course. Customers will generally focus on what is of interest and relevance to them. Employee For this reason, you should build your course to cater to the way they actually engage. You might Learning to consider eliminating assessments, for example, since customers are rarely fans of assessment. Customer What does interest them is getting training on the product, service, or solution you are expert in.

Training Approach your curriculum development with a structured mindset where the content follows a chapter or activity format, which will allow customers to move around. You may see that they By go right to one section—maybe even repeatedly— Craig Weiss 11 Shifting Gears: Making the Switch from Employee Learning to Customer Training

—and ignore other sections completely. Guess about when you have a question about a software what? That’s completely fine. You should allow application that you use. You don’t look for a them to learn and focus in their way, not yours. “course.” If you’re like me, you look for a YouTube video or search for text answers.

Microlearning If you can consider the learning you offer from that works the best, perspective—as the customer—you'll do far better 2 BUT... than if you approach it from the perspective of an employee or manager. Even when providing software training, focus on a specific topic and only one or two areas of interest in a course. Then, make sure it takes no more than You must 10 minutes to complete. Better yet, try to break the focus material up into two mini-mods at five minutes 4 on data apiece. With this approach, you’re seeking to be as The need to focus on data is true for employee modular as possible in the learning you offer. training as well, but it’s especially true for customer training. Customers tend to bounce around in If you're training someone on how to use your videos and eLearning, trying to find answers. They software via a screen recording, make sure to add aren’t required to “finish” training for compliance clear chapter headings to help learners jump purposes, so they are less patient with content that around to the parts they care most about. doesn’t help them right then and there. Better, create a "show me, let me do it" type of Pay special attention to the trends in how learners course. Those work the best in any type of software engage and consume your material. If you notice training where interactivity is essential. that multiple customers hit a certain chapter in a course, this is a flashing light telling you that you need to create a course on that specific topic. Think like a customer, not like a manager or 3 If they're stalling at a certain point, then it may employee mean you need to evaluate how you're presenting Since customers aren’t a “captive audience” like the information. That could be an opportunity to employees, they are less likely to take training break it down further or come up with new ways of without some convincing. To be successful with explaining those concepts. them, you need to treat them special and truly understand how they think and what they need. When charging for your training, go low & imagine Here are some questions to answer: What does 5 your customer need to know? What should they a blue ocean strategy expect to gain from the courses, content, and A sure way to build mass is to focus on lower price activities you'll be providing? What’s in it for them? points, perhaps keeping your pricing below $50. If What words do they use? your cost per seat comes in at $10, chances are good that you are already making a profit. If your I bet many of them think "training" is a four-letter cost becomes at $25 a seat, then charge $35. (I word. In most cases, they simply want quick made nearly $1 million dollars and never went answers to quick questions. For them, anything above $25 a course.) over 10 minutes is probably overkill, unless it’s entry-level onboarding training. Microlearning was People like subscriptions, especially if they can pick built for exactly this customer mindset. Think the bundle of courses they want. If you are putting 12 Shifting Gears: Making the Switch from Employee Learning to Customer Training together a few course bundles, make sure your naming and promotions strategies make sense and encourage engagement and progression. For instance, you could utilize course naming modelled after college curriculum. With that approach, a beginner course would be called "101"—never "Entry" or "Beginner." Intermediate courses, would be numbered with "201”; and, for "advanced" offerings, go with "301." The reason this is appealing is that people never really see themselves as beginners, intermediate, or advanced; they will always think they have a higher skill set. So, abstracting away from descriptors of skill level actually increases your potential audience.

Customer training is both useful and beneficial. Once you are deep into this type of training, you will never want to go back to providing employee development. And, if you are one of the folks who must provide both, you will most likely find yourself working on the customer training side more and more. This is because it delivers a level of satisfaction that employee training will never have.

About the author: Craig Weiss is the CEO and lead analyst for the Craig Weiss Group, a consultancy focused on e-learning. Craig is the author of the popular E-Learning 24/7 blog, which covers the "truth and realities" of digital learning. Contact Craig at [email protected].

13 A ll customer training is not created equal. There are hundreds of learning technologies on the market. All of them offer specialized options to create and deliver training and learning custom-fit for your audience and their needs. As training becomes more and more a part of the software customer success playbook, two distinct learning delivery mechanisms emerge: "contextual learning" and "application learning."

Contextual learning addresses how to use the software. It generally offers instruction-based teaching to take the user through a set of steps. As an example, it could be as simple as “Click the button,” “Select from the dropdown,” and “Save.”

Application learning, on the other hand, addresses uses for the software in the wild. For instance, it might offer ideas on how to get the best open rates from your email campaign. Both of these learning approaches are important and necessary for a customer to understand how to use your software and how it can be most useful in their lives or careers.

5 Layered above these two approaches are many To Drive different training delivery options:

Customer ● In-person instructor-led training ● Virtual instructor-led training Success, Dial in ● Webinars ● On-demand learning and courses the Right Mix of ● Microlearning ● In-app videos Application & Many software organizations—or companies with software products—have already begun the learning Contextual delivery journey by leveraging their knowledge base and offering scheduled webinars. As online training Training becomes more and more robust, these new ways to scale also help drive a positive impact on the customer success lifecycle.

By Ultimately, you will need to be in the business of Barry Kelly both contextual learning and application learning. 14 To Drive Customer Success, Dial in the Right Mix of Application & Contextual Training

Embracing both will help you move the needle on Net Promoter Score, reduce churn, and—for a Application seasoned customer success group—drive negative churn. learning Application learning refers to how your product or product feature can be used to create the most amount of value. These outcomes are what make Contextual your customers successful and ultimately more reliant on your technology. They need to experience learning wins and plenty of them. Contextual learning focuses heavily on completing a direct task either within a product or by using a Time-to-value is a common metric and key product. Continuing the example of email performance indicator in customer success. It marketing, imagine a user looking to send a bulk measures how quickly a customer experiences email to a specific segment of his or her company’s positive impact when using your product. However, audience. Sounds easy enough, but a whole set of one tricky aspect of time-to-value is that perceived choices and tasks need to be executed along the value can be very different for different users. For way. They’ll need to add a subject line, pick the instance, a business sponsor may expect something recipient segment, choose their design template, distinct from what a production team member or add specific content, include a call-to-action button somebody deeper in the weeds needs from the or link, preview their layout, and send a test email. product. With these kinds of diverse needs at play, it is critical to The user’s objective is segment your simply to send a customers. Work to marketing email. There are many incredible break down your Contextual learning audience in ways that focuses on this task to tools available—such as help you understand help them make the Appcues, Walkme and Pendo what value means to right decisions. There —that enable organizations them. Then, implement are many incredible programs that help tools available—such as to deliver coach‐ marks, them meet those Appcues, Walkme guides, and more." objectives. and Pendo—that enable organizations to deliver coach marks, guides, and more. Then, to benchmark how successful users are at those This is exactly the moment when training becomes tasks, organizations look at Customer Effort Score critical, where understanding their level of (CES). competency can map directly to a course offering. Learning pathways are a powerful way of curating For a good overview of Customer Effort Score, take specific learning content targeted for certain needs a look at this article from HubSpot: and then measuring outcomes to help optimize. “What is Customer Effort Score?” Think of pathways as playbooks for each persona at every stage of their learning path. Then work to Contextual learning is a critical part of the deliver the right content at the time when it can be customer success process. Application learning, most useful and in a way that matches their though, is what moves your customer success learning style and is easy to digest. outcomes from good to great.

15 To Drive Customer Success, Dial in the Right Mix of Application & Contextual Training

In contrast to contextual learning, you may struggle to deliver useful assistance with application learning while users are executing a task with your product. Application learning is often a much deeper dive that requires a different delivery model and content strategy.

These two approaches work so well together, though, that once you’ve gotten used to delivering one method it’s not hard to move into the other. In fact, if you only embrace one and not the other, you'll be missing out on an important part of the bigger customer success picture.

When both are well executed, expect to see strong outcomes for all of your customer personas.

About the author: Barry Kelly is the CEO of Thought Industries, a leading learning management system company that recently introduced the Customer Learning Platform, a system specifically designed to streamline the online experience and automate customer onboarding.

16 T oday's focus on "the customer" bodes well for customer learning. You can gain a strategic advantage over your competitors with well- designed customer learning. After all, we're in the “Age of the Customer”, and concocting just the right mix of learning for them will help ensure their success and your own.

