Training teams at Software as a Service (SaaS) companies know that their programs play a big role in customer retention – which ends up impacting the business’s bottom line.
Whether the training is onboarding to get customers seeing the value of their big purchase immediately or ongoing support for current clients to keep them happy (and upsell), customer training is imperative to keeping customers engaged with your product.
That’s why customer training teams like the one Jessica Coburn leads at Social Solutions need to focus on measuring (and demonstrating) the success of their programs.
Hear more from Jessica directly by watching our free on-demand webinar, Case Study: How to Create a Training Measurement Strategy
Customer Training as Part of Customer Support
Social Solutions Global (SSG), the developers of Efforts to Outcomes (ETO®) and Apricot® software, is the leading provider of outcomes management software for the human services. The software equips nonprofit and government agencies to drive performance by making data useful at all levels, from frontline staff to executive leadership.
Social Solutions has always seen the importance of training to customer success. Up until January 2016, the training team was actually embedded in the Customer Support department. As Jessica began growing the team, they spun into their own unit to provide more focused solutions.
Customer Training Goals
Jessica and her team design and implement training for the two Social Solutions platforms. While originally their goals focused on revenue generation, Jessica recognized that training’s real goal is to develop independent and self-sufficient software users.
With this in mind, Jessica set out to develop metrics that reflected the true impact of training on customer retention.
Measuring the Success of Customer Retention Training
Jessica’s measurement strategy takes into consideration two different audiences: the learner population (ie customers) and Social Solutions. If her training is successful, there will be reduced demand on the company’s Support and Professional Services teams.
To create this strategy, Jessica mapped success to each level of the Kirkpatrick Model of assessment:
- Level 1 – Grading Matrix for Each Learner
- Level 2 – Change in Learner Perception Towards the Software
- Level 3 – Customer Call Support Metrics
- Level 4 – Correlation Metrics such as Length of Implementation and Customer Retention
The Importance of Measurement
By creating a measurement strategy around her training program, Jessica is able to demonstrate the impact of her team on customer retention, a key performance indicator her executive team focuses on.
It also helps her evaluate where her training has been effective and improve the design of training programs that aren’t having the impact they should.
Learn More
This is a quick peek into the insights Jessica shared in our on-demand webinar, Case Study: How to Create a Training Measurement Strategy. Learn more, and let us know how you measure your customer training!
