Digital Customer Education: The Modern Switch That Companies Need Right Now

You’ve signed up for new HRM software, eager to streamline your company’s HR processes. Instead of a personalized onboarding experience, you receive a lengthy PDF manual full of technical jargon and unstructured information.

Frustrated(I’m not reading all that), you try to schedule an onboarding meeting with your customer success manager (CSM), only to find the next available slot is impossibly far off. Instantly, your enthusiasm for streamlining HR processes disappears

The scenario may be exaggerated, but the frustration of poor customer experience remains a real issue many customers face due to outdated methods of customer education.

With 65% of customers switching brands after poor service (Khoros), traditional customer education falls short.

This is where digital customer education comes into play - Digital CE offers a modern solution to meet customer learning needs. But what is it?

What is Digital Customer Education?

Digital customer education involves using online resources to teach customers about a product or service. It includes tools like webinars, tutorials, e-learning modules, and knowledge bases that help customers understand features, solve issues, and maximize value.

Digital customer education (CE) achieves customer success by providing personalized, 24/7 accessible educational materials across self-service platforms. Rather than focusing solely on product features or routine webinars, digital CE prioritizes guiding customers to achieve meaningful outcomes with the product.

Let’s return to the scenario above. With digital customer education in place, your HRM software experience would be dramatically different.

• A personalized onboarding journey would have replaced the lengthy PDF.
• Rather than waiting 100 years to connect with your CSM, you would have immediate access to learning materials in various formats.
• Instead of feeling frustrated,  you would be guided through the app according to your specific needs and goals.

Traditional vs Digital Customer Education: The Difference

Learning Experience

Content Formats

Customer Relationship Managers (CSMs)

Operational Impact

Analytics and Insights

Why Investing in Digital Customer Education is Essential

Digital customer education stands out as the better choice. Companies should invest in it now due to the increasing demand for scalable, accessible, and self-service learning. Here are key reasons digital customer education benefits businesses.

1. Customers Demand Better Experiences

Customer experiences have evolved in recent years, and customers now expect companies to deliver tailored experiences. The 2023 Whatfix report on  Digital Adoption report assesses how well companies meet these expectations.

• 40% percent of software users prefer channels without person-to-person communication.
• 70% of software users expect companies to provide online self-service support.
• Customers often find the answers to their queries through video tutorials, a knowledge base, and an LMS.
• 76% of software users find it difficult to access training and help content.

Customers have clear preferences for how they consume content and find solutions. Traditional customer education hinders these preferences. To meet customer learning needs, digital customer education is essential.

2. The Subscription Model of SaaS Demands it

SaaS tools require recurring payments, whether monthly, quarterly, or annually. Customers must continuously recognize your product's value. As customers progress in their journey, their learning needs will change.

This is where segmentation enables you to curate and deliver content tailored to customers' needs. This approach encourages customers to maintain active subscriptions and increases their likelihood of upgrading or subscribing to additional tools.

The subscription model fosters a partnership with customers, building a loyal customer base. Digital customer education helps maintain these relationships effectively

3. Helps You Stay Competitive

89% of customers say they would switch brands after a poor experience, making retention difficult when switching tools is easy. In a saturated SaaS market, where brands offer similar features to the same audiences, success depends not only on a seamless product but also on strong customer education and support.

This establishes a unique market advantage, not only in retaining customers but also in becoming the clear choice within your category.

4. Cross-functional Advantages

Customer education builds a knowledgeable customer base and supplies resource touchpoints with relevant content. A digital customer education program shifts CSMs from solving repetitive issues to strategizing for greater business success.

Customer education reduces repetitive support tickets, easing the support team’s workload. Well-informed customers provide valuable feedback on upcoming features and suggest new ones, enhancing the quality of customer interactions.

The Benefits of a Well-planned Digital Customer Education

1. Reduces The Learning Curve

All SaaS tools have a learning curve, which varies with the tool’s complexity. A tool with more features has a steeper learning curve than one with fewer features.

Digital customer education enables customers to start using a tool quickly. Personalization helps users in various roles see how features support their specific workflows. Online resources also allow customers to resolve feature-related questions swiftly.