In this chapter we look at how improving customer engagement through training goes right to your bottom line, the role "blended learning" plays, what elements work for which customers, and how to refine your blend for the best outcomes.

6 According to Technology Services Industry Design Associates' (TSIA) State of Education Services 2017, there's a surge in customer the Perfect success-related activities: "The time has never been more perfect for [education services] organizations to seize the day and establish themselves as a major Learning Blend force in enabling customers to achieve their for Customer outcomes." As the report explains, you can think of learning as Success "engaging" the customer with your product or service. Investing in customer-valued learning generates brand loyalty, greater spend, lower support calls, a closer vendor/customer relationship, and higher renewal rates. In fact, TSIA's study also showed the average renewal rate among trained software subscribers was 92% versus 80% for untrained customers. While we can't be sure the gain is all from learning By experiences, the data indicates that learning has a Claire Schooley strong impact on customer satisfaction. 17 Design the Perfect Learning Blend for Customer Success

The blended approach to learning provides flexibility & In-the-moment learning

Customer learning continues to move to a digitaly- hands-on, face-to-face instruction. But today's enabled online environment where learning is technologies allow a great amount learning to move available anytime, anywhere, and from any device. online. Online modalities include on-demand Learning is no longer entirely classroom-based or learning, short single-concept microlearning, video, focused on lengthy elearning courses. Rather, virtual classroom, and online social interactions. customer education now uses multiple learning modalities chosen according to the nature of the The secret sauce is in the blend—choosing the content. This approach is called blended learning. approaches that best fit the learning content—and wrapping these together into an engaging learning Learning approaches don't abandon classroom experience. learning—certainly some learning experiences need

Examples of Blended Learning Modalities

Learning approach Definition Example

Self-paced learning accessed by Overview with text and graphics to On-demand elearning customers when they need the help customers learn about the information product

Brief (2- to 4-minute) single Review one feature of the new Microlearning concept, multi-model and software product with an instructor, in-context learning text and graphics

Show the process for replacing or Short real-time captures Video streaming setting up a part of the software

Instructor-run, virtual online A scheduled online discussion of Virtual classroom discussion or interactive best practices after customers have presentation been introduced to the product

Asynchronous discussion and Blogs, online chat, FAQs, user group Online social interaction collaboration with feedback site

Performance support Help feature built into the software A short help screen enables the user that intelligently knows when the to solve the problem and continue in system user is having a problem and helps the application

18 Design the Perfect Learning Blend for Customer Success

Here's an example of the features a blended An LMS carries out many basic tasks. It enables learning module for a customer becoming familiar customers to register for learning, see all the with new software might include: learning opportunities related to the product, and launch an appropriate blended learning module. ● A video host who introduces the product, explains with graphics what it will do for the Those with administrator access can track the business, and gives examples of how it will make customer learning by running reports. This lets user's job more efficient; them see metrics on the most-used learning ● An elearning module on how to get started content or pinpoint parts of lessons where users using the product; are spending a lot of time—which could suggest ● Microlearning lessons with each focusing on that the content needs to be revisited, streamlined, one feature or function of the product. Label or made clearer. each short lesson clearly for easy access; In addition, a consumer-ready LMS has other ● Chat set up with support services for features: questions; ● A content creation tool ● Frequent virtual session for admins and users after product introduction for feedback, ● An assessment engine questions, issues, and other follow-up as needed; ● Analytics ● Blog articles with shared authorship across IT, ● eCommerce customer service, sales marketing, and the ● Localization executive suite, addressing many aspects of the product from a variety of perspectives; and ● Taxation ● Gamification, such as scores and badges ● "Social" learning to allow customers to interact with the company and other customers around questions, discoveries and best practices. LEARN MORE... While this example shows end-user learning, a similar approach for administrators, for instance, would use some of the same content and add extra material specific to their role.

Customer learning needs the right technology for blended learning A learning platform—most likely a learning management system—is an essential technology component for blended learning and it must be consumer-like in its ease-of-use. In other words, the platform shouldn't require any end-user training on how to take the training.

19 Design the Perfect Learning Blend for Customer Success

Drive customer learning by infusing education into the sales process Customer success is top of mind for all companies. It drives renewals, higher product spend, and referrals of potential new customers, to mention just a few benefits. This means that the sales organization must understand the learning strategy of their company as well as the customer's strategy, be knowledgeable about training opportunities the company provides, and feel comfortable discussing the learning blend during the sales process. Training is no longer an extra that’s tacked on at the time of purchase. It’s now a service that is in development right alongside the software as it's being brought to life.

But it's not just sales that needs to understand learning opportunities and why they are important. The customer success management (CSM) role has grown with the continual movement of companies to "software as a service" (SaaS), a subscription model for software. If a customer is not "beyond satisfied" with the product, it's easy for them to move to a competitor—since there are no more perpetual licenses or installed software. CSMs are in a perfect position to emphasize learning opportunities, recommend starter learning—which is generally free—and make customers aware of more advanced learning that carries a cost. Professional services as well as customer support need to talk to customers about learning opportunities too. Learning becomes a partnership effort among Sales, CSMs, Professional Services, Customer Support, IT and the Customer Learning department.

20 Design the Perfect Learning Blend for Customer Success

Four ways to get your blend right The top challenge in enabling good blended learning is to get the blend right. In preparation for creating blended learning, do the following:

Determine any appropriate content Work with marketing & PR to 1 you already have. 3 advertise the value of blended From a company video, you might pick out learning components. two minutes that reinforce how your Brand your learning. Make sure it's company values customers or customer integrated with other information about learning. If you have recorded classroom the product. Work with marketing to sessions, look for a two- to three-minute reinforce the message that learning is piece that explains a technical component, available and the ways it will help users for example. obtain value from the product. Let marketing create a deliverable that will provide customers with the array of learning opportunities available.

Consider design thinking to help Curate learning into blended 2 develop a stellar learning program. 4 learning packages for different If learning is stale, you don't feel your groups. existing program meets customer needs, or The groups you package for could include you are starting fresh with learning, users, administrators, super users, and IT. institute some design thinking sessions. Start with one group and build your Design thinking for learning is all about learning—most likely the users. Some ensuring that the user's learning blended learning components will be a experience is simple and easy to use. Make part of all packages while others will be sure learning is easy to get to and the blend appropriate for one or two groups. Each makes sense. As a learning leader, get package will be multi-modal depending on input from other groups in the company the mode that is best to communicate the and be innovative in your approach. learning.

About the author: Claire Schooley, principal, Claire Schooley Consulting, and long-time Forrester analyst, specializes in workforce growth and development. She has over 25 years of experience in education and corporate human resources, focusing on learning, recruiting and performance.Contact Claire through her website or at [email protected]

21 T raining is arguably the most important part of every customer success program, but customers don’t have the time to master your product like you want them to. Sometimes they put off training until it’s too late, which results in expensive support and unhappy customers.

The solution is to treat your training programs like your company’s products and insert a healthy dose of marketing to drive training consumption. Here are 22 marketing ideas that can turn uneducated customers into highly-trained advocates who would never think of replacing your product with anything else.

1 Market that next class

The most important way to measure the success of your marketing is by how much training each individual consumes. An extraordinarily high percentage of your customers will take one class and never come back. 7 They all need more to be successful, so how do you 22 Ways get them to take more? First, you need to map out training paths so that you (and they) always know the next logical class. If they take class A, then what to Promote Your is class B? Or, more likely, if they take class A, then what is class B1, B2 or B3? We’d love for everything Training & Turn to fall neatly into a linear sequence, but that’s usually not the case, especially with more advanced Customers into training. However, at the introductory level, there needs to be a sequence, and as a marketer, you need to know what it is. Because, after they take class A, Advocates then you need to let them know about class B. And the faster you do that, the better. See why in #2...

