How Strategic Learning Programs Strengthen CX
Learning and Development (L&D) departments often face pressure to demonstrate their value while operating with constrained resources. In the face of economic turmoil or unpredictable market conditions, customer training can present a promising avenue for L&D departments looking to drive significant business impact. This article explores how leveraging existing L&D resources can enhance customer education initiatives and ultimately transform L&D from a perceived cost center into a vehicle for revenue growth and retention.
The Strategic Value Of Customer Training
Economic downturns historically put pressure on departments that are viewed as cost centers rather than revenue generators, with L&D often falling into this vulnerable category. In these scenarios, L&D leaders may need to prove the business value of their function. This makes aligning with critical business priorities a critical priority for L&D teams facing these conditions.
Customer training represents a strategic pivot that can help L&D directly connect their efforts to business outcomes. In the face of economic downturn, 74% of business leaders are reportedly paying closer attention to customer service. This makes customer education a competitive necessity. By developing and delivering engaging, accessible, and relevant customer training materials, companies can cultivate stronger and more profitable customer relationships. Training that helps customers use your product more effectively can build customer confidence and reduce their reliance on busy customer support teams, fostering brand loyalty that is more likely to withstand economic turbulence.
In today’s market, the name of the game is sustainable customer retention. Driving recurring revenue starts with building strong customer relationships through personalized training. Gone are the days of signing a new customer, sending a link to outdated documentation, and waiting on the customer support team to fill in the gaps. Customer facing functions have to proactively collaborate with L&D to leverage their organizational learning platforms for customer education. Teams that understand how to train, when to train and tie those efforts to outcomes will earn L&D’s blessing for continued long term relationships.
– Todd Lefkowitz, Chief Customer Officer at Litmos
Positioning L&D As A Strategic Partner Through Customer Training
Getting executive buy-in for training is a familiar challenge and a growing concern for L&D teams facing market volatility. To secure a seat at the table, L&D leaders must demonstrate the revenue potential of customer training as well as the efficiencies that it can create.
Business leaders know that well-trained customers renew their subscriptions at higher rates, but they might not know how L&D can help. This is where L&D must highlight the benefits of leveraging existing internal training tools for customer education to decision-makers outside of L&D, who may view the Learning Management System (LMS) as a platform reserved for employee training and development. To get leadership buy-in for new customer training programs, L&D should demonstrate how extensible, scalable, and customizable their LMS can be for a variety of external use cases. Once leaders see that the LMS their employees already use can be used to train customers, they may just get on board.
Measuring And Demonstrating ROI Of Customer Training
For L&D to successfully expand into customer training, proving Return On Investment is essential. Effective measurement begins with identifying the right metrics. The most relevant KPIs for customer education programs include:
- Customer education ROI – To determine the profitability of your customer training program, calculate the difference between the benefits and costs of training.
- Course completion rates – To gauge the effectiveness of customer training, track how many customers finish training modules.
- Support ticket reduction – To understand the impact of customer training on the customer experience, measure the percentage change in ticket volume after implementing customer training.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) – Monitor how training impacts customer satisfaction by measuring how likely your customers are to recommend your product or service.
- Product adoption metrics – Assess how training influences feature usage and product engagement by monitoring product adoption metrics like time to value (TTV), activation rate, and usage frequency.
- Customer retention rates – To see whether customer training has impacted retention, compare the renewal and churn rates between trained and untrained customer cohorts.
The most compelling ROI metrics link customer training directly to revenue. This approach may require L&D to correlate learning activities with business outcomes, measuring customer training’s impact by comparing the KPIs above for trained versus untrained customers. This evidence-based approach is crucial for securing continued investment during economic uncertainty.
Leverage Technology For Scale And Measurement
Economic uncertainty creates both challenges and opportunities for L&D. By expanding into customer training, L&D can transform from a departmental support function into a strategic business partner that directly contributes to revenue resilience.
The right technology infrastructure enables L&D to deliver customer training efficiently while tracking outcomes, helping teams align customer training activity with business results. This integration is crucial for proving that customer education directly influences renewal rates, expansion opportunities, and support costs.
For L&D leaders navigating uncertain times, customer training represents a strategic pivot that aligns learning expertise with business-critical outcomes. By using the tools at their disposal, L&D can measure and demonstrate the impact of customer education on Key Performance Indicators, securing its place as an essential function in the economic climate.
