If we were to position Skilljar as an "extended enterprise learning management system (LMS)," our customers would probably look at us with blank stares. Even mentioning the term "LMS" produces mental images of clunky, old-school HR compliance systems.

At Skilljar, we prefer to call our product a "customer training platform." But no matter what you call it, what makes Skilljar unique is our focus on customer and partner education - aka the "extended enterprise." This blog post describes the extended enterprise and what to look for in an LMS that serves this particular audience. 

At Skilljar, we help companies streamline their customer and partner training. Our learning management system (LMS) is designed specifically for customer and partner education, with unique features like our Salesforce and Marketo integrations, our e-commerce and certification engines, and multiple catalog visibility options with self-service student registration.

When it comes to selecting the right LMS, it's important to consider the unique system needs and requirements for training customers and partners. To assist you, we've collected specific considerations into our new eBook - Choosing an LMS for Customer Training.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Agile is an organizational process successfully used by many software development teams around the world. Many training teams are looking at using agile principles for developing learning content, but the industry has been generally slow to adopt this methodology. Why? Read on to learn more!

Most customer success teams run new customer onboarding by scheduling a series of sequenced phone calls. While this seems easy to implement, having your customer success managers (CSMs) run 1:1 and asynchronous processes is very difficult to scale.

This onboarding experience isn't ideal for your customers either. Key attendees might have scheduling conflicts, it's difficult to capture knowledge, and customers may prefer to consume information differently than how it's presented.

Offering on-demand training is a proven, successful strategy for scaling customer onboarding and education. In this post, we describe the 4 key benefits of on-demand training for your customers.