Never Forget the Law of 2 Recency and Frequency

If you ever wonder when the best time to market the By next class is, just remember the law of RFM, which Gordon L. Johnson stands for "Recency," "Frequency," & "Monetary." 22 22 Ways to Promote Your Training and Turn Customers into Advocates

This is a marketing guideline that says the more recently a customer has purchased something, the 5 Sell Training Credits and more likely they are to want more. The same goes Vouchers for frequency. The more frequently they purchase, the more likely they will purchase more. And last, If you want to avoid all-you-can-eat, then consider the bigger their purchases (Monetary), the more training credits, vouchers, or subscriptions as likely they will purchase more. All of this is to say alternatives. These aren’t as risky as buffet pricing, that you should strike while the iron is hot and because you’re basically substituting cash for know that it’s never too early to market the next credits, but it’s attractive to customers because it’s class. So, if they finish a class today, then tomorrow convenient and feels good when it’s discounted. is the best time to market the next class. Many of the largest and most successful tech companies, such as Microsoft, Cisco and Citrix, sell training credits because it increases training revenue and gets more people trained. Bundle Training into 3 Packages

If you want customers to consume more training, Build a Great Certification then bundle it into larger packages that logically fit 6 Program together. Watch Amazon.com. That company does a great job of upselling with its “Frequently bought If you don’t have a certification program yet, it’s together” suggestions. As a marketer, it’s easy to be time to start working on one. There’s nothing else a big fan of Amazon because the company puts like it, especially for tech companies. Nothing else extraordinary effort into developing ideas that drive has the potential to increase training consumption, more consumption. customer loyalty, customer success, product adoption and customer retention, all in one program. Consider 4 All-You-Can-Eat The trick is to build a certification program that customers can get excited about: something that will improve their individual careers and make If you charge for training, then your customers may them a better user of your product. In the be picky about what training they invest in. One meantime, while they strive for certification, they reason is the painful process of getting approval consume around 50 percent more training and every time they buy a class. If that’s the case, then develop a tighter bond with your product. the all-you-can-eat concept—offering all-access options for the entire selection of your learning— can be very attractive. They only have to get approval once, which gives them the perception Use Email to Keep that they’re getting a great deal. You probably 7 Training Top of Mind generate more training revenue AND, more importantly, your customers consume more I don’t know about you, but I never have time for training and get more value out of your product. much training. Short-term projects and needs always seem to get in the way. But constant learning really is the key to long-term success. Just look at the biggest over-achievers on the planet, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Oprah. As busy as they are, they carve out 5 hours a week for training. Most of your customers are more like you and me.

23 22 Ways to Promote Your Training and Turn Customers into Advocates

They still need a gentle nudge that encourages them to make time for training. The best and the most 10 Preview Your Courses cost-effective nudge comes in the form of emails. There are a million ways to use emails for It takes a lot of time to watch a long movie, but I marketing. Here are just a few... always have the time to watch the preview of a movie. And if I like the preview, I’m much more likely to find the time to watch the whole movie. 8 Try "Drip" Campaigns The same applies to training. Most of the customers who browse your training won’t actually decide to buy anything. But if you can get them to watch a A good drip campaign is continuous preview of the course, they are much more likely to communication that adds value and reminds take the course. customers about the training that’s available to them. The keys to success with drip campaigns are The preview you show can be as simple as offering to deliver small doses on a regular basis and avoid the first section of an elearning course or it could be being intrusive. "Drip" just a little bit at a time and as elaborate as a one-minute promotional video. always add value. Regardless, previews will increase training consumption. If you have to, start small and do just For instance, if they just took course A, then a little bit at a time, but definitely try it. Just make immediately send a preview of course B. Next week, sure you have a learning management system send an email promoting something else that would (LMS) with preview technology built in. be valuable to them, like a recording of a recent webinar. The following week, send them a link to an article related to the course they took. The following week, send a link to the entire course Run Webinars Regularly catalog and invite them to browse for other relevant 11 training. Of course, you’ll have to determine the right level of communication so that it’s not too If you’re training your customers, then it’s a good much or too often. bet that webinars were one of the first things you added to your training mix. There’s no faster, more cost-effective way to get training to a lot of customers. Plus, each webinar recording becomes 9 Automate Your Marketing an asset you can continue to reuse, remarket, and repackage in the future. For marketers, webinars are the gift that keeps on giving. Many of these suggestions can’t be accomplished without some form of marketing automation. There are hundreds of systems to choose from and many of them will do the most important thing, which is Get Managers to Assign lead-nurturing and drip campaigns. Look at proven 12 Training tools such as Hubspot , Marketo , and Pardot. Which of these two things would make you more There are also lower cost and simpler systems such likely to sign up for training? A call from me or a as Act—On and ActiveCampaign that will do call from your boss? Nobody is better at convincing most of what you need. you to get trained than your direct supervisor. That’s why it’s so important for marketers to focus You'll find reviews of marketing automation some of their marketing efforts on managers and systems here. 24 22 Ways to Promote Your Training and Turn Customers into Advocates getting buy-in about the importance of training. Pursue Referrals Also, managers need to know which of their direct 15 reports are getting the training they need and which are not. Managers also need a super easy way All salespeople agree that the best lead is a referral. to reach out and congratulate those who are getting But how do you encourage more referrals? The best trained and remind those who are falling behind. way is to stop being shy about asking for them. Much of this can be automated or made easy Most customers want to help you if they like what through an advanced LMS. you have to offer. It’s just not top of mind for them unless you ask.

So, consider this: Include a question on your course Don’t Forget evaluation asking who else at their company needs 13 the Executives this training. If that’s not encouraging enough, then offer incentives or even a raffle for a bigger prize. If you want managers to encourage training, then This really works. I know of a training company company executives need to be on the same that generated over 10,000 referrals in just a few page. If you get executive buy-in, then everything years. To this day, the referral program is still their else becomes easier. When executives realize the highest performing and least expensive source of importance of your product on their success and leads. understand the role of training in that product, then it’s a no-brainer. Suddenly, those invisible roadblocks disappear and, remarkably, training consumption and—eventually—customer Work with Your Customer satisfaction go up as well. 16 Service & Customer Success Teams Do your customer-facing personnel realize the Mix Up Your Training importance of training? Do your customer service 14 & Repurpose the Good reps know that if their customers get training, then Stuff their job will get easier? Do your customer success No two customers are alike, and no two students people know that a better trained customer is are alike. We all learn differently. Some of us are inevitably a more successful customer? If they do, visual, some auditory, some kinesthetic. Some of us then they should always know what training their want live training, while some want recorded videos customers need and continuously encourage them or something to read. to invest time in it.

If you can cover that variety of learning styles, then you will deliver a lot more training. The best way to do this is to develop a repurposing strategy where Brand Your Training you put a lot of effort into developing core content, 17 then repurpose it into multiple media. The hard part is developing the core content. But once you Branding is a subtle thing and not very well have that, then everything else becomes easy, while understood by most people, including marketers. A you carve it up and make it available in different good brand makes buyers more confident that their formats. For instance, you could develop one time and money will be well spent, and a badly executed brand erodes buyer confidence and causes elearning course, then repurpose it into bite-sized chunks of videos, documents, blogs, instructor-led indecision. The most important component of a courses, and webinars. strong brand is the perceived quality and 25 22 Ways to Promote Your Training and Turn Customers into Advocates reputation of your product, but the other easier for customers to buy. We would make it complementary side is visual branding: The easier to find training, register for training, and consistency of the logo, colors, fonts, writing, and consume training. But it’s really hard to make style in general—the personality of the brand. If all something easy. It takes empathy and a desire to of this is done right, it definitely helps. If it’s done make life easier for our customers. It takes walking wrong, it hurts. a mile in their Nike Airs and really understanding how they look at the world. Until you do that, you're putting up obstacles on the way to the consumption of your training. 18 Reach out to Marketing

While reading all this, you might be saying, “I know very little about marketing and nobody on my team 20 Create Urgency does either.” If that’s the case, then it’s important to get close with someone in the marketing My days rarely turn out like I planned them. department. There’s always something getting in the way of doing the long-term important stuff. For instance, They can help you in many ways, but you need I’ve tried to write this article for several weeks, but something to offer them in return to make it a win- because it requires a lot of time and because there wasn’t a real deadline, all the urgent stuff got in the win. For instance, if your organization is really way. good at creating quality content, that could be your stock in trade. Marketers always need more quality Training is like that. It requires a lot of time and it content to help sell your products, so help them tends to be put off and put off until it’s either out. Work with marketing to develop pre-sales forgotten or until a real deadline pops up. Because training that shows how easy the product is to use. of this, you need to create a sense of urgency. That doesn’t mean making up false deadlines. It means Or, simply help them develop better marketing being suggestive of urgency. videos to show how your product solves their problems. That way, they will be more than happy A great example of that is the phrases that you hear to help you with marketing activities that come over and over in advertising: “Buy Now,” “Register with a steep learning curve—such as marketing Today,” or “There’s never been a better time...”. automation. Marketers use these phrases because they really work and create a subtle sense of urgency.

