The main customer education tools
Knowing the main customer education tools is the obvious next step to move from thinking to planning and then to action. We'll cover each of them, such as the knowledge base, community, on-demand lessons and other forms of education.
There is a plethora of main customer education tools. We'll cover in general terms what each one is for. Since customer education is a relatively new field, don't get stuck on models. Throughout these posts I'll try to explore new ways and cases of how companies have been using these tools.
The most important thing is to explore and understand the resources each one gives you, so you can think about how to use them in a way that fits your goal.
Knowledge base
The knowledge base is one of the main customer education tools. It's usually a website with documents, posts and content to answer users' most frequent questions, guides and tutorials for using the platform, and how users can solve problems and roadblocks themselves when using the product or service. It works for physical products, software or services.
It's very common for it to live at help.yourcompany.com or support.yourcompany.com.
The central goal is for people to easily find the solution to a problem without having to open a ticket with the support, customer service or after-sales team, freeing that team to handle new cases or more specific matters.
Ideally, whenever a new case comes up, the team adds it to the knowledge base. Or when a product feature changes, the team updates the knowledge base, keeping it always useful.
The structure of a knowledge base usually consists of a home screen with a search box and, right below it, a list of the most viewed and/or searched articles, to make things easier to find. Knowledge base content tends to be written, but it can contain videos, graphics, screenshots and even narration. There's not much of a limit on format.
Use a knowledge base if you have a support team that constantly has to answer many questions about using your product or service. And, above all, to help your users navigate the options, screens and services you offer.
On-demand lessons (online courses)
Certainly one of the first options when we think about the main customer education tools. On-demand courses or lessons are mostly video content that viewers can watch whenever they want, similar to Netflix, for example. Also called asynchronous lessons.
These courses and on-demand lessons require low commitment from the learner and allow the content to reach far more people than a live or in-person class, for example. That makes them very useful for teaching users to complete a more complex operation in a more interactive and visual way, especially for systems and operations that involve multiple steps that would otherwise be only text to read.
With the pandemic, the number of online courses grew a lot and LMSs (learning management systems) got only marginally better than they were before. People have really been innovating in format and content. Most systems allow the creation of rich HTML content, meaning advanced formatting, PDFs, images of all kinds, videos, text and so on. That way you can complement your teaching with different tools and media, making learning lighter.
Also, unlike a traditional synchronous class, where the learner is forced to watch who-knows-how-many minutes until they get to the part they care about, asynchronous lessons let them jump straight to what interests them. Of course, some LMSs give you the power to disallow that content skipping.
On-demand lessons can be used in many ways in a customer education context. You can use them to complement live classes, giving content beforehand for learners to study and discuss in class. Or, if you record the live online class, it can be made available on demand for those who missed it or want to watch it again.
You can also use on-demand lessons to teach more complex content and more detailed step-by-steps, since videos allow graphics, animations and other audiovisual resources to help learners understand.
You don't necessarily need to build an entire course from scratch or have an LMS to use on-demand lessons. You can very well embed individual videos in your knowledge base. When we talk about online courses, we often also refer to other features, like tests, quizzes, interactions and other tools common to online course management systems.
Live classes or webinars
Put simply, live classes or webinars are classes in which the instructor teaches a live audience. The biggest feature and resource you, as a customer education professional, can get from this is the interaction element, whether collecting some kind of information, feeling or attitude from your audience about a subject, or answering questions on the spot. Also, teaching live and recording a lesson require different skills.
Webinar attendees usually expect to be able to interact with the instructor, and even with each other, whether by video or chat. To keep things organized, webinar tools have incorporated microphone/webcam controls and message moderation so the class doesn't become a mess.
Webinars can also be useful for timely interventions, meaning time-sensitive ones. For example, a new regulation, new law or some important event in your industry. Instead of preparing material and a more elaborate production, live classes carry a different quality expectation (on average) than pre-recorded classes. That way you can cover a very recent event (even on the same day) without worrying so much about perfect post-editing.
Additionally, when the event is very recent, its developments and interpretations can change in a short time. For example, when a new law or bill comes out, it can be interpreted in various ways. So your live session today may no longer make sense in two days. Waiting to record, upload it to an LMS and give people access can cost you a lot.
Of course, some people and companies run "live" classes by playing pre-recorded videos. That's a possibility, but you won't have that element of teacher-and-learner interaction by video.
Blog and inbound marketing
Probably one of the favorite resources of the digital marketing crowd, the blog is a great tool for people working in customer education for several reasons. Not only can you distribute your content to your customers, but you can also reach new potential customers who may discover your company through Google search and content sharing, for example.
The blog is usually the marketing team's domain, but this content marketing strategy can benefit a lot from education-driven thinking, aligning content with a broader strategy based on customer research.
For example, which content format do they prefer? Is there already something in the courses or knowledge base that could be improved with the post, or that could improve the blog publication? Could this content be delivered in a more instructive way?
Finally, combining the marketing content production strategy with the team that works on customer education will let you outline a more effective medium- and long-term strategy, instead of isolated content designed case by case.
You can use written content production to prove your authority to potential leads and make it easier for your company to be found, given that there is no login or payment barrier to the content.
Ebooks and rich content
In the same line of content production through inbound marketing, we have rich content production, such as infographics, ebooks, spreadsheets, templates, research and studies, and even courses and videos (when managed by the marketing team).
Again, this content usually focuses much more on attracting new customers than on educating your current base, but combining strategies can prove enormously valuable so there's no duplicated work. With my clients, it's very common to distribute a given ebook for the marketing team to use in ads or campaigns. So they are produced from the start with non-customers in mind too.
There are cases where the customer education team will produce content very focused on customers, so not everything it produces will be usable by marketing. But the reverse, meaning marketing team content, is almost always applicable.
Onboarding and in-product tours
The onboarding process is when a new customer is accompanied through their use of your product. It can be done in two ways: a consulting session, mainly when there's a more premium price to be paid, or a self-guided tour.
Tours or tutorials are very common in software. You know when you've just subscribed to a service and dialog bubbles appear guiding you on where to click first, how to run a first operation or what each button is for? That's an in-product tour. It's there so you can get started and find a first value in using the product.
It's worth noting, though, that the goal of onboarding isn't only to teach your customer how to use your product, since several of the other customer education tools do that, like blog posts, the knowledge base and courses.
The onboarding process, especially when it's consultative and closer to the user, is about understanding their goal with the platform and building closeness.
The tour's centerpiece, on the other hand, is getting the customer to extract a first value from your product, understand how to extract a second value and come back to use it on their own. That way, through repetition, it becomes a habit and therefore a loyal user.
How to integrate the main customer education tools into your strategy
Now that you understand each of them a bit, it's time to build your strategy. You should start by defining what your goals are first. Of course, if you're just starting to create this strategy, it can be a good idea to think about who is responsible for customer education in your company.
So, did we miss a tool we didn't mention? Tell us in the comments!
