Education Strategy Mistakes to Avoid: Customer Ed Nugget 15

Every customer education organization wants to make a measurable business impact. However, it’s surprisingly easy for these efforts to go awry, resulting in programs that are sluggish, wasteful and ineffective. This often stems from a weak or nonexistent education strategy that leaves customer education teams without a “north star” to guide decisions.

A robust education strategy is essential to ensure that customers have sufficient knowledge, skill and confidence to successfully adopt your products and services. A thoughtful education strategy makes it possible for companies to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty while simultaneously improving operational efficiency. Ultimately, this can elevate the overall customer experience in ways that help companies gain and sustain a competitive advantage.

Although an effective customer education strategy requires a formal development process, it doesn’t have to be an arduous or overwhelming task. The key is to be aware of common mistakes and steer clear of them. Exactly what kind of mistakes should you avoid? That’s what we’re talking about on this 15th episode of the Talented Learning Customer Ed Nuggets Podcast!

Vicky Kennedy, Founder of Echtus

Today’s Guest Expert

Because the customer education realm is relatively new, it’s rare to find professionals with deep domain expertise. But today’s guest is one of those pioneers. Over the years, Vicky Kennedy has spearheaded a stream of customer and partner learning initiatives at some of the world’s most innovative companies. Now, she is bringing those experiences to a new consulting practice. As Founder and Managing Director of Echtus, Vicky specializes in helping technology companies grow by delivering customer-centered product education.

Recently, I read one of Vicky’s articles about the power of developing a unified strategy for customer education. Recognizing that we share similar goals and perspectives, I invited her to join us here to expand on this topic.

What is a Customer Education Strategy?

A customer education strategy is a holistic blueprint for designing, creating, organizing, delivering, and managing content that helps customers understand and use your products and services for their needs. This foundation helps your team prioritize meaningful instructional experiences that foster positive, profitable relationships and empower customers to make the most of their investment in your offerings.

What exactly should you include in your education strategy? Vicky says it’s important to focus on 5 core components.

But no matter what you include, remember that without a strategic framework, you’re just winging it. Neglecting this process is likely to seriously diminish your team’s efficiency and effectiveness. And over time, you’ll see a negative impact on business results.

Top Mistakes to Avoid In Your Customer Education Strategy

Creating and maintaining instructional content is time consuming and expensive. Even if you build it, there’s no guarantee it will work. The only reason why you’re offering customers educational content at all is to differentiate your brand and make a positive business impact. So it makes sense to increase the odds of success with a strategic framework. The right strategy can help you onboard faster, accelerate customer success, and build more durable, profitable relationships.

Succeeding with your educational strategy starts with avoiding avoidable mistakes. Here are the top mistakes we see:

1. Siloed Thinking — Educational content is relevant to prospects, customers, partners and customer-facing employees. Develop a plan that encompasses the interests and needs of all.

2. Skipping Skills — What must your customers need to learn and do? What do they already know? It’s hard to be sure if you haven’t defined a skill model.

3. Assuming One Size Fits All — The vast majority of customers voluntarily engage in learning. They’re not required to participate. This means it’s important to meet individuals on their terms. In other words, any given content type or delivery channel is likely to appeal only to some people, but not all. So, you’ll want to understand and address the various learning interests, preferences, styles and needs represented across various audience segments.

4. Ignoring Feedback — Your customers know better than anyone about what is working and what isn’t. Ask them for feedback early and often. Then listen to their answers, and let them know how you intend to respond.

5. Generalizing Needs Analysis — Every audience is different. Conduct a detailed needs analysis for each audience early in your strategic planning process. Document your findings and update this analysis periodically.

6. Buying the Wrong LMS — Learning systems for customer education are very different from employee-focused compliance or academic learning platforms. More than anything else, buying the wrong LMS slows program progress.

7. Deemphasizing Measurement — Launching a customer education strategy is a massive effort, but don’t delay or deprioritize your measurement strategy. From Day Zero you’ll need this to benchmark key metrics, to prove performance and to improve outcomes over time.

8. Leaving Money on the Table — Sometimes free is foolish. It makes sense to monetize content for certain audience groups. Be sure to consider this early in the planning process.

9. Not Leveraging New Technology — Technology is continuously changing. Staying ahead of the curve can be challenging, but it’s worth the effort. Choosing not to pay attention to advances can directly affect your strategy, content production, maintenance and more. Falling behind means you can quickly fall behind competitors.

10. Forgetting About Syndication — There are many places to host instructional content, including your customer’s LMS. Learn how you can benefit from this without losing licensing or reporting control.

Watch This Episode of Customer Ed Nuggets

You now know how important your education strategy is and the key mistakes to avoid. But some mistakes are more lethal than others.

Which pitfalls are especially important to keep in mind? To find out, tune-in to the brief video as Vicky and I compare notes…

If you’d rather listen to our conversation, tune in to this Customer Ed Nuggets audio podcast right here at TalentedLearning.com.

The Bottom Line on Customer Education Strategy

To paraphrase the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

This bit of wisdom is as true in customer education as it is in life. You may want your efforts to make a measurable business impact. But without a relevant education strategy, how will you know if you’re actually empowering customers with the knowledge and skills they need to adopt your products and services? And how will you really know if you’re contributing to customer success, satisfaction, loyalty and retention?

Even the most powerful engine in the world is useless if it moves you in the wrong direction. Be sure you start with the end in mind.

About Talented Learning Customer Ed Nuggets

Hosted by Talented Learning CEO John Leh, the Customer Ed Nuggets podcast is a trusted source of advice, guidance and best practices for customer education professionals of all types. In this series of brief video and audio “nuggets” (each 10 minutes or less), we explore key topics with numerous guest experts.

Join us anytime here or on our YouTube channel to explore all facets of customer education learning tech, from how to build a persuasive business case, to effective strategies, technologies and content that help professionals create, deploy and grow successful customer-centered programs.

Follow the Customer Ed Nuggets Podcast

We practice what we preach by providing our content in a format for every learning preference. You can stay up-to-date with this podcast series through these channels:

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Learn More About Echtus

To find out more about Vicky Kennedy and the services she provides, follow her on LinkedIn or visit the Echtus website.

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