Make Training Easy 19 to Buy 21 Consider Gamification One of the worst things that can happen is that a customer looks for training that they desperately A few years ago, gamification was the hottest thing need and then goes home empty-handed because out there, but it’s subsided a little in recent years. they either couldn’t find it or got frustrated because However, at the very least, gamification is a great it was taking too much time. marketing tool. If you proudly show which individuals have participated in the most training This happens more than you might think. It's like and give out awards, then you can spur others to that adage: “If I had more time, I would have pump up their overall training efforts too. written a shorter letter.” The same is true for marketing. If we had more time, we would make it

26 22 Ways to Promote Your Training and Turn Customers into Advocates

22 Find New People to Train

Training for customer onboarding is easy. You know who needs the training, so you go train them. But shortly thereafter, people leave and get replaced and teams grow and contract. You can consider these new arrivals as little untrained threats to customer success. Yet, it’s rare that your customers are banging on your door to tell you they have a new person who needs training.

It’s in your best interest to get ahead of this by being extremely proactive about finding out who has departed and who has replaced them. For some companies, the customer success team is responsible for this. Part of their monthly check-in with customers is to find the skills gaps and develop a plan to close them. Others don’t really address it and eventually pay the price with untrained customers and greater churn.

I know I've presented a lot of ideas here for you to consider and you can’t do them all, especially without a lot of marketing expertise on your team. I advise you to start small. Pick one or two that look easy and do a little bit at a time. I've seen it over and over: You will start showing results. Eventually, you can get more resources as training consumption grow and, in the end, customer success will grow as well.

About the author: Gordon Johnson, author of "The Ultimate Guide to LMS Marketing," has industry expertise in learning management systems, learning engagement platforms and content management systems and consults organizations on their marketing plan development, analyst relations, lead generation and pricing and packaging. Communicate with Gordon at [email protected].

27 I t’s easy to understand why companies want to educate their customers. Success stories from every industry show compelling results. When customers know how a product or service will help them achieve their goals, they're likely to have a more successful experience. And when customers succeed, they're likely to buy more and encourage others to do the same.

So, customer training is not just common sense. It is also powerful fuel that can help drive a virtuous cycle of business revenue and profit. This chapter looks at how thoughtful packaging and pricing can improve the impact of your customer education initiatives.

Customer training: To charge or not to charge? Since training is such a critical dimension of the customer experience equation, it naturally begs the 8 question, should you charge customers for Strategies educational content? If you educate new customers at no extra charge, will the long-term business benefits outweigh the near-term revenue streams for Pricing you could capture from selling that training directly? How exactly should you define your & Packaging pricing scheme?

Customer Every organization must answer these questions differently. It depends on an organization's business model, product positioning, competitive Training landscape and customer base. As a backdrop for this decision, it's useful to consider relevant industry standards and practices. First, let's weigh the pros and cons of free versus fee-based pricing.

By John Leh 28 Strategies for Pricing and Packaging Customer Training

Free content: Fee-based content: Pros and Cons Pros and Cons There is no free lunch. Even if customer training is Given the potential business benefits of free content offered at no additional charge, the cost of content strategies, why would any organization want to development, delivery and administration must be charge customers upfront for training? Well, if you included somewhere in the price of every product can generate training content revenue and expand or service. No matter what, buyers will pay, but your overall business revenues and profitability, whether they pay separately is a packaging question isn't that a better choice? Here are several ways that that should be driven by marketing strategy. fee‐ based methods work:

Our research indicates multiple reasons why ● In some industries, charging customers organizations choose not to charge customers for training is a well-established model. separately for training, including: Customers expect to pay for educational content, and there is no advantage to ● To remove another roadblock on the changing the status quo. way to product adoption, because adoption is a key factor in customer ● The more complex a product, the more retention and lifetime value. Ensuring that important it is to offer sophisticated more customers are successful more education and certification content. swiftly can lead to stronger overall Typically, customers who purchase revenues and long‐ term profitability. complex products want to gain skill, competence and expertise as quickly as ● To differentiate their brand from possible. These buyers are inclined to competitors and drive more upfront sales. invest in training that shortens their learning curve. ● To "pad" the bundle of core products being offered when companies see that ● Free content can be an excellent their educated customers tend to purchase introduction for new customers, but paid additional products over time, through certifications can add business value for upselling or cross‐ selling. you and your customers. For example, when Amazon, Cisco or Microsoft developers obtain IT certifications, these credentials qualify them to earn more for their expertise. Think of this as a way to formalize and monetize the customer relationship.

29 Strategies for Pricing and Packaging Customer Training

The best of both worlds: The freemium Over the past decade, the rise of cloud computing, ● Free Tool software-as-a-service (SaaS) and subscription Who doesn't appreciate a handy online business models have popularized a strategy known calculator, assessment or decision support as the "freemium." Another way to describe this is tool that resolves specific issues you regularly the "Trojan Horse" approach. Companies bundle face on the job? Think of lightweight apps or free training with core products to demonstrate the browser extensions like SEO widgets from content's value. This initial exposure is intended to Google or Moz. That's the logic behind free open the door to incremental paid training upsells. functional utilities from brands that want to remain top-of-mind while aiming for a larger A freemium strategy differs from purely free share of your business content because it's designed specifically to drive conversions to fee‐ based relationships. Freemiums ● Ecosystem come in multiple flavors: This "marketplace" model depends on revenue‐ sharing from a broad community of ● Land and Expand third‐ party developers or affiliates that This business-to-business technique focuses support a central platform. Successful on attracting a legion of individual customers examples include Google Play, iTunes and at a basic free level, one user at a time. When Salesforce AppExchange. There are also the number of users in an organization many examples in the commercial training reaches "critical mass," it often makes sense space, including Udemy, Skillshare, for the organization to invest in a premium Teachable, Pluralsight and Lynda. volume‐ based relationship. Numerous enterprise applications have succeeded with Although freemium models have become this kind of strategy, including Slack, popular in recent years, success can be MailChimp and Dropbox. elusive. Conversion rates are typically less than 10 percent. Without a massive ● Alternative Product Strategy addressable market, it's difficult to reach The goal is to leverage a high-value free critical mass. Furthermore, if a product isn't product to get a foot in the door, and truly self-service, it may be too complex for a eventually cross-sell an entirely different freemium model. premium product. HubSpot offers a good example. The company launched its free CRM offering to win new accounts that would ultimately be attracted to its premium‐ priced marketing automation platform.

● Network Effect Widespread digital connectivity makes it possible for platforms to leverage users and their connections for content co-creation, learning and knowledge sharing at scale. Examples include YouTube, Twitter, TripAdvisor and Quora. 30 Strategies for Pricing and Packaging Customer Training

Picking your price: Testing: How much to charge Tips for measuring for training pricing strategies Pricing customer education is tricky and there is no All of the free and fee—based customer pricing universal equation, but it helps to frame the strategies we've outlined are measurable. This problem strategically. The optimal price will means you can test their effectiveness, an essential depend on two critical factors: your business goals step both before and after a product launch. And and your customers' perceived value of the learning although pricing models themselves may be experience. challenging to develop, the measurement process may be easier than you think. Can this content stand on its own as a profit center, or will it be more successful if it is positioned as an The first step is perhaps the most difficult: You enabler of your product strategy? must clarify and operationalize your business goals. For example, say your training goal is to increase For profit centers, the primary selling objective is to the adoption rate among new customers. You'll achieve profitable recurring revenue streams. Price want to determine the appropriate metric, such as points should reflect the perceived content value, your customer satisfaction score (CSAT), net the cost of the core product, the level of expected promoter score (NPS) or customer renewal rate. demand and competitive pricing pressures. More This will help you establish reasonable complex products naturally command a higher benchmarks. price for customer training. Then periodically track relevant data from For example, a software company charging $1,000 customers who consumed content for each of the a user/year for an individual product license should training packages you provide. Compare these expect to charge 10 percent or less for training. scores with customers who didn't use the training. Alternatively, a medical device manufacturer selling After several reporting cycles, it should become a diagnostic system for hundreds of thousands of clear which pricing approach generates the optimal dollars could easily charge thousands or tens of business results. thousands of dollars per student. Successful organizations understand that testing For training designed to drive product sales, you'll never really ends. It's a process of applying want to consider the mindset of customers as you relevant, standardized intelligence to drive establish pricing. Do they expect training to be free continuous improvement. or fee-based? How confident are you about this assumption? Although you may not want training costs to inhibit product adoption, it's equally important not to devalue customer education at the outset.