Customers spend less time learning the product and gain value from it more quickly.

How to Observe:

To assess if the learning curve is decreasing, monitor how quickly customers reach each key milestone. Milestones, such as task completion, may vary by customer segment.

For example, An HR tool may track Applicant Tracking System engagement for recruiters, while HR managers may focus on advanced analytics.

Calculating average key milestone completion for a specific period:

(Sum of time taken by all new users to complete the task / total no. of new users)

2. Increases Product Adaptability

Releasing new features or major UI changes raises concerns about customer adaptation. Educating customers on using new features or navigating the interface is the best way to ease this transition.

Proper education reduces usage disruptions and prevents an increase in support tickets related to new features or interface changes.

How to Observe:

After changing your user interface, monitor engagement rates with a product analytics tool, and take action if they fall below expectations.

After launching a new feature, track its adoption rate.

(No. of active users using the new feature / total no. of active users) X 100

3. Understand Your Customers’ Issues Better

Tools for creating and managing customer education strategies offer insights into common issues customers face with your product.

How to Observe:

Correlate your product’s engagement with your customer education tools’ analytics. For example:

• Low usage rates paired with high view counts on related documentation may indicate a feature is difficult to understand.
• High drop-off rates at specific timestamps in tutorial videos may indicate complex product workflows that need simplification.
• Frequent customer searches for undocumented terms reveal gaps in your educational content.
• High skip rates on in-app guides combined with high support ticket volume suggest that current guidance isn't meeting user needs.

4. Helps You Reach a Global Audience

Digital customer education enables global reach, breaking geographic and linguistic barriers. On-demand multilingual content allows users from any time zone to access training anytime, with customization for regional needs.

This capability boosts product accessibility, promotes inclusivity, and strengthens brand presence in new markets.

How to Observe:

Compare customer education analytics across countries to identify declines in resource engagement rates from specific regions.

Gather feedback from international audiences on resource helpfulness, user-friendliness, language, and accent accuracy. Correlate declines in engagement with negative feedback and adjusts the customer education program to better serve international users.

5. Better Scalability

Digital customer education scales support for a growing customer base without expanding the customer success team. New users receive a personalized learning path that guides them efficiently, reducing the need for CSM involvement.

Reduce hiring costs and time for Customer Success Managers (CSMs), allowing companies to allocate resources to other high-demand areas.

How to Observe:

• Your CSMs transition from basic product training to more strategic customer conversations.
• New customers complete onboarding milestones independently, without CSM calls.
• The number of "how-to" queries in customer support channels decreases.

Measuring Digital Customer Education

Strategizing and implementing a digital customer education strategy is only half the task; measuring performance is equally essential. Performance metrics are often spread across various tools. Here are key metrics and their business impacts.

1. Lowers The Cost of Customer-facing Teams

Cost includes both money and time. Digital customer education (CE) reduces support requests, lowering operational costs by minimizing support hires and optimizing pricing for customer-facing platforms.

For the support team - Digital CE helps the support team save time for activities like customer feedback calls, upskilling, and database updates.

For the customer success team - They can invest saved time in strategizing retention programs, expanding revenue, and assisting customers with poor health scores.

Metrics to Measure:

• Cost per ticket for a month: Monthly cost involved with customer support / no. of support tickets for that month
• Ticket deflection rate: No. of knowledge base visits / no. of support tickets
• Average ticket resolution time: Average resolution time for all tickets / Total tickets resolved.
• No. of accounts handled by a CSM

Success Indicators

• The support team receives fewer tickets as knowledge base resources deflect basic “how-to” inquiries.
• The ticket resolution rate improves as an upskilled support team provides quicker, more efficient responses, while an educated customer base better understands these solutions.
• With reduced training responsibilities, CSMs can manage more accounts.

2. Higher Engagement From Customer Education Initiatives

Transforming customer education from generic training to personalized learning increases customer engagement. This heightened engagement appears in the analytics of customer education platforms, like the Knowledge Base and Learning Management System (LMS).

