7 Ways Customer Education Can Help B2B Businesses Scale

As a B2B business, your ability to scale often depends on your customers' ability to understand your products or services.

This is where customer education comes into play. You can improve customer satisfaction, reduce churn, and ultimately drive growth by providing the knowledge and resources your customer need.

This post will explore 7 ways customer education can help B2B businesses scale. In this blog we will cover ways to improve your onboarding processes. We will also cover ways of building a community of advocates and strategies for educating your customers to succeed.

Whether you're just starting with customer education or looking to take your program to the next level, this post will provide the insights and inspiration you need to succeed.

So, let's dive in and explore the power of customer education for B2B businesses!

7 Ways Customer Education Helps B2B Businesses Thrive

Here is why you should proactively invest in customer education:

1. Helps Build Trust

Trust is a must in any business relationship. Your customers might not buy your products if they don't trust you.

Customer education can help you build trust. It enables you to show your expertise and build relationships with your customers.

You can provide valuable educational resources to the customer base. This will showcase your industry knowledge and establish you as a trusted partner.

Informing customers about your company's products and processes can also help you maintain transparency.

2. Acts as a Differentiator

Customer education can be a powerful differentiator for your business. It improves customer experience and also shows your commitment to customer success.

Customers are more likely to choose a company that offers training content and support. They feel more confident when they're adequately trained to use products.

You can show your business value with customer education. It will be your advantage over competitors who don't offer similar customer education resources.

3. Streamlines Customer Onboarding

You should have an onboarding process that helps new customers quickly become skilled with your products.

Let's say that your company has just got a new customer. You want to get the customer started as quickly as possible. You could use a Learning Ops approach to create a customer onboarding strategy.

Your customer education strategy can include the following steps:

• Needs Analysis - You start by understanding the needs and goals of the new customers. You can gather feedback from them directly. This will help you tailor the onboarding program for every customer.
• Curriculum Design - You can create a customer education program with training materials related to the customer's needs. The content formats for the curriculum can include how-to videos, tutorials, and documentation. It must be noted that engaging content formats result in improved customer retention.
• Learning Platform - Customer learning platforms like Trainn can help you create an effective customer training program. You can even build your learning academy. This will allow you to deliver customer education materials in a structured way.
• Learning Delivery - The next step involves delivering learning materials to the customer. These can include on-demand videos, quizzes, and assignments.
• Progress Tracking - You should track the customer's progress throughout the onboarding program. It will help you identify if the customer needs additional support.
• Certification - Once the customer is onboarded, you can provide them with a certificate or a badge. The badge demonstrates their skill with the product.

4. Reduces Customer Churn

Customer education enables customers to use your product effectively. The knowledge base can lead to increased product adoption and usage. This is particularly important for B2B businesses with complex offerings.

Customers are satisfied with a product when they feel confident and knowledgeable about it. This leads to increased loyalty and a lower likelihood of churn.

5. Complements Sales Funnel

Customer education is critical for the bottom of the sales funnel (BOFU). BOFU is also known as the conversion stage. At this stage, potential customers have already shown interest in your products. Now, the goal is to convert them into paying customers.

Prospects at the conversion stage are curious about your products. You can make them confident with learning content. You can use recorded screen captures and product walkthroughs for this.

6. Creates Upsell and Cross-sell Opportunities

You can educate your customers about complementary products. This can mainly increase customer lifetime value and retention.

HubSpot is an excellent example of how customer education can help create upsell and cross-sell opportunities. It offers several products that complement each other. The same segment of customers can use their CRM, marketing automation software, and customer service tools.

HubSpot educates customers about how these products work together in conjunction. This is a great strategy to improve revenue per customer.

7. Increases Product/ Service Adoption

Customer education can help customers utilize your products to their fullest potential. Here's how:

• Product Knowledge - Your customers understand your product's value when you educate them about its features and benefits. This increases customer satisfaction scores.
• Best Practices - Customer education can also provide customers with the best practices for using a product. This can help them avoid common pitfalls and optimize product usage.
• New Features - Customers should receive updates about new features and their benefits as your product evolves. Here, customer education can help you drive feature adoption.

Wrapping Up

It has been challenging for most businesses to reduce customer support costs while keeping their satisfaction level high.

In a typical business scenario, a support team would help customers get onboarded to a product or service. But, unfortunately, this often results in poor business efficiency.

On the other hand, educational content can be a game-changer. Businesses like yours can improve customer experience by educating them right from onboarding.

However, you should understand that customer education is an iterative process. Therefore, you have to update the learning content regularly. This ensures that it remains relevant and effective.

Updating learning content requires monitoring customer feedback. Analyzing engagement metrics and staying on top of industry trends are also a part of this.

B2B businesses utilize customer learning platforms for this purpose. Trainn is one such platform that can help your business scale. It offers a no-code academy that is easy to manage. In addition, the video-pro platform allows you to create educational videos in 5 minutes.

Want to know more about Trainn and how it can help you achieve business goals? Get in touch with us today and try it for free!