Before you commit, conduct informal or formal research with customers. Ask your best customers for feedback about your content value and various pricing and packaging scenarios.

31 Strategies for Pricing and Packaging Customer Training

● Training plans How to package training: Training plans, learning paths, customer journeys and curricula are different terms for Considerations & examples the same concept. They are all pre-defined Most of the costs involved in developing content paths that help learners move through multiple occur upfront. The incremental cost of selling pieces of content in a logical sequence. They content is nearly zero. The investment required to usually involve prerequisites and timed design, build and deploy customer training is availability of content. Upon successful identical, regardless of whether you sell it to one completion of a training plan, learners often buyer or a thousand. It also means that the more receive a formal certification or designation. quickly you sell an individual piece of content, the One of the most visible and successful examples more quickly your profits will accumulate. of learning paths is the Salesforce Trailhead online training program. Subscribers can Now that we've considered various pricing models, pursue a series of challenges and projects to let's look at the most popular ways you can package earn points and badges while they learn how to training to accommodate a variety of customer use the product in a hands-on, self-paced preferences. environment.

● A la Carte ● Subscription This is the most common way to sell training A subscription provides access to content for a content, books or really anything—pricing pre‐ determined time interval. Often customers courses (products) individually and charging pay monthly or annually (with a one‐‐ or two upfront. The fee may cover a live training month discount) for access. Content event or access to specific online content for a subscriptions can be applied for a single course, predetermined timeframe. Pricing is based on a series of courses, a bundle, a training plan, a the quality, length and perceived value. catalog or an entire library. Some organizations, such as Lynda.com, provide access to all content ● Bundles for the same flat fee. Success with this kind of Bundles "package" a group of courses or any business model depends on selling a massive content together as a collection and are priced volume of lower‐ cost subscriptions. as one piece of content—usually at a discount Alternatively, organizations can offer to purchasing the content pieces individually. subscriptions for more targeted areas of These collections may include any number of content, such as topic-specific bundles or courses, but don't necessarily involve a training plans. This helps maximize the sequence or clearly defined path for learners. opportunity to drive incremental sales among Access is typically offered for a defined period. individual customers. An example of creative training bundles comes from the HR Certification Institute Additionally, the free and freemium concepts (HRCI), which lets HR professionals build discussed previously can be used toaugment their own custom training bundle to save any of the above models. money on exam preparation. LinkedIn Learning is one example of subscription-based professional training. Courses are sold on a monthly or annual subscription basis but are also included "free" with every LinkedIn Premium account bundle.

32 Strategies for Pricing and Packaging Customer Training

“Universal principles” Clearly, there are countless ways to package, price and manage customer training. Established companies often charge for training through a customer education profit center. Startups tend to focus on broader objectives and forego immediate training revenues to grow their customer bases more quickly.

There is no simple "correct" solution. However, there are universal principles. Start by reconciling your revenue priorities with the need for customer success. If the pricing and packaging options seem overwhelming, let your business strategy be your guide. Then verify your assumptions by testing and tuning, early and often. With relevant data, you'll have a reliable foundation as you build a virtuous cycle of profit.

About the author: John Leh is CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, LLC. Named among the "Top 20 Global Elearning Movers and Shakers" in 2018 and 2017, John is a fiercely independent LMS selection consultant, blogger and podcaster who helps organizations develop and implement learning technology strategies—primarily for extended enterprise applications. His advice is based on more than 20 years of industry experience, serving as a trusted LMS selection and sales adviser to more than 100 learning organizations with a total technology spend of more than $65 million. You can connect with John on Twitter at @JohnLeh or on LinkedIn.

33 T here's nothing like a certification program to prove that your company has a robust ecosystem of partners, solution providers, and other experts— internal and external—ready to help customers deploy, integrate, and train on your technology. But not every organization is a Microsoft or a Cisco.

How do you know when your operation is ready to introduce a certification program? In this chapter we explore the link between customer success and certification, dig into proven approaches for developing a well-structured program, and provide details on an alternative that nearly any company can adopt as a lower-cost, lower-effort option.

Why add certification to training There are multiple reasons why companies add certification to their training operations. A primary one is to validate the skills that employees and individuals in your partner network possess, to 9 show the outside world that they know what they're Best Practices talking about. Also, customers who choose to pursue certification for Creating in your technology become more self-reliant. They learn how to use the product more effectively, make a Hot Certification fewer basic calls to tech support, and tend to be happier with the implementation—which means they tend to buy more. Frequently, you'll find Program certified individuals working in the corporate center of excellence or other units where best (that Makes your practices are developed and embedded into the rest of the organization. Product Stickier) Another big driver is brand loyalty. People who have achieved a credential by going through extensive training and passing multiple exams, for example, are less likely to switch to another company's product line on a whim. They have a deep investment in the current one and are proud By Joe Cannata 34 Best Practices for Creating a Hot Certification Program (that Makes your Product Stickier) of what they've accomplished. Their certification Demonstrates a tangible return on investment for sets them above and apart from others working that effort. Plus, studies have shown that employers with your software. That translates into stickiness are more likely to hold onto staff that has been for your products and services. certified. This is because people appreciate the investment the company has made in their personal Then there's the link to the value of your training and professional development. program itself. Earning a certification after training

4 TIPS FOR BUILDING YOUR CERTIFICATION PROGRAMS

#1 Start with the strategy #3 Keep people hungry A certification program needs two ingredients to Like a popular video game that pushes players to succeed: Executive commitment and a reason for "level up," the best certifications reward people by existing. Frequently, those go hand in hand. Is recognizing their hard work and encouraging them to certification meant to turn training into a profit continue pursuing additional titles. If you have a level center? Claim huge numbers of certified experts? one exam, for example, make sure you have plans at Reduce support costs? Nail down what your C-suite's some point to introduce a level two and even level goals are for your program, manage expectations, and three—when the timing is right. Bundle exams into a keep them informed as you make progress. Once your mastery credential. Then, reward them when they've certification work has gone live, feed them relevant reached the goal. Grant customers or external experts metrics. If they ever begin to appear disengaged, special access to company insiders or technical that’s an indicator that it may be time to have new resources, present them with wall‐ worthy certificates conversations and reconsider the strategy. and logos, provide company swag, add a ribbon to their conference badges, and recognize them on your website and in your promotional materials.

#2 Lack staff? #4 Get help from other Contract with the experts departments to make your The most ambitious certification programs are program succeed carefully crafted by certification experts, people who Besides management buy-in, you'll need support from have worked on training and certification in other multiple business units: companies. Two such organizations, CEdMA, the Customer Education Management Association, and • Finance because it can be expensive to build a certification TSIA, the Technology Services Industry Association , program are great sources for identifying vendors who can provide these services and getting references from • HR which will want to include your credentials as people in the field regarding reliability, quality, and required or nice-to-have skills in job descriptions cost. • Marketing and communications to make sure your logos, messaging, and outreach efforts fit into company guidelines and reach further than you could on your own • Product groups where you'll find subject matter experts who can help you develop the contents of your certification and be the first in line to test the exams you create.

35 Best Practices for Creating a Hot Certification Program (that Makes your Product Stickier)

The certification Certification as alternative: stealth marketing Microcredentials Think about certifications as a form of stealth marketing. People will pay for the training, they'll Microcredentials or "digital badges" are the newest pay for the exam, and, in return, they sit through a form of certification. Typically, they don’t require 60- or 90-minute commercial in which they hope to the level of training that a full credential requires answer questions about your product or service and they fit well into a digital format. correctly. Microcredentials may emphasize specialty aspects A well-designed certification program is another that aren't part of the base product or service, such way of telling customers and prospects that there's as add-on apps or useful soft skills. They could also value in getting to know about your company and emphasize specific, crucial skills. learning about your products.

