In the previous 3 blog posts, we introduced customer lifecycle training and how it can be applied during the marketing phase and onboarding phase. In this final article, we'll cover the benefits of providing training for ongoing customer success and support.

Continuing customer education during the support stage of the lifecycle can keep your customers engaged after initial launch and increase overall satisfaction. The key is to make sure that customers continue to find value in your products and your company. Providing training about product updates, new offerings, and even refreshers on how to maximize the use of their current products are great ways to help cultivate the customer relationship.

We're excited to introduce Heidi Grey, our new Business Development lead at Skilljar! Heidi is responsible for sharing the Skilljar story with prospective clients and helping them navigate their LMS search. As described below, Heidi has a unique story - she was actually a Skilljar trainee at her previous company, TUNE. As a result, she was able to personally experience the benefits of sharing Skilljar-powered training with her customers (check out TUNE's site at academy.tune.com).

Originally from the Seattle area, Heidi has an amazing positive spirit, a customer-first personality, and an in-depth understanding of technical subjects. In addition to working in technology sales, Heidi started her career in retail sales, so is very experienced with customer care. As a former collegiate soccer player, Heidi is also very collaborative, competitive, and an incredible team player.

We are thrilled to have Heidi aboard. She is truly raising the bar for our team. Welcome Heidi!

You can now enable search on your Skilljar training course catalog so your students can find the courses they want to take quickly and easily!

In the previous 2 blog posts, we introduced customer lifecycle training and how it can be applied during the marketing (or lead generation) phase. Now we turn our attention to the post-sales phase, starting with onboarding.

After a lead has converted to a customer, the next step in the customer lifecycle is onboarding. By leveraging your training program at this point in the lifecycle, you can create a smooth onboarding experience for your customer's initial success.

Today, we announced the general availability of our Salesforce integration on the Salesforce AppExchange. This enables our joint customers to easily view training and certification data, build consolidated reporting dashboards, and trigger smooth training workflows -- all directly from within Salesforce. With this integration, customers are able to seamlessly access onboarding, training, and learning plans in Skilljar's learning management system (LMS), create a complete view of their Salesforce customer relationships, and further accelerate customer success.

In our previous blog post, we introduced the concept of customer lifecycle training. Customer lifecycle training is a useful strategy that you can employ to raise initial awareness with prospects, onboard converted customers, and increase ongoing customer renewals.

In this article, we discuss the first phase of the customer lifecycle - marketing (or "lead generation"). By offering training as marketing, you can inform potential customers about what your company has to offer, and how they can benefit from your products and services.

At Skilljar, we are seeing innovative companies apply customer training principles across the entire customer lifecycle, not just during the implementation phase. Companies that offer training from pre-sales, through ongoing success, are able to help customers gain the most value from their products and services. This leads to the virtuous cycle of increased product usage, higher customer satisfaction, and lower churn.

We've collected best practices into our new eBook - The Guide to Customer Lifecycle Training. What is the customer lifecycle? It is the process that a customer goes through as they consider, purchase, and deepen their use of your product or service.

Today, we announced our partnership with Microsoft Azure Marketplace. This integration enables Active Directory users to seamlessly access onboarding, training, and learning plans in Skilljar's learning management system.

On-demand training is an effective way to increase long-term return on investment (ROI) for the resources allocated to customer onboarding and training.

Creating faster, accessible and more effective training leads to improved customer onboarding and long-term success. Salesforce.com, for example, states that "customers who invest in training consistently report >80% higher ROI on their investment. That’s why we offer a wide range of training options, from in-person classes featuring hands-on instruction, to virtual training, self-led courses, private workshops, and more."

These benefits can be tested and quantified by providing on-demand training to only certain groups of customers, and measuring short-term and long-term impacts on customer satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), upsells, renewals, and revenue.

In the short-term, measuring ROI from onboarding could be as simple as assessing revenue and cost. Read on to learn how on-demand training can improve customer onboarding ROI.

When scaling an on-demand customer education program, customer success organizations are also concerned about the quality and effectiveness of onboarding and training. Scheduled phone calls for onboarding, while difficult to scale, are at least a way for customer success managers (CSMs) to interact directly with the customer, get a pulse on their satisfaction, and respond in real-time.

On-demand training, when implemented correctly, can actually increase the effectiveness of customer onboarding when paired with instructor-led training. Read on to learn the 4 ways to increase training effectivness.