LMS for Customer Training

Online learning in many organisations mainly focuses internally, i.e. on employee training and certification. However, there are several more areas in which your LMS can be applied to improve your bottom line. 

An area you may not have considered is training your customers. 

Why train my customers, you may ask? Well, your customers remain a vital part of your assets as an organisation and value must be developed as with all assets. When you convert a customer, your relationship with the customer does not end there. The relationship needs nurturing and deepening, and value should appreciate on both sides. 

One way you can do this is by providing customer training.

Contents

• What is customer training?
• What is a customer training LMS platform, and why is it important?
• The benefits of implementing a customer training programme
• Reduced overheads
• Higher customer engagement and retention
• Higher customer satisfaction
• Effective onboarding
• How to evaluate different LMS options for your customer training programme?
  • User experience
  • Customisation
  • Content discoverability
  • Searchability
  • E-commerce
• Conclusion

What is customer training?

Customer training is equipping your customers with the knowledge and skills required to use your products and services correctly, productively and to meet their desired results. It entails teaching and showing them how products and services work and the most effective ways to use your products and services. 

By training your customers on using your products and services, you position them to be successful, and their success often culminates in yours. With customer training, you achieve the following benefits:

• Improve the customer user experience of your products and services
• Retain your customers because they get committed to your products and services
• Ingrain your organisation as a vital ally and part of your customer’s business and life.

What is a customer training LMS platform, and why is it important?

A customer training learning management system is an eLearning environment targeted at an organisation's customers, partners, and employees. It provides customer education programmes, particularly for complex products and services, or training that requires documentation for compliance reasons. 

They help to facilitate and accelerate the training process and ensure the customers gain practical understanding and experience. More importantly, they are multi-functional in not just training the customers but also in the storage of educational content.

With more than 50% of organisations training external groups of partners, customers, distributors, franchisees and value-added resellers, customer training has become a crucial tool for organisations globally. They offer organisations the opportunity to: 

• Deepen ties and relationships
• Grow brand awareness, reach and network
• Elevate customer experience
• Produce additional revenue streams.

The benefits of implementing a customer training programme

You now know about customer training and how it fits into an organisation. Here are other underlying benefits of customer training software to organisations:

Reduced overheads

Equipping customers to use and understand products and services reduces your cost of providing support services.

Higher customer engagement and retention

By training your customers and partners to use your products and services, you also drive their commitment to your brand. They get comfortable with your brand and continue to repeat purchases in form of upgrades, accessories and other products and services in your portfolio.

Higher customer satisfaction

Once your customers and partners know how to use your products, they are likely to become your advocates. With less frustration, they will use your products and service more and for longer and be satisfied customers. 

Effective onboarding

As you sign on new customers, training them on your products and services elevates their customer experience. Smooth onboarding ensures that they are quick to adopt and adapt to your products and services, making their experience seamless and positive.

How to evaluate different LMS options for your customer training programme?

Your customers remain at the centre of your customer training programme and should be the focus of your strategy. Though they are the users, their training needs and perspectives may differ from employees within your organisation who currently use your LMS for learning. 

External learners on your LMS have to have to be approached differently because:

• They do not work for you, at least not directly. 
• They have the option of using and associating with someone else.
• Beyond buying your products and services already, they may be paid users of your training services.

You need to maintain high engagement to encourage them to continue and complete the training process because your training is part of your conversion and marketing tools. In deciding on the appropriateness of an LMS for your customer training programme, consider the following:

User Experience

Do you want an LMS that prioritises high user experience for your customers? Customers cannot be intimidated by reminders and notifications, so you need to provide them with a stronger pull than that. The aesthetics and user-friendliness of the interface are building blocks to optimal user experience. 

Customisation

Your customers don’t want to feel like they are on a foreign platform when they use your training programmes. Save them the discomfort by choosing an LMS that you can white-label to your brand.

Content discoverability

While employees may make time to explore your portfolio of courses and find courses that interest them, your customers might not be so generous with their time. You want an LMS where courses are easy to discover or fall under personalised recommendations.

Searchability

Yes, many LMS platforms have search bars, but you want one that recognises that users may not know what they are searching for. You want one that is smart and can make suggestions to users.

E-commerce

While you may offer your training courses free to your customers initially, other considerations may come to play as your business expands. 

Look out for LMS solutions that can generate invoices, accommodate payment gateways, facilitate the creation of course bundles and packages, and offer discount codes. Creation of subscriptions, billing reports and forex accommodations are also areas to look at. Even if you do not need to activate these options at the onset, it is not a bad idea to make forecasts when planning at this stage.

Conclusion

There are many other considerations that you can make when deciding on the LMS platform that is most suitable to host your customer training programme, and we at My Learning Hubs are eager to discuss them with you.

Book a demo session with us today to find out more about the customer training software that will be most appropriate for you.