Training & Enablement for Enterprise Customers

We had a great discussion about Training & Enablement in last week's CS Leadership Office Hours.

There were several topics we didn't get to in the Enterprise breakout room last week that I wanted to post here:

How are you using certifications to drive usage and adoption? @David Ellin
How do you package training offerings to increase impact, efficiency of delivery and margin for training offerings @josh whitcraft
How are you tailoring curriculum and content to the stage of the customer journey? @Parker Chase-Corwin

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Comments

Pam Micznik

Hi Jay,

I wish I had been in the conversation about Training & Enablement (also known as Customer Education). It's my world.

Customer Education is an INTEGRATED CUSTOMER ENABLEMENT PROGRAM, which works best when partnered with Customer Success.

Certifications drive usage and adoption by:
- Creating an additional source of revenue
- Building user authority. Certified users promote the company because they are more likely to:
  - Display their certificates on their LinkedIn® profiles.
  - Be loyal to the products for which they have certificates because they have invested time and money to get the certification.
  - Get recruited to companies that use that product.
- Market your product. Marketing a Certification program is marketing for the company.
- Promote a more consistent experience for Customers and Partners. Certifying Partners and Employees can create a more consistent experience.
Package training offerings to increase the impact, efficiency of delivery and margin.
- There is no one size fits all Customer Education package. You need to start with the basics: user guides and instructor-led programs and get feedback to see how it helps your customers and what changes need to happen. From there, you can build out:
  - Onboarding Curriculum (Instructor-led, self-paced learning, and blended learning.)
  - Help Desk articles and User Guides
  - In-app tours (done effectively and unobtrusively)
- Onboard Training should be part of a comprehensive Change Management program. (And needs to include strategies for onboarding new users after the initial go-live program.)
Content for the Customer Journey: Because curriculum must evolve - early content delivery can be role-based. As the content scales, with an effective Content Management Strategy, you may also be able to use AI to deliver the right content at the right time based on many other factors.

David Ellin

Hmmm.. @Jay Nathan, I'm just seeing this for some reason.

When customers want to use their own trainers for onboarding, it's important that you, as the software provider, feel comfortable and have confidence that the customer trainer will deliver the right training. After all, improperly trained customers can misuse your product and not achieve the value or outcomes they expect.

There are two ways to achieve a better result. First, conduct a certification process where you teach and test for proficiency. The certification process can include online tests as well as observations during role play where the customer trainer conducts a class as part of the certification process.

The second way would be to allow the trainer to conduct training for his/her team with your trainer present (to coach and correct where appropriate). At the end of the class, your trainer would provide detailed feedback to the customer trainer for continued improvement.