How to Measure the ROI of Customer Success Training

In this section, we’ll discuss how to measure the ROI of training as used for post-launch customer success.

After a customer has achieved initial value through onboarding, there are many opportunities to strengthen the relationship via ongoing customer training and education. Examples include:

• Providing product updates, particularly around major new features or releases
• Retraining for your customer’s new team members, new roles, and/or regular refresher training
• Education on best practices with your product
• Resources for advanced topics, certifications, and other related products.

Training is an excellent strategy to deliver continuous value to your customers after their initial launch, combined with regular business reviews. Customers who are engaged with training are more likely to succeed with your product and ultimately grow revenue.

Measuring ROI

Customer success is usually measured by account retention rate, revenue growth (upsells/cross-sells), and ongoing CSAT/NPS scores. However, from a training perspective, it’s usually only possible to understand the contribution of training to these metrics - for example, that 75% of retained customers invested in training, versus only 25% of churned customers. Metrics for this phase therefore tend to focus on items that are more specific to training:

• Number of students
• Number of enrollments/completions/certifications
• Hours engaged with training
• CSAT/NPS
• Training revenue (in the case of paid training)

Nevertheless, it’s critical for trainers to monitor the impact of training on downstream customer renewals and retention, even with qualified data. In this phase of the customer journey, training is more of a proactive tool for building product value, increasing customer engagement, and ultimately ensuring long-term customer success.

Conclusion

In this series, we’ve learned how customer training can be applied across all aspects of the customer journey.

• In the prospect phase, training is used for content marketing and industry thought leadership, and can be measured by cost per qualified lead and overall engagement.
• In the onboarding phase, training is used to accelerate and scale implementation, and is typically measured by cycle time, customer satisfaction, and CSM productivity.
• For ongoing success, training is used for continuous engagement, refreshers, and advanced topics, and is ultimately measured by customer renewals and retention.

For the complete guide, download How to Measure the ROI of Customer Training today!