Ignite Your Growth: The Power of Customer Education in Business Expansion

In recent years, Customer Education (CEd) has emerged as as the fastest growing segment in the corporate learning space. It is also moving from a value-added service to a key business priority for more and more executives.

This article will explore how CEd is igniting growth and it's power to shape business expansion. It's not a how-to-guide for customer education (I have written some of those in my newsletter - link on LI profile), it's rather a business guide to CEd. I will showcase how CEd is igniting growth using evidence and real-world examples.

Customer Education - The Scale Engine for Customer Success

1️⃣ From SaaS Academy Advisors,

👉 90% of companies have seen a positive return on their external education and community investments

👉 Companies with formalised education and community programs see a 7.4% increase in retention and a 7.1% increase in lifetime value.

👉 90% of external education programs grew last year

👉 On average, 29% of customer user base is engaged in training annually

2️⃣ From Forrester

🚀 Customer education can increase customer satisfaction by 11.6 percent, increase customer retention (and lower churn) by 7.4 percent, boost customer lifetime value by 7.1 percent, increase revenue by 6.2 percent, and reduce customer support costs by 6.1 percent.

🚀 The study also showed that 63 percent of high-success organizations surveyed worked with third-party vendors to help them with their customer education initiatives.

3️⃣ From MIT Sloan School of Management, companies that offer training and education programs are trusted more by their customers.

🚨 This is a twofold benefit. First, trusted brands are far more likely to be seen as thought leaders in their respective business sectors.

🚨 Secondly, trust can often lead to customer loyalty, bringing a whole host of other positive business outcomes.

🚨 Loyal customers spend 67 percent more than new customers, are more likely to try new features, and can even become brand ambassadors.

Customer Education Audiences and Metrics: (CEd)

• SaaS - improve CS KPIs like NRR, upsell, ramp times or decrease support tickets or training time spent by CSMs or PS teams. Sometimes driven by marketing too to drive brand loyalty, awareness or evangelism to your software.
• Consulting - wide category, could be running managed service programs or educating clients on specific programs. Large consulting companies have built business units based on EE programs, McKinsey Academy (powered by Docebo) is a perfect example.
• Medical/pharma - evangelism play, often driven by marketing teams. Goal is to drive adoption and loyalty of set product/drug, so it is preferred and sold over competitors.
• Manufacturing - often an adoption/implementation play, how can they set up your product more effectively to scale

CEd is used to attract and educate customers. It is a competitive differentiator and something that is highly measurable, often tied to KPIs like Net Revenue Retention, upsell, CSAT and support tickets.

How CEd Helps Product-led Growth

The golden years of SaaS are over, at least for now. We do not have capital flowing freely like champagne, and investments are not easily accessible across the board.

The sales-led growth mantra is not status quo anymore. Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) are going up, leading GTM teams and SaaS execs to rethink their approach.

One of the biggest shifts, especially in SaaS is product-led growth (PLG - see photo below).

In the subscription economy and current economic times, PLG is the way forward as the retention of customers becomes increasingly important. Metrics like Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is top of mind for Execs across the board.

So what can GTM teams do to make a shift towards becoming a PLG company? In my view, they should unify their customer education and community programs under one umbrella ✌️

1) Increased Sales & Profit

It is easier to get sales from existing rather than new customers. Customer education & community can supercharge this and drive adoption which results in increased revenue.

2)  Shorter Sales Cycles

If they educate themselves on your product, they’re more likely to buy it and do so quicker. They essentially become an “educated qualified lead”, which is extremely valuable, especially in SaaS. This can come from CEd or Community alike.

3)  Lower Customer Support Costs

Every interaction with support costs you, and lowering this is a massive upside to customer education. Better adoption and knowledge = less customer support and more cost savings.

4)  Increased Customer Satisfaction

A proactive self-service approach that increases satisfaction as users know how to use your product effectively. Win/win, adoption drives time to value for customers and is key to upsell or cross-sell for companies

5) Cost-savings from customer education & community,

• Acquiring new customers/evangelism
• Less costs for trainers flying out & about/training hours saved
• Shorter onboarding times/rollout
• Product expansion/cross-sell & upsell.

6) Building your brand exposure and loyalty

If your competitors are doing this, so will you. Enable adoption, advocacy and community - a bigger and bigger part of customer education programs. Education + Community are often interlinked, or closely aligned with each other.

