The Customer Education Playbook

Introduction

In today's subscription economy, your business is unlikely to survive if your customers aren't gaining value from your products. This is a sound argument for developing great products, of course, but that's not enough. After all, how can customers gain value from something they don't know how to effectively use? For your customers to achieve their desired outcomes, you must teach them what they need to know. Enter customer education, a rapidly evolving field that focuses on teaching customers the right things, at the right time, so that they find value from your products and become advocates of your brand. An educated customer is a satisfied customer that delivers long-term value to your business.

Here's a secret. Customers are always learning, and they are learning at every stage of their lifecycle. Whether they are learning how to solve their problem, why your solution is better than others, or how to develop mastery with your product, customers are being educated and educating themselves, for better or for worse. Left to their own devices, customers will often struggle through this learning process; many will fail to adopt your product, much less become masters of it. Without a customer education strategy, learning will happen anyway – just not the kind that positively impacts your business. You don't want customers learning the wrong things; that your product is “difficult to use,” for example, or “doesn't offer value to someone like me.”

Whether you think ...