How important is customer education? The short answer: Very. The success of your product doesn’t just depend on its features, but how well you educate customers to understand and use them. 

As technologies like AI continue to evolve, products and services have become more sophisticated, meaning the need to educate and empower customers has never been more urgent. It’s not just about avoiding the negative, though — in fact, customer education should be viewed as a way to guarantee customer success, helping you drive product adoption, reduce churn, and encourage long-term loyalty.

In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about educating your customers. Whether you’re just starting out or want to boost your existing business goals, we offer top tips to build a world-class customer education program.

What Is Customer Education?

At its core, customer education is about creating a continuous learning experience that grows alongside your product and your customers’ needs. This approach goes far beyond simply teaching customers how to use your product features — it’s about helping them achieve their own business goals and solve their biggest pain points.

The best education programs integrate seamlessly with the customer journey, providing relevant knowledge and resources at every touchpoint. From initial onboarding to advanced feature adoption, each interaction is an opportunity to deepen customer understanding and engagement with your products and services.

Customer Training vs. Customer Education

Think of customer training as the initial wireframe for a website design, while customer education is the finished product with fully interactive elements.

Traditional customer training often focuses on one-time knowledge transfer through standardized sessions, like basic product tutorials or support documentation.

However, modern customer education takes a more nuanced approach. It recognizes that different segments of your customer base have varying needs, learning styles, and objectives. 

Consider how your customers’ needs evolve throughout their journey:

• During onboarding, they need clear, foundational knowledge to get started quickly. 
• As they become more familiar with your product, their focus shifts to discovering advanced features and best practices. 
• Seasoned users might want to optimize their workflows or integrate your product more deeply into their operations.

A well-designed education program addresses these different needs through multiple channels and formats, creating a solid learning ecosystem that offers support at every stage for a well-rounded customer experience. 

To sum up, true customer education means empowering users throughout their entire journey with your product.

The Benefits of Customer Education

What is the impact of customer education? Though it may take some investment at the start, the benefits can ripple across multiple business metrics. Companies that prioritize education programs see dramatic improvements in customer satisfaction and retention — which is good news for their bottom line.

Drive Customer Success and Loyalty

When customers are fully educated on how to use your product, they’re more likely to achieve their personal business goals. This, in turn, leads to increased loyalty and higher retention rates. 

Your customer support team will also see benefits from well-educated users. As customers become more self-sufficient, the volume of basic support tickets will naturally decrease, freeing up your support staff to focus on more strategic tasks. This not only reduces operational costs but also improves the overall customer experience.

Accelerate Product Adoption and Revenue Growth

Just launched a new feature? Don’t forget to update your education program. When users adopt new product features and see the full potential of your solution, they’re more likely to expand their usage and become advocates within their organizations. This internal championing often leads to expanded accounts and new business opportunities through referrals.

A recent survey from Forrester, commissioned by Intellum, found that:

• A whopping 96% of companies that invested in education programs have seen a positive ROI
• Well-educated customers lead to a 15.5% decrease in customer support costs
• Customer education has contributed to a 38.3% increase in product adoption rates
• Organizations report a 26.2% improvement in customer satisfaction thanks to educational initiatives

4 Steps to Build a Customer Education Program

Never built a customer education program before? No problem. Follow these four steps to create your strategy:

1. Understand Your Audience

Analyze your customer base to identify different learner personas. Consider factors such as:

• Role within their organization
• Technical expertise level
• Industry-specific challenges
• Common pain points
• Learning preferences and styles

This will help you create targeted content that resonates with each segment of your audience and addresses your customers’ needs.

2. Create Your Education Center

Next, build an education center to house all your learning resources. Modern learning management systems (LMS) such as Moodle, Intellum, and TalentLMS provide similar hubs to organize and share their educational content.

Your education center should include:

• A structured onboarding program that guides new users through essential features and workflows. This initial experience sets the tone for the entire customer journey with your product.
• An online academy offering self-paced courses and certification programs. This allows learners to progress at their own pace and track their advancement.
• A comprehensive knowledge base containing detailed product documentation, troubleshooting guides, and best practices. By including an in-product resource center, users can search for what they need without leaving your platform. This knowledge base is an invaluable resource for self-serve learning, cutting down on your support team tickets. 
• Regular webinars and live training sessions that provide interactive learning opportunities. Webinars are ideal for more complex features, allowing customers to engage directly with product experts.

3. Use Multiple Content Formats

Different learners absorb information in different ways. Some of your customers will prefer written materials while others will appreciate a more visual approach. 

With so many options for educating users, it makes sense to have a diverse content strategy that includes:

• Interactive product tours: These guide users through key workflows directly within your app, providing contextual education at the exact moment of need.
• Video tutorials: An ideal way to demonstrate complex features or advanced use cases. Visual learners often prefer this format for understanding new concepts.
• Written documentation: A detailed reference for product capabilities and technical specifications.
• Live training sessions: These allow for real-time interaction and question-answering with your education team.

4. Set Your Metrics for Success 

How can you guarantee your education program delivers value? By establishing clear metrics for success. These key performance indicators (KPIs) might include:

• Engagement metrics such as course completion rates and resource usage statistics. These indicate how effectively your content resonates with learners.
• Product adoption metrics that track feature usage and user progression. These help identify areas where additional education might be needed.
• Customer satisfaction scores and retention rates that show the broader impact of your educational initiatives.
• Support ticket volumes and resolution times that show how well your program enables self-service.

How Can You Improve Customer Education?

Maybe you’ve already implemented the above steps and want to scale your customer retention efforts. Here are some advanced content strategies to take your education program up a notch. 

Personalization at Scale

The best learning management systems offer a highly customized user experience from the get-go. By analyzing user behavior and preferences, you can create personalized educational paths in your LMS that adapt to each learner’s unique needs and progress.

Integration With Customer Success

Customer retention takes a village. That’s why your education program should work hand-in-hand with your customer success team. Success managers can use educational resources to support their customers’ growth and spot opportunities for deeper engagement.

Continuous Evolution

The most effective education programs are never truly finished. To keep up with the competition, you should constantly be thinking of new ways to refine and improve your educational offerings. Regular content audits, user feedback collection, and performance analysis can all help with your user retention efforts.

Get Ready to Invest in Customer Education

As we’ve discussed, companies can no longer afford to neglect their customer education efforts. When you invest in a comprehensive education program, you’re not just teaching customers how to use your product — you’re empowering them to achieve their business goals and realize lasting value from their purchase.

Remember, a strong customer education program:

• Drives product adoption
• Creates more engaged and knowledgeable users
• Reduces support team costs
• Improves customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Increases revenue, boosting business value

As you build or enhance your customer education program, focus on creating engaging, accessible content that meets your learners where they are. Host new webinars and update your online academy and knowledge base when you launch new product features, add personalized elements wherever you can, and continuously measure and optimize your efforts based on customer feedback and performance metrics.

Ready to revolutionize your customer education program? Start your free trial today and see how Userflow can help you create engaging customer education experiences that keep users coming back for more.