Whereas a full certification exam may last 90 minutes and have 60 questions, microcredentials may have half as many questions and tend to be less expensive to earn. Rather than receiving a certificate for their feat, learners who pursue a microcredential do so for the digital reward: a badge they can immediately put in their email signature or post to their online professional profiles.

For companies developing microcredentials, the investment is less than for a standard certification program and visibility may be greater because of the social aspects of badging.

About the author: Joe Cannata has many years of expertise in the development of training and certification programs for some of the world's largest tech companies, including Hewlett-Packard and Brocade. Most recently, he serves as the certification director for Kinaxis and as a board member for CEdMA, a leading professional association for training leaders.

36 Best Practices for Creating a Hot Certification Program (that Makes your Product Stickier)

Kinaxis: How We Created Our Certifications By Joe Cannata

Kinaxis produces a cloud-based supply chain Then it was time to start writing questions. I gave a management application sold by subscription. In brief training on the guidelines for that July 2015, the company brought me in as (shared in a CEdMA blog post here), emphasizing certification director to launch a program with the importance of the quality of the questions and three credentials, each one addressing a different making them legally defensible, should a test-taker role tied to its product, RapidResponse. "Authors" decide we were being unfair with the exam items. are people who create what-if scenarios in the We concluded with an in-depth group review of the software; "Administrators" understand the questions. architecture of the software and serve in a data or system administrator role; and "Contributors" In the course of five days we had built our first test. serve as power users who understand how to We duplicated that process for every exam navigate in the program, work with data, and developed afterwards. Six months after joining the understand its basic functionality. company, I was pleased to be part of the launch of the program at Kinaxis' annual employee/partner A small cross-functional group developed a "rough conference, where we gave two new exams free to wireframe," which laid out the basic structures for scores of attendees. each credential. Our education group began building out the training program in tandem. Once Now we've developed a "master"-level credential we had an outline of what we planned to do, we that requires no unique exam itself because those brought in additional people throughout the who earn it have already taken a number of the company to provide feedback—and eventually to other tests, along with gaining years of experience serve as the "subject-matter experts" to create the in the field working with the product in multiple items that would become exam questions. Those scenarios. We already sense the excitement and participants came from education, technical interest among experts inside and outside of the marketing, professional services, support, research company to earn this new title because we've given and development, and product management. them a new, ambitious goal to pursue. We went into the exam development process first, with the intention of creating a blueprint for each test. We followed an industry-standard process called the "job task analysis," to identify the entire body of knowledge required within a given job. Those were divided by topic and within each the experts identified objectives they considered most important.

37 C ustomer learning is a "value-add" that differentiates your company from the competition. This is because it's a win-win: Customers learn to use your product or service more effectively and you benefit from the revenue stream. These qualities are often considered by looking at return on investment (ROI) and value of investment (VOI), which have a well-defined connection. Unless your customers find value—their VOI—from the learning that you provide, you will not reap any financial reward—your ROI. The emphasis of this chapter is how to you can measure the ROI and VOI of learning throughout the customer lifecycle.

Why customer learning? The vendor movement toward more in-depth customer learning experiences is relatively new. Vendors have provided some end-user "feature" training but, in general, customer training has not been a high priority of software vendors. If training is included, it's often developed toward the end of the development cycle or just before launch. This 10 "feature" focus of training also means that the users Measuring have a very narrow product exposure and often don't understand the context and higher purpose of the software—the real reason behind why they're the ROI/VOI of doing it.

Customer Today, customers are savvier about what they need for training. Especially with subscription software, Learning vendors have to do more than provide a product. The competition is fierce, and the goal for vendors becomes the added business value training provides to help retain and grow a long-lasting partnership with the customer.

By Claire Schooley 38 Measuring the ROI/VOI of Customer Learning

What to measure in customer learning The measurement process for external customer learning programs is very different from the measurements used for internal corporate learning. The number of people registered for a course, the number of course completions, test scores, and the number of courses in the library are important to learning and development people. But the C-Suite wants business data that indicates that customer training influences business results. They're looking for results such as:

● Increased customer retention and higher renewal rates ● Increased customer spend and use of more product ● Better customer satisfaction scores ● Improved customer engagement ● Decrease in questions to support team

To get results in these areas, you must focus on:

Understanding Creating or Establishing an Communicating the needs of acquiring infrastructure to learning customers pertinent and enable delivery opportunities to engaging content customers aligned to the business

By following these guidelines, you'll be on your way to achieving the kind of business results outlined in the embedded infographic, "The ROI of Customer Training."

39

40 Measuring the ROI/VOI of Customer Learning

Who's involved in Since customers reach many parts of the business and customers are the concern of all employees, it customer learning makes sense to gather expertise from many In some companies marketing has taken on the business units in planning for, executing, and customer learning management role. In other measuring the effectiveness of customer learning. companies learning and development assumes this The team composition depends on your business role. No matter who leads the initiative, your but most likely it will include people from sales, chances of success increase if you assemble a marketing, learning and development, IT, and coordinated team approach. Executives must finance. Each unit has a role and contributes to commit staff and financial resources to enable this providing learning that keeps customers coming interdisciplinary team to work together. back and wanting more.

Business unit Role in customer learning

Based on customer surveys, data, and L&D knowledge of adult Learning and Development learning, L&D creates and/or acquires content and assembles it into a variety of effective user experiences.

Uses customer learning as a differentiator in making the sale. Customer success managers (CSMs) explain the opportunities Sales and suggest appropriate learning for new, intermediate, and advanced users. Sales stays up to date on present and future learning content.

Assures that the customer learning technology is consumer-like in its ease-of-use, provides quick access 24x7 from any device, Information Technology and supports learning in multiple formats (elearning, microlearning, social, virtual classroom, etc.).

Uses market analysis to help determine what customers want. Continually informs customers about learning events and Marketing activities and how these add to their success with the product. Emphasizes increased productivity due to high-quality content that uses a variety of formats personalized to users.

Provides data on aspects of business, such as retention rate, product adoption, and how to apply tax. Financial analysis can Finance assist in interpreting data and suggesting other areas of data collection.

The customer learning team working together decides on the program goals, works through technology infrastructure (build or buy), surveys customers, collects and analyzes data, and decides how to optimize training content to get those desired ROI/VOI results.

41 Measuring the ROI/VOI of Customer Learning

How to measure business effectiveness No matter what your strategy, basic measurements If you are providing some free or fee-based include: customer learning and want to quantify results, look at comparison data between those customers ● Tracking revenue from your customer learning who took or bought training and those that did not. initiative year-over-year. Examine: ● Tracking volume of use to account for the free learning provided. Accounts that renew and those that ● Expenses such as technology used to provide the do not renew (churn rate or learning, marketing to customers, and internal, attrition). outsourced, and acquired content. Although most customer learning is online, add in the costs Training data of accounts that buy associated with any onsite instructor training. more product versus the training data for those that reduce their spend. Companies provide some learning for free and leverage it to move customers to fee-based training Consumption level by comparing that is more in-depth and developed for different number of users who have roles. For example, sales uses free training as a consumed training versus number strategy at renewal time. The ratio of fee-to-free of users in the account. training is generally about 75 percent fee-based to Training conversion, the number of 25 percent free. users who moved from free training to paid training versus number of users who used only free training.

Support team reduction in "how to" questions received from those trained versus those not trained.

Customer satisfaction data from trained versus untrained customers.

Number of product components used by trained customers versus underuse of product by customers not trained.

Shorter time to reach productivity for trained customers versus those who aren't trained.

42 Measuring the ROI/VOI of Customer Learning

Because the extended enterprise market of of product by customers, and an overall better customer and partner learning is young, vendors customer experience. and companies have not yet explored all that can be done with this kind of technology. The results may ● As TSIA found, the average renewal rate among not be all numbers-based. Even now, some trained software subscribers is 92 percent vs. 80 percent companies are looking at gaining broader value for untrained customers. from customer training by: ● At least 64 percent of customers use products more ● Using it to build community among customers after they participate in elearning, virtual instructor-led and the company training, classroom training or on-site training, ● Becoming a trusted adviser Talented Learning reported. i.e. a medical products company ● Creating an ecosystem ● Over 86 percent of buyers will pay more for a better i.e. users becoming proficient on the platform, customer experience, according to Walker's then developing on the platform "Customers 2020, A Progress Report."

