The 5 Benefits Of Customer Education

Creating an exceptional product that engages and serves customers over time is a challenge.

Although substantial marketing can shine the spotlight on your product and entice individuals to find out more and move them through the sales funnel, this is not enough on its own, your product needs to be backed by an even more important aspect: Customer Education.

Think for a moment about how you would approach a new product that you have just come to know about. What would you do if you were unsure how to use it or how it can improve your life? Would you be curious about this product’s benefits or why you should invest in it?

Customer education solutions, especially in the online space, help to remove uncertainty from the equation. This approach involves information as well as touchpoints aimed to educate customers about the product that they are buying or have already bought.

These resources have several goals, including onboarding your customers, engaging them using practical advice and tips, retaining them, and even encouraging them to become advocates for your brand. Brand advocacy is especially powerful as it adds real-life experiences to your marketing and showcases positive interaction with one or several of your products.

Some of the many customer education options that you could use include product manuals, short courses, concise case studies featuring customer experiences, online tutorials that they can access at any time, or even videos where a brand team can demonstrate various features of a product.

Building a relationship with customers through education takes the relationship a step further from just buying a product and then not having any future connection. With customer education solutions, this brand connection can start as early building awareness as to why an individual might need this product in their daily lives.

Customer education also creates demand for a product, as the highlighted features make it valuable to the user.

Therefore, customer education is a great tool for demonstrating product value and enticing customers to complete a sale. No matter the size of a business, education can go a long way in boosting product revenue and reducing customer support costs.

A solid customer education program also helps to build credibility by showing that a company is a trusted, well-informed authority in its industry. This, in turn, can lead to an increase in brand awareness and respect for the business.

In this article, we are looking at the five main benefits of customer education, and how it can benefit a brand in the long-term, when executed in an expert, informative manner.

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” – Steve Jobs

According to a study by Intellum-Forrester, a customer education program can boost customer retention by 7.4%. So, how do businesses get this benefit?

The study further notes that users who are educated in a product could potentially become long-term customers. If someone has a positive experience with a brand, they are more  likely to return to the same business.

However, customers that do not get this valuable education could drop off in terms of future product support. This is where customer education makes a difference: it empowers customers to feel confident about using a product or service and inspires loyalty to a brand.

This is why it is important to build a relationship with customers through customer education. The benefit of customer education is that it allows you to engage with your target audience with a clear approach of being a source of support when they need it.

Consider this: according to Gladly, just about 36% of consumers felt like unique individuals when interacting with customer service. Flipping this script by taking on a dedicated personalised approach is one of the many benefits of customer education.

Customers who are better equipped with knowledge about your products and services will likely feel more positive about your brand. What this means for you as a business, is that you can boost customer satisfaction and improve how people experience your product.

Many well-known businesses have leveraged customer education to make their brands more accessible to the public. Some customer education examples include the popular design platform Canva, as well as collaboration tool Slack which have both leveraged video to connect with their customers and take the mystery out of what their services entail. Because they are mainly online service providers, the video platform is ideal, as their target audiences are already on the web and can engage with their content in an environment that is familiar and easy to navigate.

Not to be outdone, Apple offers free workshops in-store, as well as the opportunity for customers to view devices and get the information they need about the products that they are seeing in front of them. This is a great opportunity where customers can also directly engage with team members with any questions that they might have.

These are all fantastic examples of how brands can achieve customer satisfaction by providing education in an accessible and customer-centric manner.

Two more benefits of customer education are reduced costs and increased efficiency.

According to Zendesk, support ticket numbers at help desks rose by a whopping 16% (following the COVID-19 pandemic). Now, imagine the time and money spent on attending to each ticket logged – it can be overwhelming, and even cause teams to rush through assistance, which can negatively impact customer satisfaction.

However, this is where the benefits of customer education can really make a difference. When you actively provide these solutions, you can reduce the number of tickets as customers will have access to the information they need to solve their pain points, Also, calls will be reduced as the customer education solutions you provide make it easy to interact with various resources, such as social media tutorials or digital, interactive manuals, depending on the complexity of the products and services that you offer.

Ultimately, the goal here is not to cut out all customer interactions, but rather take the guesswork out of how your products or services work by providing customer education solutions that are practical and easy-to-follow. This way, your support teams will not be overstretched and can easily assist customers if they need more information, without needing to rush through the process due to call backlogs.

Whether you are introducing a new product to the market or want to reintroduce a current product to boost sales, customer education solutions can play a vital role in product adoption and revenue.

Customers who better understand a product (whether they viewed resources online or visited an in-store activation) will be more likely to purchase it as they know the benefits and how they can use it daily.

This increased usage can furthermore drive sales and revenue, as loyal customers will be likely to recommend the products they were educated on to others – or even leave good online revenues that could influence customer spending decisions.

One of the many benefits of customer education solutions is having a unique selling point that you can offer your target audience through the resources that you provide.

Education can differentiate your business from your competitors, especially if you are offering better solutions for customers to get to know your products. This can lead to increased customer loyalty thanks to effortless engagement, as well as the help and feedback that you provide when customers need it.

And when your target audience perceives your brand as one that is focused on their needs, they will likely choose to support your products often thanks to the positive experiences that they have had.

Leveraging the benefits of customer education, especially with online solutions, can help to enhance your business offering and boost your revenue.

Investing in customer education can assist in improving your overall business offering by going beyond just what everyone else is offering and truly making your consumer part of the experience of getting to know your products.

By putting in the effort into consumer education solutions, you can increase customer loyalty and satisfaction, drive sales and position your business as one that puts its customers first.

As a last takeaway, consider these customer education solutions that can easily be accessed by your customers:

• Blog posts, of which they can receive the links in your customer newsletters.

• eBooks, which could serve as lead magnets too for customers who have not yet purchased products.

• Podcast episodes, which you can promote on your website and digital marketing channels.

• Case studies that demonstrate positive interactions with your brand and how your products were able to solve the pain points of customers.

• Webinars and video tutorials that can be watched at any time.

• Group or personal meetings that will make your customers feel unique and valued.

• Video tutorials and recorded screen captures that provide clear instructions on how to use your products.

Whichever option you choose for your customer education solutions, ensure that it is on-brand and aligned with your customers’ needs and level of comfort.

This will, ultimately, help you establish your brand profile better and ensure that you forge a perfect rapport with current and future customers.