Customer satisfaction is always a top priority for businesses, and the global pandemic has only served to make it even more critical. When asked to assess their outlook on 2022 and beyond, organizations responding to Brandon Hall Group’s HCM Outlook Survey named customer satisfaction as their number two priority, right behind generating revenue. And it is pretty clear that high customer satisfaction results in more revenue.
Given its importance, organizations should be putting everything they have into the customer experience. Yet, quite often, delivering training to customers is not included in those efforts. Customer education is seen as an add-on to products, or a way to meet compliance requirements. In many cases, it is managed by anybody except the learning and development team. It falls instead to operations, sales, or others. The product team may be the ultimate subject matter experts, but they likely don’t know what goes into an engaging learning experience. Marketing may know how to engage an audience, but they probably do not understand the mechanics of learning.
L&D teams must take a stronger role in customer training. In organizations where they already do, they need to pay more attention to the role training plays in the overall customer experience. Good customer training results in customers who:
- Make better use of the products
- Are happier with their purchases
- Are more likely to renew or purchase more
- Less likely to rely on customer service
L&D teams need to leverage their expertise in creating engaging, impactful programs for employees and creating them for customers. Internal learners are essentially a captive audience, even if learning is not mandatory. In the customer experience, engagement and satisfaction are even more critical, as the learners have paid for the privilege of learning in one way or another.
To dig a little deeper into the challenges and benefits of customer training, Brandon Hall Group is partnering with one of their Platinum Preferred Providers, LearnUpon, to deliver a webinar on the topic. At a time when companies need every competitive advantage they can get, customer education can be an untapped resource for growing customer satisfaction, retention, and revenue. Join us to learn more.
–David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst, Brandon Hall Group
@davidmwentworth
