Customer training is a lesson in diplomacy. You need to create a customer training program that thoroughly educates clients on using your products and empowers them to solve
problems on their own.
Comprehensive customer education reduces the time you need to spend guiding your clients
through your products. If you do it right, customer training can save you money while
improving customer satisfaction.
Yet you never want your customers to feel abandoned, as if you’ve left them to struggle with
your products while you’re chasing new sales prospects.
A learning management system (LMS) allows you to create a virtual customer training
academy that encourages your customers through product education in a fun and engaging
way.
This blog will detail the LMS features that are critical for customer training. That way, you
can decide which learning management system will support and train your clients with little
intervention from your team.
Problems that make customer training difficult
When choosing a customer training LMS, it helps to identify the problems you need your
software to solve.
High customer turnover
Unsupported clients don’t feel satisfied. If they don’t know how to use your product correctly,
it’ll feel more like a chore rather than a helpful tool. And when that happens, you’ll see high
churn rates and poor repeat customer numbers. The stage is set for high customer turnover.
Customer education programs improve customer satisfaction, reduce turnover, and inspire
more customers to renew and extend their contracts.
Inconsistent customer training quality
The consistency of your training materials may also affect your customer retention numbers.
Users want to feel secure in your customer training.
They need to know it’s reliably accurate and up-to-date. Inconsistencies, typos, and errors in
the materials tarnish the overall quality of the program and threaten to erode customer trust.
Well-coordinated training materials instill confidence in your company and your products.
From simple formatting cohesion to the overall writing style and level of technical accuracy
and detail, consistent training documents show customers you’re polished and professional.
Scalability challenges
As your company grows, it can be harder to keep track of who has completed customer
training, how much of the program they’ve completed, and how they performed.
Guiding customers to the wrong training materials or forgetting whether they’ve completed
their online courses reflects poorly on your company.
On the other hand, a customer training program that anticipates the client’s next educational
needs and prompts them to get started before they encounter problems showcases your
industry expertise and attention to training detail.
Limited access to customer training materials
Offering too few training materials sets the stage for a poor customer experience. For your
customers, it feels like you haven’t taken all their needs into account. Learning a new tool or
product can be disorienting, and insufficient training materials are more frustrating than
helpful.
Poor tracking and assessment
If your customer training program doesn’t monitor learners’ progress and report on learning outcomes, you’re missing a trick.
Tracking and reporting allow you to find and address customer training needs. Customer
feedback helps you improve your training programs. The more data you can gather on your
training programs, the better they’ll be.
How a customer training LMS solves education challenges
Customer training software addresses the challenges of educating your customers because
it:
- Allows you to create training materials that are consistent in look, feel, tone, and design
- Lets you change and update materials as individual courses or as a group, so you know all the data included is up-to-date
- Scales with your needs as they change, letting you add as many training courses as required
- Helps you develop a data-driven customer training strategy with tracking and reporting features to inform your content creation
Key features to look for in a customer training LMS
When you’re selecting an LMS that will serve your clients, you need to consider 2 audiences:
- The customers who will interact with your learning management software
- The content creators who will manage your customer education program
The LMS you choose has to work for both audiences. And if you’re hoping your training
program will improve customer loyalty and give your company a competitive advantage, the
LMS you choose has to work seamlessly.
Here’s what to look for in a customer training LMS:
User-friendly interface for non-technical users
No matter your client’s level of technical proficiency, any new software comes with a learning
curve.
When choosing a customer training LMS, you need one that’s as easy to navigate and
understand as possible.
Look for:
- A simple, attractive home screen or dashboard
- Straightforward navigation to access online courses
- Easy-to-understand course and learning journey navigation
- Quick access to discussion forums or a private messaging system if the learner gets stuck
Learners who feel confident using your customer training LMS are more likely to log in,
complete courses, and retain the data they learned.
Customization options to match your brand
Another way to boost the customer experience is to choose anLMS that is a white label LMS
or an LMS with customizable branding options.
Ideally, customers won’t realize they’ve left your website to access customer training. That’s
not a ploy to trick your customers. It’s a way of reducing access friction so customers
encounter as few barriers to completing their training as possible.
Look for:
- Customizable colors and images on every page in the LMS, including all training content
- Customizable logo display
- A seamless transition from your website to the training portal
Training and education should be a positive, painless part of the customer journey.
Customization options help you achieve that.
Scalability to accommodate growing customer base
As your sales team secures more contracts, you need to know your customer training LMS
can grow with you.
Not all learning management systems make it easy to scale your training, so you need to
find an LMS that will support your growth.
Plus, your LMS may need to support corporate training, sales training, and other educational
goals. Don’t get stuck with an LMS that’s one-note and self-limiting.
Look for:
- Easy editing for courses, modules, and learning journeys
- The ability to assign permissions and access based on user roles
- Frictionless restructuring, in case you need to reorganize your courses or modules
- Unlimited instances of the software so that you can assign a new portal for each new client
When you choose your customer LMS, plan for success. That way, you know your software
can flex to accommodate every new customer.
Integration with CRM systems for seamless customer data management
Look for an LMS training software that integrates with your CRM so you can sync all the
training data your LMS generates with your learners’ CRM profiles.
Think of CRM integration like a superhighway for customer data. It connects your customer
training LMS with your CRM, making sure that everything your customers do in their training
— like completing courses, nailing performance goals, and snagging certificates — gets
smoothly synced with their profiles in your CRM.
It’s a great way to personalize training and help the customer see the direct link between
their learning goals and their job roles.
Analytics and reporting for tracking customer progress
To deliver customer success, you need to define it. LMS with analytics tools and reporting
features help you tweak, adjust, and change your courses so you can measure whether
learners are meeting requirements, acing tests, and making their way through each module.
- Visibility on a learner’s enrollment and completion
- Downloadable transcripts and certificates
- Downloadable activity logs
- Feedback gathering and reporting features
- The ability to see which courses are the most popular
You can build a solid foundation for customer success when you track learner progress.
Every data point you gather informs your training program, allowing you to adapt it to training
goals and learner preferences.
Security and compliance
When you’re searching for training software, remember to keep regulatory requirements like
security and compliance top-of-mind.
By law, you must protect your customer data. You could have access to personal biodata,
contact information, home addresses, and credit card information. Housing and handling that
data is a serious responsibility, and you need an LMS platform that ensures it’s kept safe.
Look for:
- Data security and compliance with industry standards
- GDPR compliance for EU customers
- Role-based access for different user groups
Keep your company on the right side of the law and avoid fines associated with ignoring data
regulations: choose a secure, data-compliant LMS.
Vendor support and training
With all the focus on supporting your customers’ training needs, it’s easy to forget that your
team will need training, too.
The LMS you choose should offer instructive training and unrivaled vendor support. If you
get stuck creating a course or integrating with new software, you need to know that your
LMS vendor has your back.
Look for:
- 24/7 support via chat, email, and phone
- A global support team
- Onboarding specialists dedicated to your company
- Migration assistance and an support tool
- Training videos and other learning materials
Finally, ask about the LMS roadmap and how often you can expect updates and patches.
You need to know that the product you buy is future-proofed and constantly improving. That
way, you can be sure it’s a customer training LMS that will grow with you.
LearnRight supports your customer training efforts
At LearnRight, we know an educated customer is a happy one. That’s why we created our
industry-leading software with your customer training process in mind.
Book a demo of LearnRight to see how it supports your customer education program, boosts
customer retention, and improves the customer experience.
