Edtech is an interesting industry. It has been growing consistently over the past years. However, it has not yet reached its stage of being considered ‘established’. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated how Edtech companies work. Edtech solutions are becoming essentials for learning at home. Every class has gone online and there is a sudden upsurge in the number of innovative solutions in Edtech. The number of signups and subscribers have also increased for e-learning solutions, guidance, and exam prep companies. To handle this influx of customers, companies need to offer the best solutions to them to win their loyalty.

Edtech companies now need to adapt to customer success strategies to give customers the best. The growing usage of customers needs to be met with. Companies need to adapt customer success to make sure that their educational product or service works with customers.

Why does Edtech need Customer Success Strategies?

The face of education has changed from the erstwhile textbooks and papers. It is now based on e-learning solutions, online assessments, and virtual guidance programs. More schools and educational institutions are looking to partner with such Edtech companies to get their curriculum and learning needs fulfilled.

Some reasons why edtech needs customer success include to achieve meaningful levels of user engagement. To get the right fit of what a student or teacher needs, it is important to have customer success. New programs in Edtech call for a different type of customer support. Online products that can be accessed anywhere need to have the right customer-centric method of working. For educators, parents, or students to achieve their desired goals in learning online, they need to set expectations. These need to be known to customer success managers who will track, engage, educate, and build personalized relationships with customers.

Customer success in edtech requires a long-term strategy. It goes through a lifecycle of three stages all aimed at ensuring customer success efforts. The three stages of customer success in Edtech companies are as below.

Stages of Customer Success Efforts at Edtech Companies

In all Edtech companies, customer success efforts are aimed at maximising student involvement and reducing churn to other companies. In the competitive sphere, many companies try to retain students, educators as much as they can to get the best profits.

Roughly, there are three stages of customer success efforts.

Customer-centric strategies start, no team in place

For Edtech companies, the initial point is whether students or teachers or customers received the log-in credentials. Whether they were able to login in a hassle-free manner. Supporting users in checking into the product in an easy manner is necessary. In this stage, customer efforts are mainly focused on delivering online materials, tech support and more. Once customers use the product, some engage very well. Some do not engage at all. This is where the need for a customer-centric plan begins.

Creating a dedicated customer success team

To move towards strategic customer relationships, it is necessary to create a dedicated, knowledgeable customer success team. This team is responsible for having relationships with accounts, making sure the customer journey is fruitful, and interaction is more personalized. Incorporating effective onboarding strategies will make customers more educated than before. This means a higher focus on customer success efforts, improved customer responsiveness, better personal relationships. A customer success team also will help with more upsells, better renewal rates, and improved growth.

Segmenting and Scaling customer success efforts

The third step is to segment and scale customer success efforts. Account-based segmentation is important to make sure the right efforts are being put. For each segment, having a customer success manager will help deliver a high level of personalized service. With this segmentation approach, specific customized plans can be built to reach shared goals. Companies can also be proactive and identify issues before they go haywire. This will help manage complex issues and achieve goals set per segment. Segmentation will also help in improving specific goals like geographical targeting, class or school-based targeting, gender-based, and more.

Customer Success for Edtech: A Necessity to Scale Operations

Edtech companies essentially aim to score two aspects: learner achievements and company success. With customer success, you can demonstrate value to other customers, deliver educational outcomes, manage customer experience, and reduce churn or shift to other learning models. Customer success strategies allow and empower companies to proactively enable growth and retention.

Through automation, it is possible to scale customer success across e-learning firms or institutions.

• Monitor customer’s unique needs and workflows to help them achieve their goals
• Create unique customer journey maps through personalized, customized, digital engagements
• Improve visibility for a product across all its dimensions and functions

Through engagement, it is necessary to engage, activate and encourage new customers.

• Deliver learning experiences customized as per their past learning and interactions
• Provide training that works to solve their issues through customer education via content, tutorials, blogs, videos, and other explainers
• Improve engagements through customer success managers to create personalized relationships

Through customer health score, it is possible to get real-time alerts for renewals, threats, opportunities, and more.

• Monitor health and proactively identify risks
• Make customers loyal advocates by making sure they are aligned to company goals
• Prove how the team’s activities contribute to overall learning outcomes

How can SmartKarrot Help Edtech to Reach the Pinnacle of Success?

SmartKarrot is a customer success platform that works wonders for any B2B SaaS business. EdTech differs from other forms of tech since it focuses on learning and education. While the benefits of customer success platforms are huge, it is important to choose the right platform that can give your EdTech company the success you deserve.

EdTech companies face peculiar problems as compared to other SaaS companies. They deal with instructing students with technology. So, if a particular student or school finds the solution tough to understand, the chances of others using it regularly are also reduced due to peer talk. This makes it important for EdTech companies prioritize customer success].

SmartKarrot helps EdTech companies by making the job of CSMs simpler. It is easier for CSMs to connect with customers and meet their product value requirements.

EdTech Companies will know how customers use the app

Customer success tools will help you proactive solve customer problems since you know how customers use the app. You can predict how customers will react to a feature, understand their usage patterns, and prevent churn. Customer success software like SmartKarrot will help you collate all customer information in a single dashboard. This gives you a 360-degree view of the customer behavior and interaction with the product.

You can know customer health in a better manner. Customer health scores will give you an in-depth insight into how customers work. You can also ensure product adoption and receive actionable insights to improve customer health.

You can reduce customer churn and revenue churn

Customer success software tools like SmartKarrot help you arrest churn by understanding the core problems in the first place. You can know if customers will churn because of poor onboarding, no customer support, wrong fit, or quality that didn’t suit the customer. You can also reduce revenue churn due to wrong billing information, expired cards, and more.

You will know when customers are facing their aha moment to realize their true value. Customer success software will help you track the entire onboarding process and define goals for customers.

You can improve the customer experience

EdTech companies can improve customer experience. It is possible to provide a better experience for the users. This helps increase renewals and cut costs. Customer success tools from the SmartKarrot suite can connect with customers, engage with customers, receive notifications if customers are losing their ability to derive value, and more. You can also know the product adoption features and how frequently customers use the product. This will help know customers who will be fit for case studies, referrals, and testimonials.

You can stay connected with customers through various touchpoints and identify spots for improvement.

EdTech companies can spot upsell and cross-sell opportunities

EdTech companies can identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities by choosing a customer success platform. You can know which customers are likely to convert to a paid conversion. EdTech companies will know which customers are ready for an upsell. This way, you can increase your expansion revenue and ensure that you grow revenue by focusing on existing clients. It is also possible to know customers who are ready for a cross-sell. This way, you can get customers to choose allied products to grow eventually.

SmartKarrot’s powerful reporting tool will help EdTech companies

EdTech companies will benefit from the customized reports and features of SmartKarrot’s customer success software. You can better understand customers across different stages – onboarding, upselling, churn, etc. SmartKarrot’s reporting feature allows you to track data-driven insights, use simple dashboards to collate information, and measure conversion rates, CLV, and more.

Bottom Line: Shoot Up your Growth

With customer success strategies in Edtech, it is necessary to draw a line of caution. Understanding that every account is not the same is very important. Tools and research materials that enable a remote learning format are also evolving every day. A customer success strategy will allow for edtech companies to improve the experience for educators, students, parents, administrators, and every stakeholder. Keeping customers engaged through marketing, the right support, and more is important to promote customer success. It is also necessary to measure the outcomes and results of customer success plans. The end goal of customer success is to ensure customers get the outcomes they want while using the product or service. If it aligns with that, then customer success is achieved.

---