3 Real-Life Customer Education Examples and What They Can Teach Us

There’s no way to sugarcoat it; it’s a tough time for SaaS. While the state of the market is uneasy, the last thing you want to worry about is unhappy customers. 

Customer education is the number-one way to improve customer satisfaction (and, ultimately, customer retention), but many companies still rely on old-fashioned one-on-one training. Maybe it’s the upfront financial investment giving them pause. However, the time and money spent on a customer education strategy always pays off. 

We’ve got three real-world examples of companies that adopted structured digital customer training programs that helped them reduce churn rate, shorten onboarding, and boost customer satisfaction.

1. Swapcard streamlines customer training with digital learning

Swapcard, a leading virtual event platform, significantly improved customer satisfaction and retention by streamlining its training processes using 360Learning’s collaborative learning platform.

The problem

As Swapcard rapidly expanded, it encountered difficulties in scaling customer training to match its global reach and complex product offerings. Traditional training methods, reliant on one-on-one sessions, were inefficient and couldn't keep up with the growing demand, leading to inconsistencies and delays in delivering critical training to clients.

The solution 

To overcome these challenges, Swapcard implemented 360Learning’s collaborative learning platform, which enabled the company to digitize its training programs. This shift allowed Swapcard to provide consistent, up-to-date training to its clients worldwide. By leveraging the platform’s collaborative features, internal experts were able to quickly create and update content, while interactive elements like discussion forums and feedback loops ensured that the training materials were continually improved based on user feedback.

The takeaway

Swapcard’s adoption of digital learning not only streamlined the customer education process but also enhanced the quality and scalability of its training programs. This approach led to increased customer satisfaction and retention, demonstrating the effectiveness of digital and collaborative learning solutions in meeting the training needs of a rapidly growing business.

2. INES CRM leans into digital learning to reduce churn rate

INES is one of the top SaaS CRM providers in the world, working with ​​small and mid-sized companies. They’ve completely revamped their customer education program with ambitious goals: a 20% reduction in churn plus a 10% increase in revenue.

The problem

One of the biggest challenges INES faced was the churn rate for existing customers. Frédéric Naudin was brought on as the company’s new GM to help roll out a new growth strategy focused on reducing churn.

Naudin conducted an audit of the company and found the best way to optimize customer training was to create an entirely new program rooted in digital learning. 

The solution   

Naudin identified three main requirements for INES’ new program based on our collaborative learning playbook:

• The program must offer continuous learning opportunities that evolve alongside the product and its features. 
• In order to fully replace in-person training, digital learning must be collaborative and highly interactive.
• Both the support team and customer success team must have access to scalable digital content creation tools to build more effective training materials. 

Now, INES’ customer training program focuses on digital tools that connect customers with experts. 

They use 360Learning as a collaborative customer training platform, which lets team members create new materials on-demand. Plus, interactive elements like forums encourage customers to ask questions or search for answers in existing discussion threads. 

With all of these new training opportunities, Naudin expects the company will see a 20% reduction in churn rate, along with a 10% increase in training revenue. The cherry on top? 1,000 hours saved on customer support. 

The takeaway  

The fact is, most customers churn because they don’t understand the product they’ve invested in. 

More than half of consumers say they’ve returned a product because they didn’t know how to properly use it. The same holds true for apps—80% of consumers have deleted an app because it wasn’t user-friendly. 

So, shift your focus to creating educational content that clearly guides new customers toward product adoption. Offer different levels of touchpoints to meet your customers’ needs, including tutorials, interactive webinars or quizzes, and good old-fashioned emails. This will give your customer base ease of mind knowing they always have resources available to help them through issues. 

*Since our case study, INES CRM was acquired by the Efficy group.

3. Mitsubishi Electric uses blended learning to improve customer satisfaction 

Mitsubishi Electric, a global electronics and electrical equipment manufacturing company, achieved unicorn status with their customer education program: maintaining a 99% customer satisfaction rate while reducing costs by 65%. 

The problem

Mitsubishi Electric provides electronic equipment—including heat pumps and air conditioning units—around the world. Because their products are so in-demand, the company must be able to seamlessly train thousands of client engineers. 

Around June 2020, they had in-person training available globally. But with a 1,500-person waitlist for a course and a classroom that could only hold 12 people at a time, they needed to provide more training than the company was able to handle. 

The solution 

Mitsubishi Electric’s L&D team built a customer education program around five key areas:

1. Blended learning: Using an 80/20 live model to deliver training
2. Authoring: Developing content in-house with an authoring tool
3. Social: Enabling learners to interact with trainers
4. Engagement: Accessing dashboards to track customer engagement and usage metrics
5. Upskilling: Supporting the L&D team to acquire new skills 

They built a new program around the concept of blended learning, with 80% of training content online and the remaining 20% conducted in person.   

In the end, on top of eliminating the waitlist and improving customer satisfaction, the company increased the number of people training per month from 200 to 300. Plus, the new program uses only 10% of the resources required before without compromising on training volume or quality.

The takeaway

Mitsubishi Electric knew this approach would be favored by their customers. That’s because the company actually surveyed them and found that most customers liked having some in-person training. 

So, even though they had the capacity to digitize 100% of their high-quality learning content, the L&D team listened to what their customers wanted over what was currently trending in the industry. Their blended learning approach paid off. 

They turned to 360Learning’s customer education platform to allow in-house experts to work as peers, creating content quickly and collaboratively.

Fuel customer education program 

Customer education is meant to teach customers about your product to improve their experience. When done right, customer training increases loyalty and extends your customer lifecycle. The key to reinforcing product knowledge and increasing adoption comes down to one thing: properly educating your customers.

A platform like 360Learning provides scales and personalization for customer training. On the back end, customer education leaders manages content along with contributions from subject matter experts—while on the front end, customers work together to gain a deeper understanding of the training materials.

Ready to scale your customer education program? Get in touch and see how we can help you.