The better you educate your customers, the more likely they are to stick around. That’s why it’s so important for SaaS companies to invest in customer education. Why? Because it improves customer retention and reduces churn. Here are five customer education ideas to help you start reducing your churn.
What are you sending?
The ultimate goal of this email sequence is to get these customers to start using this feature.
- Alert your customers to a certain feature, including an overview of how it helps them
- Ramp up the benefits of the feature and explain how they’ll get more value
- A mini how-to guide explaining how they can get started with the feature
- An invitation to talk with a Customer Success manager
Define your product’s Aha! moment
Think about the reason you made your product in the first place
- Work backward using product usage analytics
- Identify a specific feature that churned customers never completed
- Nudge new customers towards it as fast as you can
The customer education recap
Five customer education ideas that will improve retention and reduce churn
- Onboard new users
- Send automated email sequences
- Create educational content
- Launch an academy
- Upgrade your knowledge base
- Ensure your knowledge is structured and easy to understand
Create educational content
Teach people how to use aspects of your product to solve a particular problem.
- Over time, you’ll amass an incredible resource that you can send out to customers if they need it.
- Prospective customers will get more value from your content if they eventually become a customer.
Creating an academy
Create the content
- Figure out the best way for customers to access it
- Email is the best medium
- Host your academy on a third-party platform
- This gives you complete control over how the course works but will likely take up a lot of resources
Customer education idea #1
Onboard new users
- If we want to retain our users, we need to start educating them from the moment they start using our products.
Reduce time-to-value
Direct your customers towards your product’s Aha! Moment as soon as possible
- Create an onboarding flow that takes your new users through a checklist
- Tooltips are a great way to highlight key areas of your product
- Alternatively, use driven actions which require users to complete an action
Who are you sending the emails to?
Segment your audience further by personalizing the emails based on who you are addressing
- New signups
- Free triallers
- At-risk customers
- Customers who are yet to “activate”
- Those who are due for renewal
Update your knowledge base
When faced with an issue or a feature they don’t know how to use, most customers will try to find relevant documentation to help them.
- 89% of millennials, who are one of the biggest purchasers of SaaS software, prefer to search online for help rather than pick up the phone.
Well organized
Knowledge bases can be fairly complex, especially if you have a large, feature-packed product.
- Invest in something called “Content Design” or “Information Architecture”
- This is where you audit all of your help docs, and figure out the best way to organize them into a logical hierarchy based on the product and your customers.
Launch an academy
An academy is essentially a course that helps customers learn how to use your product and become experts
- Your academy should be free to access, at least for your paying customers, if not free triallers and prospects as well.
- Think about offering an incentive to customers who complete your academy’s courses
Easy to understand
Your customers should be able to read a help doc and instantly know how to use your product or solve a problem they have.
- Think carefully about how you communicate with your docs
- Never assume prior knowledge
- Use visuals
- Screenshots, videos, etc.
Key takeaway
Your knowledge base is a fundamental part of your customer education efforts, and as such you need to make sure it is well organized and easy to understand. Tools like Helpscout and Zendesk are great to get up and running if you haven’t already put together your knowledge base.
Customer education idea #2
Send automated email sequences
- Only 12% of SaaS companies use in-app behavior to trigger email sequences.
- Two things you need to consider when creating an automated email sequence
- The frequency with which a customer logs into your product, and the type of customer you are targeting
