(Newswire.net — February 21, 2020) — If you’ve ever used photoshop without reading a manual or taking lessons, you’d know the need for adequately training customers around a product.
It’s a fact. No matter how great your product is. No matter what uses it serves or what issues it solves, if your customers don’t know how to make the most out of it, it’ll fail to perform optimally.
Solution?
Customer training/education can save the day here. Plus, it can help you build trust among your customers. And so, we are talking about it.
Here are six tips on how you can educate your customers without spending a fortune; but maybe, earning one.
1. Create User Manuals For Basic Information and Know-How
We know how most electronic devices come with a ‘user’s manual’.
These handy manuals fold into small size booklets and can be expanded up to the size of a mini-newspaper, providing crucial information regarding the product’s usage.
And that’s not just about electronics. Such manuals help educate customers, even for using several digital services and products.
So, the point is, can these work for your product?
Think about it. In most cases, these are easy to create, easy to distribute (yes, right with the product package) and easy to access (for customers). This can be one of the easiest and most effective modes of educating customers about your product.
2. Use Ebooks as Detailed Product Guides
The world of marketers in 2020 knows how ebooks can be a super-useful marketing resource.
Whether it’s about establishing brand authority, spreading awareness, boosting leads or educating customers, ebooks can always come in handy. The point is how you choose to create and use them.
While you may work hard to give a generic ebook an aesthetic look and feel, it may not perform well, if the content isn’t really helpful to your audience/customer base.
So, remember that the point is to be useful to your customers.
As you are intending on creating an ebook to train your customers for using your product, it’ll be better for you to talk about product’s initial setup procedure, its basic and advanced features, how your users can access and benefit from them, plus the challenges that they may have to face regarding the product and how to deal with them.
For better understanding have a look at this general customer training ebook index:
- (Product) Introduction
- How to Set Up?
- Basic Functions + How to Use Them?
- Advanced Functions + How to Use Them?
- Product’s USPs (if applicable)
- Most Common Challenges That Users May Have to Face
- Troubleshooting
- FAQs
Now, you don’t necessarily have to use the same index (you still may though). This was just to give you a basic idea about the contents of your customer training ebook.
3. Harness the Power of Videos
Videos are great educators. In fact, nearly 60% of colleges are using videos to educate their students.
Clearly, when used smartly, these can be super effective, even for your customer training campaign.
So, explore video types that can work towards your goal of educating your customers.
These can be explainer videos or tutorial videos or series of several video lessons that train your customers.
For example, if you are an LMS vendor and your LMS has a ton of exciting, and essential features that your customers will find useful, a series of video lessons on how your customers can access these features and leverage their full potential can be beneficial.
Sounds like a good idea?
Try implementing it for your product. You can start with small videos, see how they perform and then decide whether you want to take it further to create a video series or not.
4. Host Webinars
As talked above, videos do great for educating customers. So, how about amalgamating videos with live interactions?
Looking at the stats, we can say that the idea is great.
Webinars hold good potential for training your customers as well as solving their queries and doubts that they may have regarding your product.
Plus, hosting webinars to help your customers learn better about your product will evoke a sense of trust and quality in your customers’ minds. It’ll make them feel like you care about their expectations of your product.
So, think about it. If you are looking for a quick, economical and highly effective customer training session, a webinar can do the job perfectly.
5. Use MicroLearning
Sometimes, your customers may be well aware of how your product works and how they can use it, but they may still have doubts regarding a few features. Or you would know about your product’s USPs and may wish to educate your customers about how they can make the most out of these special features.
That’s when microlearning can come into play.
The idea is to create micro-content pieces for educating your customers regarding different elements/features of your product.
Microlearning can also help if your product has several bit-sized features that you need to talk about.
6. Create an Evergreen Online Training Program
Coming to one of the most substantial customer training methods – online training program.
We know-how business, colleges and schools are using eLearning as an effective education method for training employees and students. The same can work wonders for training customers as well.
Yep! With the modernization of eLearning, designing, developing and managing online training programs has become super-simple.
All you need is the right set of tools, knowledge of your product and the content to train/educate your customers.
A good eLearning authoring tool will help you design and create the course, while an LMS will help you manage and track performance regarding this program.
Just make sure you spend some time in LMS and eLearning authoring tools comparison to pick the tools that best suit your customer training needs.
Final words
Yes, it’s great to have a useful product that can solve many of your customers’ problems. But can it work when they don’t know how to use it?
That’s when the need for customer education arises, and that’s when the above-mentioned tips will come into play.
Hopefully, this was helpful.