How Can Customer Education Help Customer Onboarding?

Customers have a lot of product options in a competitive business landscape. Hence, businesses must set themselves apart from competitors and provide a top-notch customer experience.

One way to do this is through effective customer onboarding. Customer onboarding can help businesses build strong connections with their customers from the outset.

Nonetheless, each product and customer are distinct. And so, the customer onboarding process has to be tailored to the individual needs of both parties.

Also, customers often don't understand new products. This results in customers not being able to utilize the products to their fullest extent.

This is where customer education comes in.

Customer education is the process of training your customers on how to use your product effectively to achieve their desired outcomes.

Here, you might wonder how education can help in customer onboarding.

How Can Customer Education Improve Customer Onboarding?

Customer education is about guiding customers on how to use a product, what it does, and how it can solve problems.

By educating customers during customer onboarding, you can ensure that customers understand how to use the product right after they buy it. This can help them see the product's value and become long-term users.

Here are five benefits of customer education in customer onboarding:

A. Better Product Adoption

It is more likely that your customers will adopt a product if you train them to use it during customer onboarding. This can also lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

B. Faster Time to Value

Customers want to see the benefits of a product or service as quickly as possible. You can assist customers in using a product or service effectively by educating them during the customer onboarding process. This leads to a faster time to value.

C. Reduced Support Costs

When customers understand how to use a product, they are less likely to need support. This can help you reduce support costs and put your focus on other business areas.

D. Higher Customer Engagement

Ongoing customer education and support can help keep customers interested in your product. This can lead to increased usage, loyalty, and customer lifetime value.

E. Competitive Advantage

Focusing on customer onboarding can help businesses stand out from the competition. A smooth onboarding experience builds trust and creates a positive brand reputation.

10 Strategies on How Customer Education Can Help with Customer Onboarding

Here are some education strategies you can use for customer onboarding:

1. Perform User Research

You should start by understanding the customer's needs during customer onboarding. You can run surveys or do interviews to understand what customers want to learn and how they like it.

2. Create Targeted Content

You should create personalized educational content for customer onboarding. This may include creating how-to guides, videos, or interactive tutorials that address common questions and pain points.

3. Use Analytics to Measure Success

You can use analytics to judge how effective an educational program is. This includes examining key metrics, including user engagement and completion rates. This can help you identify areas for improvement and adjust the educational content for customer onboarding.

4. Provide Ongoing Education

Effective training is not a one-time event for customer onboarding, but an ongoing process. Thus, you should give users lifetime access to educational material and support to help them continue learning.

5. Personalize the Experience

You should consider personalizing the customer onboarding content to each customer's liking. This may involve providing customized suggestions based on their usage patterns or offering personalized support through chat or email.

6. Use a Variety of Formats

People learn in different ways, so it's important to use a variety of formats for educational content, such as written guides and videos. You can also consider interactive elements like quizzes, simulations, gamification, and WhatsApp Chatbots. This will make the learning experience more engaging.

7. Make it Accessible

All customers should have access to educational information during customer onboarding. It even includes those with disabilities or those who speak languages other than English. You can use tools like closed captions, transcripts, and translation services to make your content more inclusive.

8. Integrate Education into the Product

You can streamline the onboarding process by including educational content in the product. For example, a software application might include a guided tour to help users learn how to use different features.

9. Use Customer Feedback to Iterate

Customer feedback is a valuable source of information for improving educational content. It ensures the relevance of the educational content. You should use the feedback to improve customer onboarding.

10. Collaborate with Other Teams

The customer onboarding process involves many teams, including customer support, product development, and marketing. With team collaboration, you can create a cohesive customer onboarding experience that reinforces the value of the product.

3 Examples of Customer Onboarding Success Through Customer Education

The following brands have effectively used customer education for onboarding:

1. Customer education at HubSpot

HubSpot offers a complete customer onboarding program called HubSpot Academy. The program offers a variety of educational resources, including online courses, certifications, and live training events.

Customer education has led to a surge in customer adoption and a drop in support costs for HubSpot. It also helped establish the brand as a thought leader in the sales and marketing niche.

2. Customer education at Slack

Slack uses in-app messaging and tutorials to help new users get started with the product. The company's educational tools include online courses, webinars, and a community forum.

Slack has achieved high customer retention rates with its onboarding programs. It has also helped them attract new customers through positive word-of-mouth.

3. Customer education at  Dropbox

Dropbox uses various educational resources to help new users get started with the product. This includes tutorials, FAQs, and a user community forum.

Dropbox's customer education programs have increased customer satisfaction and reduced support costs.

If you want to implement the same functionality for your product, you can use Trainn. Our platform is video-first and can help you create customer education videos in just 5 minutes.

Go Beyond Welcome Email and Onboard Effectively

Effective customer onboarding can help businesses build strong connections with their customers right from the start.

By facilitating customer education during onboarding, you can ensure that customers know how to use the product after the purchase. This can lead to better product adoption, faster time to value, reduced support costs, and higher customer engagement.

So, would you like to enjoy the advantages of customer education during customer onboarding? Let's set up a call to discuss how Trainn can assist you.