To help the customer along the PLG motion, customer education can be extremely powerful, as it helps customers find a map and a compass to go from the stage of Activation --> Engagement --> Loyalty and creates a win-win for both customers and companies alike.

Growth Examples in Customer Education

AWS Training & Certification

AWS is the hammer and nails for SaaS companies, enabling them to grow and scale.

The What:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the largest cloud computing company in the world and enables builders of today and tomorrow to create and leverage IT infrastructures to fuel growth. This includes cloud computing platforms and APIs for corporate and public sector use. AWS is the motor oil/fuel that powers the machinery of SaaS companies to grow.

The Why?

Goal: Drive product adoption, revenue, and evangelism about AWS products

Since AWS has few competitors and is a critical supply chain component to nearly every SaaS company on the planet, they wants to build winners and enable others to succeed. Their business model is genius, the more SaaS companies sell, the more profitable AWS becomes (as they leverage more cloud computing space).

This led AWS to establish the business unit called AWS Training & Certification, and launch a range of external training programs to help companies and individuals get upskilled on all things AWS.

The How:

AWS built their own LMS for many years, before they tested out the market. They tested systems for nearly two years before deciding to build their T&C business on a SaaS learning provider's infrastructure instead.

Scope: All AWS users globally including Partners, customers, and general public

AWS Training and Certification products include digital training (eLearning), classroom training, virtual classroom, webinars and AWS Product Certifications.

Free for anyone to consume and covers also premium training for advanced developers.

The Scale:

While I do not have specific user metrics on the AWS usage (it's proprietary), I can safely say it is in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. AWS has 150,000 employees, and an ecosystem of partners, customers and general public that is unparalleled on a global scale.

Since AWS powers the SaaS ecosystem, the AWS T&C arm is a vehicle for builders of today and tomorrow to be empowered with the knowledge they need to leverage the power of AWS.

🏆🥇 1st Place - L'Oréal Access 🥇🏆

L'Oréal needs no intro, as one of the most iconic personal care companies in the world.

But why build out Access, an external learning program?

Access is about community-based learning, which combines two of my favourite things, community + learning. However, lets hear This video explains it better than me 👇👇

I am fascinated by the intersection of learning & community, and believe that programs that not only teach but actively apply will be more successful for knowledge retention.

As I shared in article one, you cannot force anyone to take your training on the external side. If your program does not look fresh and inviting, people will not engage. It has to be more interesting than Instagram, TikTok or Snapchat, and that is a high bar.

I think you can unlock the Da Vinci Code for learning teams that is engagement by combining learning & community, aptly called community-powered learning by Sam Jacobs, CEO of Pavillion (another community-lead learning enabler via Docebo).

Community-led Learning - The Future of Corporate Learn

Access is fresh, accessible (mobile-first), and THE PLACE to learn for salon professionals. This is where they can share how they use the products, while learning from leading influencers.

By inviting world leading experts, in a community-powered learning platform, Access is setting a new bar of corporate learning, and one that can rival the attention war for today's learners.

Access is setting a new standard, and before long, community-powered learning will be the new norm. Great eLearning courses ain't cutting it, you need to leverage the power of peers, social networks and community, to reach the learners of tomorrow.

Access is by all marks a game changer, for end users, experts and for Loreal, and that's a win-win-win for all parties. This might seem like all fun and games, but I can assure you, launching a community-powered learning program is WAY easier said than done. It is a whole orchestrated dance to ensure the content, community and learner experience is personalised and relevant for each learner.

You CANNOT build a community-powered learning program without the right learning infrastructure to support it.

Education and community are like Peanut Butter & Jelly, they belong together. CEd aims to educate and certify a customer with a baseline understanding of the product. Community aims to engage the customer in dialogue and conversation around the product. The goals are the same, engaging customers about a product, but the means of getting there is different.

Vendors working in this market are realising that they need to offer both a customer education platform (LMS) and a community-platform in one. This needs to be a seamless integrated experience where learners can be 1) educated about new features and subsequently 2) discuss set features with peers in a singular platform.

Learning in the Flow of Work has been a big topic for learning teams for years. I think this will reach Community as well, as customers do not want to go to separate platforms for Education and Community. Why? They see it as one customer enablement experience, so why separate them?

In the future, Education + Community will happen is the "Customer Flow of Work" and allow customers to educate, engage and empower themselves from a singular platform.

Thanks for joining me down the rabbit hole this week.

How are you educating your customers?

What benefits does it have for your business?

Would love to hear about your CEd experiences!