For many years now, businesses have recognized the value of training their employees in order to optimize their work performance for the benefit of the company, as well as the employee’s career and growth opportunities. But until recently, many organizations have failed to see the benefits of extending their training programs outside of the four walls of the organization- a concept that is referred to as extended enterprise training. And when you choose to expand your training program to include outside entities, perhaps the most important group to consider is your customers.
Customer training programs are implemented to help users of your company’s products and services to derive the greatest possible value with the fewest challenges. A well-designed customer training program can serve to differentiate your brand from the competition and deliver a significant return-on-investment (ROI).
The Benefits of Customer Training Programs
Customer training, as a component and contributor to the overall customer experience, is gaining traction because of the benefits it can bring to businesses.
Improved Customer Onboarding
The customer journey starts with the onboarding process. An effective onboarding strategy improves the customer’s chance for success with your product or service while maximizing your retention rate.
Increased Customer Satisfaction
Effective training helps ensure that your customers utilize your products and services in ways that bring them the greatest possible value, leading to higher rates of customer satisfaction to the benefit of your company and brand.
Enhanced Customer Loyalty
Satisfied customers are less likely to abandon your products and services in search of a replacement. This enhanced loyalty can help protect your customer base and associated revenues.
Increased Upsell Opportunities
Effective training programs can help your customers understand how your additional products and services (which they may not yet have purchased) can contribute to and enhance their current experience with your brand.
Streamlined Product Development
Offering customer training opens up a new form of communication with your customers which can help facilitate discussion regarding the current feature set of your products and services, as well as opportunities for enhancement and improvement. In this way, your customers can participate in your road mapping discussions.
Learning Management Systems as Customer Training Software
A Learning Management System, or “LMS” is the software that is used to build, deliver, manage, and track any type of online training program, including customer training. And while LMS technology is not new, several recent advances have made LMS infrastructure extremely well-suited for customer training programs.
Cloud-Based
Over the past several years, LMS technology has become widely available from third-party vendors who offer access to the infrastructure in a subscription-based approach over the Internet. This cloud-based approach eliminates the need for a large up-front investment in hardware and software and ensures that your customers will have access to the training content they need at any time and from any place. All that is required is an Internet connection.
Multi-Tenant
Multi-tenant LMS architecture is ideal for customer training as it allows you to “spin up” a dedicated instance of the application for each of your customers. This approach allows you to created branded eLearning environments (portals) that offer the specific content, given the set of products and services purchased by the customer.
Rapid eLearning
While many companies have resisted offering customer training programs due to the cost of program and course development, some LMS offerings now eliminate this concern by including a rapid course development engine to allow most anyone to build engaging training courses, quickly and easily.
LMS Portals as Customer Training Software
LMS Portals provides our clients and partners with a cloud-based, multi-tenant learning management system for customer training software. The platform allows you to launch and manage branded eLearning portals on-demand to support customer training programs. And each portal includes a rapid course development engine, along with supporting tools for user onboarding, learner collaboration, analytics, and more.
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