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Customer Training

by Martha Kendall Custard
Customer training is the process of creating materials to help consumers learn how to use a product. Discover the different methods and their benefits.

What is customer training?

Customer training is a type of e-learning that helps companies train external stakeholders, like partners, resellers, and customers. It consists of courses that help consumers learn how to use a company’s product or service. This type of training is highly useful in the software industry, as some applications have a steep learning curve. 

Companies typically turn to corporate learning management systems (LMS) to organize, track, and manage training for employees, customers, and other external partners.

Customer training methods

Customer training methods vary in cost, time commitment, and scalability. Depending on their customers’ needs, companies can choose one or more of the following methods:

  • Help center: Companies provide a help center with articles, videos, white papers, and user forums. These materials are usually free and passive, meaning they require no customer or company feedback.
  • On-demand training: This self-paced method provides short training videos to answer a certain question. It usually follows a learning path that allows consumers to view their training progress. 
  • Virtual live training: This webinar-style training enables consumers to provide feedback on a company’s products or services. It usually requires registration. The downside is that customers can’t get answers right away, but live training material is easy to create with webinar software
  • In-person training: Also called on-site training, in-person training includes personalized classes specific to a customer’s needs. Hands-on, in-person exercises reinforce what is being taught. 

Benefits of customer training

Companies can gain major benefits from training customers, from better onboarding and retention to surprisingly lower support costs. Here are some of the main benefits of customer training:

  • Better customer onboarding: With proper training, consumers are more likely to fully comprehend the product’s value and be satisfied with their purchase. 
  • Increased product engagement: Offering training is a way for companies to differentiate themselves from their competitors. This improves customer experience, creating more engaged consumers who truly understand your product’s value. 
  • Higher customer retention: If consumers address their pain points through training, they can overcome steep learning curves and stick around.
  • Lower support costs: Customer training helps companies reduce support tickets and the resulting burden on customer support teams. It helps resolve common queries upfront.

Customer training best practices

Companies need to put themselves in their customers’ shoes to create simple training materials. Here are the key customer training best practices:

  • Keep it simple. The training process should be designed for beginners and outline how to use the products as concisely as possible. It should also be structured as a simple, easy-to-follow course.
  • Use custom branding. It should feature employer branding consistent with the rest of the company’s materials. This creates a uniform user experience while improving brand awareness.
  • Test the customers. The training material should include assessments so that customers can track their progress. 

Customer training vs. customer service training

Both customer training and customer service training improve buyer satisfaction, but they accomplish it in different ways. 

Customer training helps train a customer to use a company’s product effectively. On the other hand, customer service training involves educating employees about the company’s product and services and then delivering that training to the customers.

Martha Kendall Custard
MKC

Martha Kendall Custard

Martha Kendall Custard is a former freelance writer for G2. She creates specialized, industry specific content for SaaS and software companies. When she isn't freelance writing for various organizations, she is working on her middle grade WIP or playing with her two kitties, Verbena and Baby Cat.

Customer Training Software

This list shows the top software that mention customer training most on G2.

Docebo makes employee, partner and customer training easy and engaging while saving L&D admins countless hours with artificial intelligence.

Thought Industries provides learning delivery and monetization tools through a customizable white-label platform. From creating online courses to managing an online learning business, the platform hosts a library of features that enable organizations to get to market quickly and cost-effectively.

Litmos is a Learning Management System (LMS) designed to deliver and track on-demand training for an unlimited number of users, quickly and easily.

WorkRamp is a modern training software that helps growing customer facing teams onboard, train, and certify their employees. The platform empowers reps to be more productive by taking training and knowledge materials to where they already work like SFDC, Slack and Chrome. Paired with dynamic and engaging learning paths and certifications, WorkRamp starts having an impact on team success immediately.

TalentLMS is a super-easy, cloud LMS to train your employees, partners and customers.

Reimagine how your teams work with Zoom Workplace, powered by AI Companion. Streamline communications, improve productivity, optimize in-person time, and increase employee engagement, all with Zoom Workplace. Fueled by AI Companion, included at no additional cost.

Create sandbox environments using real infrastructure to train your teams, customers & prospects. Define challenges to guide users and uncover the true value of your product.

Millions of businesses trust GoTo Meeting for reliable, professional online meetings and on-the-go collaboration. Gain momentum with an award-winning solution that works instantly on any device.

CloudShare’s Business Acceleration Platform lets you orchestrate customized software experiences quickly, easily, and at scale, driving higher customer acquisition and retention. Whether showcasing your product to a prospect or delivering hands-on training to customers or employees, CloudShare’s platform enables you to show the true value of your software, providing actionable insights that boost your ROI and impact your company’s bottom line. To learn more, visit www.cloudshare.com.

Livestorm is a webinar software that fully works from the browser, with no download required. Livestorm offers live webinar engagement features such as chat and questions, provides webinar analytics and source tracking, audience segmentation through polls and data enrichment, and integrations with CRMs and marketing softwares.

Delivering learning experiences that drive business results that really matter.

Developed by Laiye, a leading RPA+AI firm, Laiye RPA is one of the few RPA solutions with advanced AI capabilities. Laiye RPA can automate manual and repetitive tasks, freeing the staff to apply their skillset and expertise on high-value and cognitively stimulating tasks. Laiye RPA is easy to grasp and can be learnt within a few hours. It comes with over 400 pre-set commands which can be used for all types of projects, including those with a series of complex processes. Equipped with AI capabilities and OCR functionality, Laiye RPA is applicable in a wide variety of areas ranging from data entry to invoice processing. Many organisations have already adopted Laiye RPA to automate tasks in a range of sectors including Finance, Telecommunications, Outsourcing, Logistics, Insurance and more.

ReadyTech provides online training software.It offers instructor-led training, self-paced training and hosted lab solutions.

Quickly create images and videos to give feedback, solve a problem, or show off something cool.

WalkMe pioneered the Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) to transform the user experience in today's overwhelming digital world. Using artificial intelligence, analytics, engagement, guidance and automation, WalkMe's transparent overlay assists users to complete tasks easily within any enterprise software, mobile application or website.

Marketing automation software to help you attract the right audience, convert more visitors into customers, and run complete inbound marketing campaigns at scale — all on one powerful, easy-to-use CRM platform.

Highfive simplifies business collaboration with an all-in-one conferencing platform that builds connected cultures.

Get everybody on the same page, when they're not in the same room, instantly. Review documents and designs. Train staff. Demo products or just show off. join.me is a ridiculously simple screen sharing tool for meetings on the fly.