The Customer Education Playbook

14Step 12: Demonstrate the ROI of Customer Education

Ultimately, everything that you've done so far, from creating the right education to meet your goals and engage the learner to distributing, measuring, and iterating content, needs to lead to a place where you can prove the worth of your customer education program according to business impact.

We mentioned back in Step 10 (Chapter 12) that teams often struggle to measure the success of their education, and we talked about measuring the impact of your program on customer consumption and satisfaction. But measuring success is about much more than getting a handle on who is consuming content and who isn't (although that's important, of course). It's about getting the right people to buy into your story. The bottom line is, if you can't draw a connection from the customer education function to the rest of the business, how can you make a case for greater investment to grow your team or expand your portfolio? Ultimately, if your data exists in a vacuum, how will you get a seat at the proverbial table and help to drive strategy for the business at large?

Without data to back up the ROI you're providing, you have to rely on executives just “getting it,” – coming to you and saying, “I don't need to see the proof of your impact, I understand the underlying value of customers learning and being trained and how it relates to our success.” Even if you're lucky enough to have an executive sponsor who “gets it,” don't get complacent! Relying ...