● The leading causes of churn, according to Retently , Salesforce has developed and marketed training are poor onboarding (23 percent), weak relationship successfully using a team approach. They say that building (16 percent) and poor customer service (14 training is core to customer success with their percent). customer relationship management product. ● Only 29 percent of B2B customers are fully engaged, Internal data showed the company that customers Gallup found. The other 71 percent are ready and who invested in training on an ongoing basis got 80 willing to take their business elsewhere. percent higher ROI on their Salesforce investment. ● In a Brandon Hall Group survey, more than half Customer learning provides education throughout of companies (55 percent) reported that customer the ecosystem, starting with an introduction to the learning improves customer relations; 41 percent said it platform and continuing with more advanced—and maximizes client retention; and 26 percent said it more appropriate—learning as users become more reduces client support interactions. familiar with the product. The outcome: Numerous customers have chosen to build solutions on the Remember: Customers engage in learning Salesforce platform. voluntarily. They will access the content you provide and ask for more only if they know about it and the learning offerings help them understand and use the product to increase their productivity. Customer Learning Learning needs to continue through the customer Delivers Results lifecycle, leading to a closer relationship and solid brand affinity between the customer and vendor. Although customer education is still in its early stages and company data isn't plentiful, findings from research firms shows that it's working. Even as far back as 2010 research data showed that the #1 factor in company loyalty was to reduce customer effort. This is testament to the About the author: importance of providing the right learning—easily Claire Schooley, principal, Claire Schooley Consulting, accessible, short and to-the-point. Customer and long-time Forrester analyst, specializes in learning wins by providing additional revenue to workforce growth and development. She has over 25 years of experience in education and corporate companies, more brand-loyal customers, more use human resources, focusing on learning, recruiting and performance.Contact Claire through her website or at [email protected]

43 U nless you intend to build your training business around serving just a handful of customers, you can expect to automate much of the operations for managing users, training content, data, and other aspects of the operation. Otherwise, the manual effort will quickly overwhelm you and put you behind even before the organization is really off the ground. Fortunately, the customer success segment is rife with programs and services ready to address any aspect of your work. This chapter does two things: First, it offers a lay- of-the-land for the various kinds of software (and leading examples) you'll want to consider for building a solid foundation for your customer training business. Second, we offer guidance to help you make the right choices as you're building your technology stack.

The layers of the customer training technology stack The different types of software for customer success 11 and training can be divided into a few broad usage How to categories:

● Used for overseeing the customer lifecycle; Assemble Your ● Used for managing the learning processes; and ● Used primarily by you and your customers for Customer the sake of communication and collaboration. Training Technology Customer lifecycle management Stack These products are designed to help you oversee some particular segment of the customer lifecycle: collecting information about prospects, managing your leads, marketing to them, turning them into paying customers and keeping them happy. Some companies, such as Salesforce.com, have programs By to address every aspect of the customer lifecycle. Barry Kelly Others focus on their specific task and offer 44 How to Assemble Your Customer Training Technology Stack

features that encroach on the other groups. For example, companies classified as marketing automation may also consider themselves players The learning in the customer success category. management system Customer relationship management The LMS lies at the heart of digital customer Take every lead you can drum up and plug them training. First, it serves as the waystation for into a system to track through the sales cycle from learners—where they head to get their assignments, every angle—individual, division, company, view alerts, receive notifications, take assessments, industry. That process includes managing renewals, receive evidence of learning, and communicate with gauging the temperature of your customer, and subject matter experts. Second, on the recording every interaction you have, which is all exactly what a CRM is made for. Salesforce.com administrative side, the leading examples of LMSs is the granddaddy of customer success, but there (such as the Thought Industries Customer are many other CRMs that share most, if not all, of Learning Platform) provide a myriad of the same features. features:

Marketing automation ● Content authoring tools to create lessons and assemble While the best learning management systems training modules from text and graphics, video and include features to help with marketing, this audio, quiz questions, gamification scoring, simulations, category is dedicated to the job and has gained animations, and other types of learning materials; ready pickup among marketing pros in training businesses. Among the activities these programs ● A learning object repository for storing lessons, videos, handle is lead generation and nurturing, email PDF documents, and other resources; campaigns, lead scoring, and data analytics for tracking success and failure. Prime brands include ● The ability to embed a "virtual lab" inside the LMS for Marketo, HubSpot, and Oracle Eloqua. hands-on training and allow people to use the software they're learning; Customer success The newest category of application among those ● Communication components to continually "tickle" profiled here, the basic idea of this product type is learners, as Pat Durante, president of the Computer to help you stay on top of your customers Education Management Association (CEdMA) puts it, to throughout the entire lifecycle. By doing that, you'll remind them about the next lesson, encourage them to retain them longer, discover what drew them in to facilitate finding more prospects just like them, and keep going and upsell them to the next phase of their help them become successful with their goals. As a learning; result, they can be expected to buy more from you. Or, as the Technology Services Industry ● Data management for capturing details about delivery, Association succinctly expresses it, the right user engagement and consumption of training; customer success technology can "reduce churn, lower costs, and improve customer loyalty." ● Certification and digital badging management, to keep Prominent examples include GainSight, Natero, users on top of their progress and automate the issuing and Totango. of credentials as they're earned them;

Customer service ● E-commerce components that enable you to bundle Otherwise known as help-desk or support systems, your training into modules or collections and sell them these programs provide a means for giving help to online; and the organizations buying your training and the individuals receiving it. The best offer a ● Front-end and back-end reporting to keep learners combination of services, including chat, a informed of their own progress and enable you to track knowledgebase for self-service, a ticketing system, learner progress behind the scenes. service level agreement views, and reporting to let you stay informed about support metrics. Two examples are Zendesk and Kayako.

45 How to Assemble Your Customer Training Technology Stack

Communication and collaboration These programs enable real-time and non-concurrent communication and collaboration.

MEETING SOFTWARE CHAT

This is also known as virtual classroom, Chat windows, otherwise known as videoconferencing or webinar software or messaging or instant messaging, are virtual instructor-led training (VILT). Some common on software home pages, asking if programs are better suited for pulling people you need help before you've purchased a together with video, audio and whiteboard product. Chat is also a useful mechanism for for a virtual meeting session, while others are on-going customer support. It is essential to intended for slideshow presentations with the stack because people would rather chat audio. Some companies offer both flavors of by text on a web page than pick up the services. "There are times with customers phone and talk with a support rep. where you want to bring them together in a Frequently, these are available as an add-on live environment so that they can ask to help desk— Zendesk Chat or questions," explains Claire Schooley, Kayako Messenger—or customer analyst and researcher in the field of relationship management programs— workforce growth and development. By Salesforce Service Cloud. meeting in a virtual classroom, "you can follow along with them and see if they're having difficulty and then talk about it." Examples include Zoom, BlueJeans, Webex, ON24, and GoToMeeting.

COMMUNITY SOFTWARE BLOG SOFTWARE

These products serve as a targeted form of Every serious company has a blog these days, social media. They give people a place to go as a forum for sharing news directly with to ask and answer questions and help each customers, promoting upcoming events, other. Even though answers may come from broadcasting new case studies, and sharing customers, the company should expect to advice, feature how-to's and other kinds of check responses to make sure they're information. Now blog software has also correct or add additional insights, advises turned into content management software, Schooley. As the information piles up in the serving as the platform for creating entire program, it serves as an FAQ, allowing websites. WordPress, with both open people to search for information without source and commercial versions, leads the posing a question at all. way with most of the global market. Oftentimes, as John Leh, LMS selection consultant, points out, the functionality of typical blog software will be included in marketing automation programs.

46 How to Assemble Your Customer Training Technology Stack

Other useful programs Believe it or not, the list above isn't complete. There are a few other lingering programs you may consider including in your technology stack. Sometimes the features provided by these "one- offs" are also encompassed in one of the platforms we've already covered, but that'll vary from vendor to vendor.

SURVEY Make sure you have the ability to run customer satisfaction SOFTWARE surveys. SurveyMonkey is the favorite here. Not only can you quickly set up stylish surveys to check on how happy people are with your latest customer support help, but you can use it to query new customers about why they haven't really done anything with their trial product or find out what it would take to get them to try the latest features you've unfurled.

