Five ways to approach customer education for your SaaS business

Customer education is one of the most important things you can do to increase retention and boost product adoption. This is because when it comes to B2B SaaS products, customers are much more likely to abandon the product than they are with a consumer product or service.

Companies that take the time to educate their customers throughout the customer journey see tremendous results. They increase retention by 30% and adoption by 200%. This also adds an enriching customer experience.

Suppose you're a software as a service company looking to set up your customer education programs. In that case, the first thing to do is create a customer education plan that addresses why people abandon your product.

This also means looking at your sales funnel and identifying what’s causing customers to drop off or churn. Then, you need to come up with solutions for those issues. Next, create a series of educational content that addresses each issue. This could be as simple as writing a blog post, designing a case study or creating an ebook. Or it could mean developing a video series or webinar.

The key is to make the content actionable and easy to understand. It should also be relevant and helpful for your customers. Often, companies create educational material that is too complicated or go off on tangents that don’t help anyone. The content in your customer education strategy must solve problems and answer questions, not just give people more information.

Here are five things you can do to kickstart your customer education journey at your company.

1. Provide interactive tutorials and walkthroughs
2. Create a knowledge base
3. Offer personalized customer onboarding
4. Host user groups and events
5. Send regular product updates and tips

1. Provide interactive tutorials and walkthroughs:

Interactive tutorials and walkthroughs effectively educate customers on using your SaaS product. These tutorials include videos, webinars, or interactive guides showing users how to navigate your software.

To start creating interactive tutorials and walkthroughs for your B2B business, here are some steps you can take:

• Identify the essential features of your product: Before you start creating tutorials, you need to identify the most important features of your product. This will help you prioritize which features to develop tutorials for.
• Choose the right format: Interactive tutorials can be videos, webinars, or interactive guides. Choose the most appropriate structure for your audience and the feature you want to teach.
• Write a script: Once you have chosen the format, write a script for your tutorial. Your script should be clear and concise, focusing on the key benefits and use cases of the feature you are teaching.
• Create your tutorial: Create your tutorial depending on your chosen format. You can use software such as Trainn to record your screen and add an automated voiceover when you create a video.
• Test your tutorial: Once you have created your tutorial, test it with a group of customers to ensure it is practical and easy to follow.
• Share your tutorial: Once you have tested your tutorial, share it with your customers through your website, email marketing initiatives, or social media channels. You can also include it in your customer onboarding process to help new customers get up to speed quickly.

Overall, interactive tutorials and walkthroughs are a great way to educate customers on how to use your product and can help to increase customer satisfaction and retention. Following these steps, you can create practical tutorials for your B2B business.

2. Create a knowledge base

A knowledge base is a collection of articles, FAQs, and other resources that provide customers with answers to common questions and issues they might face while using your SaaS product. A comprehensive knowledge base can reduce the number of support tickets your team receives and empower customers to solve their problems.

By providing a comprehensive and user-friendly knowledge base, you can reduce the number of support tickets your team receives, freeing up time and resources for more complex issues. This also helps provide consistent information to your customers.

You can create a comprehensive and user-friendly resource that meets your customers' needs and provides them with the information they need to succeed with your product, by following the below steps,

• Identify common customer questions: Identify your customers' most common questions. This will help you prioritize the content for your knowledge base and ensure it meets your customers' needs.
• Organize your content: Once you have identified the questions, organize the content for your knowledge base. Group similar questions and topics together to make it easier for customers to find what they want.
• Write clear and concise articles: Write clear and concise articles that answer the questions and issues your customers will likely face. Use plain language and avoid jargon or technical terms that might be confusing.
• Include multimedia content: Consider including multimedia content such as screenshots, videos, or diagrams to help illustrate your points and make the content more engaging.
• Create a user-friendly interface: Ensure that your knowledge base has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for customers to search for and find the information they need. Use straightforward navigation and a search bar to help customers quickly find what they want.
• Keep it up-to-date: Your knowledge base should be up-to-date and accurate. Review and update the content regularly to ensure it reflects your product's latest information and changes.
• Promote your knowledge base: Once you have created your knowledge base, promote it to your customers through your website, email marketing, or social media channels.

Encourage customers to use the knowledge base as a self-service resource, and include links to relevant articles in your support responses.

3. Offer personalized customer onboarding

Offering personalized customer onboarding can be a practical part of your customer education strategy as it can help customers get up and running with your product quickly and efficiently. By tailoring your approach to the needs of each customer, you can improve their experience and help them be successful with your product.

Here are some steps you can take to offer personalized onboarding:

• Identify your customers' needs: Before onboarding them, it's important to identify their needs and goals. Conduct surveys, interviews, or analysis of user data to understand the needs of different customer base segments.
• Create a tailored onboarding plan: Based on your findings, create a tailored onboarding plan tailored to your customer's needs. For example, if your product has different modules or features, you might create a plan specific to each customer's use case.
• Assign a dedicated onboarding specialist: Assign a dedicated onboarding specialist to work with each customer. The specialist should know the customer's needs and goals and deeply understand the product.
• Provide hands-on training: Provide hands-on training to your customers to help them get started with your product. This can include one-on-one sessions, webinars, or training videos.
• Offer ongoing support: Offer ongoing support to your customers to ensure they continue to succeed with your product. This can include regular check-ins, email support, or access to an online community.
• Track progress and adjust: Finally, track the progress of each customer and adapt the onboarding plan as needed. This can help you identify areas where customers might be struggling and make adjustments to improve their experience.

Here, you can learn more about how to customize your onboarding, whether low-touch or high-touch.

4. Host user groups and events

User groups and events can be a powerful tool for your customer education strategy. They can help you connect with your customers and provide them with valuable resources and training.

User groups and events can foster a sense of community among your customers. By bringing them together, you can create a forum for discussion, collaboration, and sharing of ideas. This can also help them learn from each other and get opinions on using your product.

Apart from being a community-building activity, through user groups, you can offer training sessions, workshops, or presentations to help customers learn more about your product and how to use it effectively.

This can also be a two-way street, as these groups allow you to get customer feedback and insights. You can use this feedback to improve your product and customer education strategy. You can increase customer retention and advocacy by working on this feedback and staying transparent and close with your customers.

Conduct more events to build user groups as part of your customer education strategy. Consider creating an online community platform, organizing local or virtual user group meetings or workshops, or hosting more significant events such as conferences or summits.

5. Send regular product updates and tips

Regular product updates and tips can help customers stay informed about new features and changes to your software. Building your content marketing strategy in accordance with your product road map will help keep your customers engaged and educated. Providing tips and tricks for using your software more effectively can help customers get the most out of your product.

To start sending regular updates and tips to your customers, consider creating a regular newsletter or email campaign highlighting new features, best practices, and tips for using your product effectively. Consider making a blog or knowledge base where you can share more in-depth content related to your product. By providing regular updates and tips, you can support customer education and improve customer success with your product.

At Trainn, we encourage business owners to provide customers a way to connect with you. The tools you can use include: 1) Meeting regularly with new customers to explain your company and its products; 2) Providing customer-specific guides and help docs; 3) Creating videos, so people know what they're getting into when they decide to buy from you. Hop on a call to understand how to upgrade your existing customer education strategy with Trainn.