Metrics to Measure:

1. Knowledge Base Metrics:

• Total no. of knowledge base visits
• Article views: Most viewed and least viewed
• Article engagement: Time spent on articles
• Article helpfulness = (Positive ratings / Total ratings) × 100

2. LMS Metrics:

• Total no. of enrolled users out of your total no. of customers
• Total no. of active users who return every week to continue courses
• Total no. of courses completed

Success Indicators:

• Frequent knowledge base visits accompany a reduction in support ticket volume.
• High search volume within the knowledge base indicates users find content more easily.
• Higher engagement across customer segments in both the knowledge base and LMS confirms personalization efforts are effective.

3. Better CSAT and NPS

Digital customer education aids in product adoption and consistent value delivery, boosting customer satisfaction, measurable through the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT).

Satisfied customers are more likely to recommend your product, measurable through the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Metrics to Measure:

1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT):

Step 1: Survey your customers and ask them to rate their experience with your product on a scale of 1-5. “1” being very dissatisfied and “5” being very satisfied.

Step 2: Note the number of people who are most satisfied - “4” and “5”. These are your Satisfied Respondents

Step 3: Calculate your CSAT -

(No. of Satisfied Respondents / Total No. of Respondents) X 100

b. Net Promoter Score (NPS):

Step 1: Send out a survey asking customers this question - “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [Your Product] to a friend or a colleague?”

Categorize your responses as:

• 0-6 = detractors = not likely to recommend your product
• 7-8 = passives = satisfied but not enough to recommend your product
• 9-10 = promoters = highly likely to recommend your product

Step 2: Calculate your NPS:

% of promoters - % of detractors

Success Indicators:

• Increase in referral signups
• Increase in the mention of your customer education in positive reviews

4. Increases Expansion Revenue

Educated customers who achieve success with your product are more likely to upgrade or purchase additional features, increasing expansion revenue.

CSMs focus on expanding revenue from existing customers, as the likelihood of selling to them is 60-70% higher than to new customers.

Metrics to Measure:

• Upsell Rate: (No. of up-sells / No. of up-sell attempts) X 100
• Cross-sell Rate: (No. of customers who made additional purchases / No. of cross-sell attempts) X 100
• Expansion Revenue Rate = (Revenue from upgrades / Total MRR) × 100
  

Success Indicators:

• Higher upgrade rates among customers who complete educational programs.
• More customers proactively request information about advanced features.
• Shorter sales cycles for upsells.
  
  

Better Customer Retention

Customer retention is the key measure of your customer education programs, as they aim to deliver top support and guidance to encourage long-term loyalty.

The previously mentioned statistic applies here as well: retained customers are more likely to upgrade.

Metric to Measure:

1. Customer Retention Rate (CRR):

To calculate CRR for a specific period, we need:

The number of Customers At the Start of the period (CAS)

The number of Customers At the End of the period (CAE)

The number of Customers you Gained in this period (CG)

Calculate CRR:

CRR = ( (CAE-CG) / CAS ) X 100

2. Churn Rate: (No. of customers lost / Total customers at the start of the period) X 100

Success Indicators:

• Your retention rate exceeds your churn rate.
• Churns citing "lack of product understanding" as a reason decrease.
• Retained customer feedback cites customer education as a key reason for staying.

Take Your Digital Customer Education to Greater Heights with Trainn

Optimize customer education strategies with Trainn, a platform built for B2B SaaS companies to educate and onboard customers at scale.

Trainn is an AI-powered digital customer education platform that helps you:

1. Create Content Effortlessly - Transform product knowledge into engaging videos, interactive documentation, and articles within minutes—no editing expertise required.
   
2. Build a Robust Knowledge Base - Launch a searchable self-service Knowledge Base portal that integrates seamlessly with your product, ensuring help is always one click away.
3. Launch Your Own LMS Academy - Set up an LMS academy with customized learning paths that adapt to user roles, segments, and learning progress.
   
4. Get Learner-level Insights - Access comprehensive learner analytics to understand engagement patterns, identify knowledge gaps, and improve your education strategy continuously.