3 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Launching Your First Customer Education Platform

Scaled customer education is nothing new. Many company websites now include product academies, learning centers, and “universities” with both live and on demand courses aimed to help clients and prospects learn more about the value and use of the company’s products and solutions. But what does it take to launch this initiative from the ground up? Where should you start, and what pitfalls can you avoid? Here are three of the most common mistakes companies make when it comes to launching their first customer education platform, with solutions on how to avoid them yourself!

Don’t Make These Common Mistakes

You’ve got executive buy-in and a decent budget to own the development of your company’s formal learning center. Perhaps you’re already researching learning management systems (LMS) and content development vendors, creating a content roadmap, and planning your launch date. But while this may sound like the right approach, you may be skipping a vital step – aligning on the program strategy.

Mistake #1: Jumping into tactics before defining strategy

When it comes time to launching a customer education initiative, the very first question that should be asked is – Why are we doing this? What are the business problems or opportunities that we’re targeting with this program? There could be - and likely will be - more than one. Maybe you want to create a scaled solution to onboarding new clients, or you want to encourage more advanced product usage by offering certifications. Perhaps you see a lot of customers churning and want to ensure they have access to training material that will accelerate time to value.

Customer education content shouldn’t be thought of as a one-size-fits-all solution. Content that isn’t built to achieve specific outcomes won’t be effective in meeting business goals. Because educational content is “living,” meaning it needs to be updated based on learner feedback, efficacy, and product changes, it can be very expensive to create and maintain over time. If you’re not targeting the learning material and experience appropriately based on business needs, the investment will fall flat.

Solution: Start with strategy

Create your strategic plan first. Start with the overall vision for the education platform. Identify the business reasons for offering training. Learn everything you can about your audience, their behaviors, needs, and motivations. Take an audit of existing learning material and training programs. What’s working, what could be improved? Before you jump into content creation and LMS selection (which can also be quite expensive), you should develop a comprehensive education strategy that considers everything about your approach to content, how you’ll deliver it, what you’ll measure, how you’ll segment your learners, and how you’ll engage with them.

Mistake #2: Misjudging the required skills necessary to build and maintain an effective customer education program

It's not uncommon for teams that have no educational background to be tasked with owning a customer education program. There can be a misunderstanding that educational content is not the same as other content types. Going back to the first point, educational content should be targeting specific outcomes. Education is unique in that its goal is about changing learner behavior. It’s not simply meant to inform or demonstrate. Effective education targets learning objectives and enables the learner to achieve proficiency in the expected competency. If teams embark on developing a customer education program without any dedicated education resource, the content is unlikely to achieve the expected outcomes.

Solution: Prioritize curriculum and instructional design

It may not be possible for you to hire a dedicated curriculum developer and instructional designer on day one, but there are ways to still ensure you’re addressing this need. Consider hiring a consultant or working with an e-learning agency that specializes in customer education. Over time, once you see the results of effective learning material, you’ll be able to make a case to your leadership to bring these skills in house.

Mistake #3: Not defining success at every stage

Related to both #1 and #2, this common mistake bears repeating. Your customer education program is a strategic initiative, which means it should be supporting larger business goals. Yet, many novice customer education teams struggle with measuring the program’s impact beyond customer engagement. Their success metrics are often limited to views or enrollments, completions, and course ratings.

What would happen if other areas of the business measured success at engagement only? If a marketer spent money on an email campaign and only reported on open rates, the CMO likely wouldn’t be too happy. They would expect to see some report on conversions to understand if the campaign successfully achieved its goal.

Solution: Design a measurement strategy that connects learning to business results

Education isn’t as direct as marketing, but you should still have a measurement strategy in place to measure success beyond engagement alone. If you’ve developed your learning experience to target a specific business problem, then you can measure whether it’s effectively addressing that same problem. Your measurement strategy should cover at least three levels of metrics:

Course outcomes; as measured by content efficacy metrics
        Connected to -
User behavior; as measured by product or customer metrics
        Connected to -
Business results; as measured by top-level business metrics like ARR

Equip Your Program for Long-Term Success

Having an awareness around these common mistakes should equip you to get ahead of them and build a program designed for long-term growth. When education is effectively employed as a business strategy, it has the possibility of impacting a variety of metrics at both the pre-sale and post-sale stage. It can be a highly efficient way to build brand credibility, increase leads, reduce churn, increase loyalty, and much more. If you’ve been given the opportunity to launch a customer education initiative from the ground up, keep these common mistakes in mind. You’ll want to show a high return on your education investment!

Looking for support in building or growing your customer education program? Schedule a quick call to learn how Echtus experts can help!