The Power of Customer Education: How it Can Improve Your Product and Service Reviews
Did you know that a recent article revealed that about 83.6% of customers, when given the choice between four different brands, would likely pick the one that will give them customer education content? Or that 77% of customers who had a good experience with a brand will likely leave good reviews online or share their experiences with their family and friends?
When it comes to the benefits of customer education, great feedback stemming from a solid customer education strategy can be worth gold when it comes to future repeat purchases, or attracting new customers to your products and services. Often, when potential new buyers start researching your brand online, they will first go to platforms such as Google Reviews or those given on your website before deciding whether to proceed with a purchase or not.
So, where does your customer education strategy come in to ensure five-star experiences without fail? Let’s recap what exactly educating your customer entails.
Customer education is the provision of resources that empower customers to better understand a brand offering and it is a key tool in ensuring a good experience with any brand. Businesses that leverage offerings such as online guides and tutorials, product demonstration videos, eBooks, how-to blogs or other on-brand digital materials create opportunities for new and existing customers to get to know products in the best possible way.
However, did you know that around 43% of companies aren’t tracking the impact of their customer education impact properly?
Here’s where it is important to understand your customer education journey properly. Your customer education strategy needn’t just be executed: it needs to be tracked, analysed and tweaked according to customer feedback – especially if you want to ensure positive product and service reviews.
Having your strategy is great, but there needs to be a purpose behind your customer education – and most of the time, improved products and service reviews are at the top of the wish list where goals are concerned.
When you invest in customer education, you can also improve your business bottom line, which is more than enough reason to take the time to review programs and structures that will streamline your customer journey. This will pave the way for more positive reviews that are 100% earned, authentic and based on real-life experiences.
In this article, we take a close look at the impact of your customer education strategy on reviews, as well as how to create education programs and measure your success in enhancing the customer experience. Let’s start with reviewing how your customer education strategy relates to the feedback you receive on the products and services that you offer.
“You build loyalty by helping someone with something, so then when they are ready to buy they remember that. Show and tell is the new sell, sell, sell.” – Margaret Magnarelli, VP, Marketing & Communications, Baldor Specialty Foods, Inc
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Understanding the Impact of Customer Education on Reviews
The benefits of customer education are rooted in giving your target audiences both the skills and knowledge they need to effectively interact with your products or services.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a brand-new customer for a brand that you are interacting with for the first time. You have just discovered one of this business’s products and you are interested in learning more – and all it takes to gain insights is a click of a button to get instant resources that will educate you to make an informed decision.
Then, when you’ve made a purchase and had a positive experience thanks to the prior customer education you received, you are ready to leave a great review for all of the world to see online.
This is the power of having a customer education strategy that can convert into positive reviews: when you bring your A-game, great results are sure to follow!
According to Science Direct, customer education can enhance a brand’s relationship with its customers and boost satisfaction, as we illustrated in the above example. Plus, credible word of mouth from customers that experienced a product or service could impact buying decisions.
This extract also makes a key comment for brand consideration: “Customers who are socially active and prefer to share information with others in their daily lives could also be a potential target for brands to engage in customer education programs.”
Therefore, it is important that you target the right audiences with your customer education strategy as well. Those customers who are comfortable with digital resources will likely be more comfortable with adopting your customer education solutions, as they have the information they need to invest in your products and services.
Plus, these audiences could be a rich source of positive reviews, as they started their journey with your brand with great customer education that followed through with products and services that delivered as promised.
So, how do you build the right foundation for your customer education strategy? Take a look below.
Building a Strategic Customer Education Program
Your customer education strategy should always consider your target audience – and be tailored in such a way that your solutions are received in a positive way that will yield the right results.
Your starting point to get this customer education strategy right, is to consider what your customers’ needs are. Do they need to know how to operate your products or how they can be used for multiple scenarios?
Also, you need to get in that mindset of how your customer journey would look: from the moment that a potential buyer first gets to know about your product, to buying your product and the onboarding process as they use and get comfortable with the specific item. When you envision how these steps will culminate, you can create a customer education program that will be able to generate positive feedback and good reviews. When you start designing effective customer education content, it is important that you consider delivering these solutions through multiple channels. Remember, customer education solutions are not limited to just one or two formats. There are various formats to choose from, such as online tutorials or written materials that could be revisited often.
This accessibility will certainly play a big part in designing effective content that can be widely used and understood – and here, digital learning design can be the game-changer for your customer education strategy. Online learning, for the most part, is easy: if you have an Internet connection and can access digital content from your mobile or desktop devices, getting product information can be a breeze.
So, when you are creating your customer education solutions, use digital formats that make educating and onboarding your customers as easy as possible.
Measuring the Effectiveness of Customer Education on Reviews
Once you have your customer education strategy in place, the next step is to have a review system in place that will allow you to consistently monitor your program’s progress – and how customers are reviewing your products following the education resources that they received.
As we mentioned earlier in this article, there are instances where some businesses do not effectively track how their customer education is faring among customers. This can be solved by knowing how to review results and data.
Ask yourself: where are we spending our resources the most, and are the tools that we are using making a difference in customer experience and reviews in the long run? Are you investing in support phone calls, or have you built customer education modules that have proven successful?
Another important part of your customer education process is to keep an eye on the online reviews and if any issues are flagged by your customers. Bear in mind that getting negative feedback is never easy, but it does help you identify issues in your customer education strategy that you could tweak.
For instance: if a customer said that they had no idea how to operate a product, you need to review your education content and see whether you can better clarify how-to guides to ensure buyers who invested in your products know how to use your products.
Also, if a customer directly mentioned a negative experience with customer education learning materials, you need to review whether your information is too lengthy, too difficult or even too boring. Consider how you could repackage content (such as switching to more video content that is easier to digest) or how you could might customers halfway with resources that are better suited for their comfort levels.
Ensure that you have a good schedule for gathering data on reviews as well: whether you do this weekly or bi-weekly. Take stock of both your positive reviews as well as negative ones, and ensure that you adjust your customer education strategy as needed.
The Impact of Digital Learning and Customer Education
A great customer education strategy can lead to higher customer satisfaction and, ultimately, good reviews that can play a vital part in converting future target audiences into paying customers.
Effective customer education can greatly enhance your chances of getting positive product and service reviews as customers will be more at ease with your products and services.
Make customer feedback part of enhancing your customer education strategy. and create programs that are customer-centric. This will likely lead to a high level of satisfaction and potential reviews that will reflect how your customers are always at the centre of the education solutions that you provide.