Why On-Demand or Self-Serve Customer Training?

I started this blog in hopes that I could help companies who want to reduce time spent on customer training and support tickets and improve customer acquisition and retention metrics by providing on-demand customer education content.

Along the way, I've found a number of resources from vendors who serve similar companies. I'd like to bring a number of those resources together for you in one place. 

Three of these sources of applicable information are LMS (learning management system) companies. All three of them have resources dedicated to creating educational content that goes beyond how to use their systems into the broader realm of how to get a job done - the job of scaling your customer education content so that customers can be successful with your product. Their tools are but one part of getting the job of educating your customers done.  A couple of my favorite resources for each source are linked.

Skilljar
Skilljar is an "online training platform for customer onboarding and success,"* and has published a number of helpful short ebooks, case studies, and worksheets available on their Resources page.
​
Building a Business Case for Customer Training
​How to Measure the ROI of Customer Training
​The Three Stages of Customer Training Development
*https://www.skilljar.com/

Learndot
Learndot is "the LMS for software customer training,"* developed by ServiceRocket. They also have a number of resources, including customer stories and webinars, as well as their Guide for Building a Strategic Enterprise Software Training Business. In addition to these resources, the ServiceRocket blog has helpful articles on advice and processes related to starting your customer education program.

5 Steps for Implementing Your First Customer Training Program
Create a Customer Education Program Focused on Customer Success
*​http://learndot.com/

Schoolkeep
Schoolkeep is a cloud-based LMS that "provides the tools you need to create online courses and optimize your training operations, no matter how small or large your learner base."* They also have a number of resources with a number of articles available in the Customer Education Use Case area of their Resources page.

Why Proactive Customer Education Is More Effective Than Reactive Support - this article is actually on the SalesForce blog, but was written by Julee Ho, who was head of Product Marketing at Schoolkeep at the time of the article (July 2016).

The 5 Point Checklist to Kickstart Your Customer Education Program
8 Ways Training Automatic Helps You Attract, Onboard and Retain Customers

Schoolkeep has done an excellent job of connecting related articles, so once you get started on one of their articles, you may find several others you want to read as well.

*​https://www.schoolkeep.com/

Springboard Solutions Consulting
I'd also like to mention my new friend Donna Webber of Springboard Solutions Consulting, whose expertise is in Customer Success and Enablement and developing an overall strategy for your customer training program. She's published a few articles on LinkedIn that are also good resources when thinking about whether you want to invest more in customer training offerings. 

Five Ways Customer Education Impacts Your Bottom Line
​Why Training as a Service is Good for Your Customers 
Why Training as a Service is Good for Your Company

Final Thoughts
Of course, don't miss my previous guest author, Adam Avramescu, who wrote Why You Should Invest in Customer Education in 2017 (And Your Customers Will Thank You).

Though I've included resources from three different LMS companies (and I'm sure there are others for this use case), I haven't created content specific to any of them as of this writing. I do know enough to see that they have different audiences and different capabilities, so can't necessarily recommend one product over the other. It really depends on what your budget is and what you'd like to get from the system.

As the trends for customer success and scaling customer training efforts grow, more and more resources and solutions will become available. I've only included a small sampling here. There are meetup groups, professional organizations like CEDma, and tons of other resources out there to help you. 

Please leave additional recommendations in the comments section.

My Expertise
Once you've decided to invest in on-demand customer training or online help, you'll need someone to help develop or repurpose your existing content. My expertise is in creating clear, concise, and engaging instructional content to support software customer success.