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Does your software company have a customer education program? If not, it should.
This article discusses why, starting with a general overview, followed by a drilldown into specific benefits.
Understanding the Importance of Customer Education for Software Companies
There’s no denying the software market is booming, but with phenomenal success comes fierce competition. To grow market share, software providers must stand out by offering both excellent products and exceptional customer experience.
Customer education plays a crucial role in CX.
For one, it’s a cornerstone of customer success, equipping users with the knowledge and skills they need to make the most of your software. It can also double as an incredibly powerful marketing tool, establishing your company as a thought leader while getting more eyes than ever on your offering.
Together, this translates to increased sales, enhanced customer satisfaction, higher customer retention, reduced churn, and better overall revenue.
The Benefits of Customer Education
Customer education is an effective tool for both outreach and customer success. And that effectiveness can be assessed with a range of business metrics.
Faster Time to Value and Better ROI
Imagine two customers using the same software.
The first customer has gone through a comprehensive customer education program that’s taught them everything they need to know about the software’s functions and features. They understand exactly what it can do for their company, and they know how to get started.
The second customer is going in blind. They know your brand and they know the basic capabilities of your software, but that’s about it. Everything else, they’ll have to learn on the hoof.
Which customer do you think will achieve full product adoption more quickly? Which of the two is most likely to uninstall? Which of the two will start generating value with your software first?
You likely already know the answer: the first customer. Because they know exactly what the software does and how it benefits them, they’ll reach time to value — the point at which they start achieving their goals — much faster.
That means they’ll likely enjoy a better return on their investment. This, in turn, makes them more likely to become a loyal recurring customer. As for the second customer, you might get lucky and retain them for a time.
But it’s far more likely they’ll churn and end up choosing one of your competitors.
Reduced Customer Support Costs
Eventually, even the most knowledgeable customer will probably need to contact your company’s helpdesk. But you can reduce those support calls and their associated costs significantly with a solid customer education program. If you also provide self-service support tools and a comprehensive knowledge base, you’ll be able to increase call deflection and reduce overhead. .
Customer Advocacy
A good customer education program, especially one supported by an online community, has the potential to bring in a ton of additional prospects. That’s because, in both the B2B and B2C spaces, more people than ever tend to trust the word of friends or colleagues over ads and sales representatives. It’s also known as social proof.
Developing a robust educational strategy and supporting it with a knowledge-sharing community or platform has the potential to bring in a constant stream of new leads, likely at a fraction of what it would have cost to acquire them through traditional channels.
Upsell Opportunities
Sure, you could just hurl upsell offers at the proverbial wall until something sticks. But that doesn’t mean you should. You’re much more likely to succeed if you maintain a customer education program. Well-educated, satisfied customers are far more likely to be open to additional products and services than anyone struggling to keep up with how your software works.
They’re also the most likely audience to have achieved both an acceptable return on their investments and a low time to first value.
Explore More Customer Education Topics
Educating and supporting your customers will lead to higher satisfaction and better business results.
After all, a customer who is satisfied and has achieved a significant ROI from your software is more likely to remain a customer. That’s precisely why customer education is so important.
Without an education strategy, you’re basically rolling the dice every time you bring in a qualified lead — and in software sales, the less you leave up to chance, the better.
Interested in learning more about customer education’s role in outreach? Read Why Marketing and Customer Education Go Hand in Hand. You can also explore some of the ways generative artificial intelligence might potentially change customer education.
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