EMAIL MARKETING Until you have full-fledged marketing automation software in place, you may rely on a dedicated email marketing service such as MailChimp or Constant Contact. These programs serve to help you stay in touch with your training prospects and customers.

47 How to Assemble Your Customer Training Technology Stack

THREE STACKING TIPS FROM THE PROS Now that you understand the various kinds of technology that make up a winning customer success and training operation, it's time to begin building. But first, here are three stacking tips from the pros that will save you time, money, and frustration.

1 2 3 Interoperability Choose Remember, you're is important best-of-breed a customer too

All of the programs we've While some of the companies Your customers expect certain listed here generate their own referenced here would like all things in the training they buy data, but it's just data in a silo of your customer success and from you, advised Clair unless you can integrate it to training business, they're not Schooley: service that's mobile make new discoveries. An all best at what they do, to work on any device and advantage of working with suggests Thought Industries while on the go; that's the big names in each Sales Engineer, KJ McGowan. browser-based so it's always category is that they follow Spend time mapping out your available; and modular and industry standards that will technology needs to cover the video-based so they can learn enable you to connect diverse big areas of your operation, just what they need and systems, says John Leh. That sort out what portions of the rapidly. can be done by connector, spectrum your existing application programming software already addresses Make sure any service you interface (API), or a dedicated well, identify the gaps, and run subscribe to as part of your third-party tool, such as trial versions of software that tech stack offers the same Zapier. could help close them. Where feature set: mobility, browser- you see overlap, go with the based, and outfitted with video services that appear to have training so you can quickly staying power, explain their pick up what you need as you data privacy options clearly, need to learn it. and play well with the other services in your stack.

About the author: Barry Kelly is the CEO of Thought Industries, a leading learning management system company that recently introduced the Customer Learning Platform, a system specifically designed to streamline the online experience and automate customer onboarding. 48 Appendix: The Thought Industries Customer Learning Platform The Fastest Way to an Educated Customer LEARN MORE...

Guide your customers to success and create fans for life

Customer onboarding, training, certification and support are time consuming and hard to scale. Streamline the learning experience, automate customer onboarding and mobilize your training for your hard-to-reach customers. BUILT—IN Deliver exceptional learning experiences Build engaging online learning experiences with TOOLS powerful drag-and-drop authoring tools. Leverage over 20 learning objects such as surveys, interactive FOR… content, discussion boards, and more to create customer learning programs.

Improve customer success & satisfaction ✔ Onboarding Build engaging online learning experiences with powerful drag-and-drop authoring tools. Leverage ✔ Content Creation over 20 learning objects such as surveys, interactive content, discussion boards, and more to create customer learning programs. ✔ Certifications

Modernize the software education experience ✔ Deliver engaging, interactive online learning-from eCommerce onboarding to advocacy-to ensure your software customers get the most out of your product ✔ New Product offerings. Training Discover new revenue generation opportunities Leverage the most powerful and comprehensive suite of monetization tools in the market to offer premium content, service packages, subscriptions, licensing, up-selling, and cross-selling.

4749 Appendix: The Thought Industries Customer Learning Platform

Powerful customer learning capabilities built for customer success

Integrated In-App Training Software Authoring Dashboard Embed Integrated tools eliminate Embed in-context training Embed your software inside the need for third-party within your software, so that the learning platform to offer authoring tools and make users learn what they need to live exercises and step-by- know without ever leaving the content creation fast and step product training. application. easy.

Customer Portals Certification Engine Deliver dedicated portals for A built-in certification engine Powerful Commerce special customers and unique eliminates complexity, Take commerce to a whole customer groupings easily making the certification new level with subscriptions, and at no additional cost. process easy to manage, bundling, taxation, licensing, update, and document. service sales, up-selling, and cross-selling.

Panorama for Fully Seamless Licensing White-Labeled Integrations Use Panorama to license Create a perfect complement Robust set of integrations content, segment groups, and to your look and feel with with critical and widely used manage many multi-tenant seamless brand-matching of platforms such as Salesforce, enterprise customers from one your apps and website. Citrix, Adobe, Marketo, and instance. Hubspot.

BOOK A DEMO AT www.Thoughtindustries.com

50 THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO CUSTOMER TRAINING About the Authors

Barry Kelly Thought Industriesess Kelly is CEO and Co‐ founder of Thought Industries. He is a marketer and digital learning innovator and has a proven track record in web and mobile product development, customer success, and creative digital strategy. His career has been focused on helping organizations leverage the power of online learning to grow their businesses. He has over 20 years of experience in online learning, product development, and learning technology.d not. Examine:

Pat Durante Synopsysess Durante is the President of CEdMA and is the Senior Manager, Training and Education at Synopsys. He is an education executive with significant experience managing sales, customer, partner, and employee training initiatives for global technology companies. Building on 25 years of experience in high tech, including 17 years of education and management, Pat has designed, delivered, and managed several new hire sales training programs, customer‐ facing training programs, and partner certification programs.

John Leh Talented Learningess Leh is the CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, LLC. Named among the “Top 20 Global Elearning Movers and Shakers” in 2017 and 2018, John is a fiercely independent LMS selection consultant, blogger and podcaster who helps organizations develop and implement learning technology strategies – primarily for extended enterprise applications. His advice is based on more than 20 years of industry experience, serving as a trusted LMS selection and sales adviser to more than 100 learning organizations with a total technology spend of more than $65 million.

51 About the Authors

Joe Cannata Kinaxisess Cannata is the Membership Trustee on the CEdMA Board of Directors and is the Certification Director at Kinaxis. He has expertise in all aspects of education services leadership, including market analysis, strategy, certification, development, delivery, partner alliances, customer experience management, digital learning, P&L management, social media marketing, forecasting, field readiness and sales. Joe is a frequent industry speaker and is a member of other industry trade groups in the education and certification industry.d

Claire Schooley Claire Schooley Consultingess Schooley is an expert in corporate learning, recruiting, and performance management technology. As principal analyst, Claire led Forrester Research Inc.’s strategic HR practice worldwide in the areas of employee development and selection. This work included research, writing, and speaking engagements on these topics. She has her own consulting business — Claire Schooley Consulting-focused on helping companies find, nurture, and develop talent.

Craig Weiss The Craig Weiss Groupess Weiss is the CEO and Lead Analyst for the Craig Weiss Group LLC. (formally known as E‐ Learning 24/7). Craig was named the most influential person in the world for e‐ learning and the LMS space. He writes the E‐ Learning 24/7 blog, which is read in 174 countries and territories. Craig has been involved in the e‐ learning industry since the late 1990s with experience as a training director, creating and launching successful online learning programs, including purchasing LMSs. He is on the advisory board of The Moment and is the co‐ chair of the training committee for VRARA. Craig speaks regularly at conferences, events, and companies around the world.

52 About the Authors

Michael Daecher Thought Industries Daecher is the Chief Marketing Officer at Thought Industries and brings years of experience in growth startups and online learning. He first encountered Thought Industries while using the platform to-launch the multi‐ million dollar online education business within Active Interest Media. Prior to Active Interest Media, he led the marketing team at Craftsy, which was acquired by NBC/Universal. At the time of the acquisition, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Craftsy had “an audience of 12 million for its expert workshop videos and e‐ commerce shop, with 2 million active visitors a week.” Most recently, Daecher was Chief Marketing Officer at ArtistWorks, an online music education provider, which recently landed their Series A funding.

Gordon Johnson Training Growth Consultant Gordon L. Johnson has been a marketing leader in the corporate L&D industry for over twenty years with the last ten years dedicated to learning technology. Gordon’s specialty is developing transformative marketing strategies that generate qualified sales opportunities. He employs the latest digital marketing channels, coupled with traditional techniques to achieve industry-leading brand awareness and widespread web presence.

Samma Hafeez Thought Industriesess Hafeez is the Vice President of Customer Success at Thought Industries and has more than a decade of experience in customer success, leading and scaling industry- recognized teams in the delivery of technology and services around the world. She spearheaded key corporate restructuring initiatives and managed multi‐ million dollar Fortune 100-1000 portfolios at high-growth, venture-backed enterprise SaaS companies in healthcare and marketing. She recently served as Senior Manager, Client Success and Operations at CloudCare, and prior to that, she was Senior Manager Customer Success- Enterprise at BrightEdge.

53 THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO CUSTOMER TRAINING

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