Customer success is pivotal to company success. Customer education is a profit center and needs to be taken seriously to add value to the organization. Customer education programs are courses that onboard, retain, and engage customers with the customer. The goal is to share skills, knowledge, resources, and attitudes with customers to help them reach their goals. Customer education programs inculcate educational activities and online curricula into formal learning programs.

Monetizing your customer education program is basically earning revenue from the asset. It is earning value from customer value. However, while some companies prefer monetizing their education platform – others don’t.

But first, why is customer education important?

• To help customers learn more about how to use the product
• To enhance product adoption and induce a better understanding of the product and company
• To build brand awareness so that one can learn about the vision, mission, and goals
• To ensure leads convert into paying customers

Top Questions to Consider before Monetizing Customer Education

You need to know the answers to the following questions before monetizing customer education.

• Is the course value high that they would like to pay for it?
• Is there a better option in available free courses?
• Would it be possible to add the customer education fee as part of the contract to cover costs?
• Will a fee make the course serious for customers?

Strategies to Monetize Customer Education

Once you decide to monetize your customer education programs, you can keep note of these strategies. You must know how to charge correctly to get the right revenue.

Using LMSs

Learning Management Systems or LMSs are helpful in the corporate scene to help monetize content. The customer education content is shared with franchisees, partners, contractors, retailers, and more. Customer education programs through LMS can help offer secure and robust transactions. There is an option to give group discounts, early bird offers, limited time offers, free courses, and price changes. Learning management systems help increase profitability and streamline operations.

A la carte or individual courses

In this strategy, customer education programs are charged per course basis. If a customer wants to pick a certain course, they can purchase that one course. This strategy helps you identify which courses customers want. You can even choose different prices for live courses and recorded courses.

Subscription Plans

Customers can access these training resources for a limited time. They can choose the time length within their contract. This will give them access to certain courses. They can take other courses they like after paying separately.

One variant of this is the subscription training pass model. In this, customers need to renew their subscriptions to access the SaaS training courses. The time is limited to 12 months or 24 months. The customer is expected to renew on their own for non-interrupted learning services.

Bundled Training model

In this, training fees are clubbed or bundled with service level agreements, onboarding packages, and support plans. When customers pay the implementation fee for a product, they pay for the training as well. For example, this can include pre-recorded courses that help users navigate through the product.

Free training model

Another strategy is the free training model. This will build customer trust since they do not charge anything. These are helpful for large companies that cover training costs through other revenue formats. Startups or newcomers can also employ it as a marketing strategy to gain more recognition.

Blended Pricing

You can choose to charge for some courses and leave some free. For example- A course on how to grow plants on your terrace can be free. But, how to grow plants on your terrace in winters can be paid for. This kind of advanced course can be made premium. It would also be great if some certification were offered with the courses. This helps choose premium and top-end courses in the service level agreement.

Fine-tune as per who you are targeting

One way to monetize customer education is to know who you are targeting. The target audience needs to be clear to ensure better service. If you target a long-term customer, you can choose which courses will be helpful to them. For a newbie, only necessary courses will be helpful. You must choose to pick whom you want to target and why.

Optimize Operations

You need to optimize operations for SaaS companies. You need to diversify operations and structure services in an aligned manner. If you think you will need to hire additionally and are not ready, you can find a strong training partner. Their expertise can be leveraged to provide the best advice in operations. SaaS companies can renew subscriptions and drive product adoption with better operations.

Update training material

You need to update additional content and include it in the portal. The content needs to be fact-checked and relevant. It needs to include the latest trends, techniques, and more. You can also choose to offer webinars on a monthly or quarterly basis aligned with the updates.

Take feedback

Feedback is essential for any process to improve. It is essential to ask customers what they feel and inculcate them into the course in customer education programs. You need to ask customers if any aspects can be improved and how.

Bottom Line

Monetizing customer education is about creating value. You need to drive value either by revenue or customer value. There are many ways to monetize customer education training. Each company needs to understand what its customers want to deliver the best customer experience.

Customer education cannot become a profit center in one week – so you need to plan well, have a strategy, and try different things. Monetizing customer education is possible if you put the above-mentioned strategies in place.

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