7 steps to set up

Customer
training
Welcome!

In this guide, you will find the 7 steps to set up an effective and efficient Customer Training in your company.

If you are reading this, it is likely you already know that customer training is critical for your business success.
Whether it is for onboarding, engagement or keeping a happy relationship with your customers, offering training
can be the deciding factor in stopping churn.

Also, the benefits of having a Customer Training Academy reflect not only in the customer related metrics such as
retention, onboarding time, churn, usage, etc., but also in the customer service and support teams’ performance
metrics. Why? Because by fostering a self-help experience available 24/7 for your customers, it will save you time
and money in duplicated work, team workload and more.

But be aware that a Customer Training Academy is not just about making user guides available online. Quite the op-
posite. There are some important things to consider, that we have divided into 7 manageable steps.

7 steps to set up Customer Training 2

 1 Analyse customer challenges and how training can help
To make sure you offer the best onboarding and training to your customers, you need to put yourself in their shoes
and understand what they need, what they value and how you can help them get the most of your product and be
better at what they do. Here are the categories you should look into.

Onboarding
What do your customers need to know in order to complete “First Value” action quickly and effectively?

E.g. If there is an overall logic, process or specific order your customers need to follow to complete the
“First Value” action, make sure your customers learn this right in the beginning. At bugle, the “First
Value” action is to publish your first course. As you need to follow a specific order to do this (define
course structure > add content > categorize course > define audience for the course) it’s important we
provide this information during onboarding. What’s your product’s “First Value” action?

Product knowledge
If your customers don’t know what they can do with your product and how they can use it, they are likely not to use
it at all. Consider having two types of training content: user guide / help centre type of courses; and a more val-
ue-based approach, where you explain the benefits of your product, how it can help them with their challenges and
offer best practices in product usage.

E.g. If your product is a SaaS, you may want to have a user guide type of training so your customers can
quickly access instructions on how to use a specific feature, and a course about how customers can
leverage the data from your software’s reporting to improve their businesses.

Skills
Do your customers need specific skills to truly understand the value of your product? What skills are relevant and
useful for your customers to do their jobs better and achieve better results by using your product?

E.g. If you have an Email Marketing automation SaaS, you can offer training on Email deliverability best
practices so that, with that knowledge, when they use your platform, they will have better results.

7 steps to set up Customer Training 3

Thought Leadership
Show that you are an industry leader by sharing your expertise in high end and hot topics in your industry. You can
do this by betting in topics such as the future of your industry, strategy or innovative approaches.

E.g. If your product is A.I. based, you can have training content on “What to expect from A.I. in the next 3
years”.

Company knowledge and culture

Do your customers know you company’s mission, values and culture? Do your customers know your company’s his-
tory? Are your customers familiar with your company culture and team? When your customers identify with and feel
part of your brand’s family, it’s half-way there to becoming ambassadors.

E.g. Share your company history and what is your mission. Also, especially if you have a great and cohesive
company culture, showcase your team talking about it and how your customers fit in that culture.

Tip
Once you have analysed this, create a prioritization list based
on which training categories and topics would have a bigger
impact on your customers’ lives. This way, you have - from
the start – a better idea of where to begin.

7 steps to set up Customer Training 4

 2 Define training objectives, business goals and KPIs
What do you want to achieve with the onboarding and training of your customers, and what business metrics do
you want to impact? Do you need to reduce onboarding time, increase product usage, reduce CS agents’ workload,
increase customer satisfaction, reduce churn…?

E.g. If your onboarding process is complex or has a big impact on your team’s workload, create an onboard-
ing course or programme where you help simplify the process and customers can be more indepen-
dent, thus reducing workload for your team and keeping a consistent onboarding experience. A SMART
goal for this could be: reduce customer onboarding time by 50% in 3 months.

Tip
Define the KPIs you want to improve and establish SMART
(Specific – Measurable – Action Oriented – Realistic – Time
Bound) goals for your customer training.

7 steps to set up Customer Training 5

 3 Define your training content
The next step is to define the training content using what you defined on steps 1 and 2 as base. Write down the
training topics and content you need for each of the training categories in step 1, and what you want to accomplish
with each, based on step 2.

Then, prioritize your content production pipeline. You will probably not be able to produce all the courses you want
at the same time so, prioritization is key. Add a matrix to the list of contents where you analyse (at least) these 4 cri-
teria for each content:

Impact
For customer and business KPIs, these 2 go hand in hand as usually one has a direct impact on the other.

Reach
How many people it will impact. For example if you have many products and need to decide which one to do the
user guide first, you may want to start with the product with the biggest customer base.

Need
Regardless of the impact and reach of a training content, sometimes there is a pressing need that has to be over-
come urgently.

Resources availability
Consider the resources you need and when they will be available. Whether the resources are people, budget, time,
or other, make sure to plan accordingly.

E.g. If your product “A” represents 80% of your customer base (or revenue), start by create training related
to this product.

Tip
Keep a plan with key information about each course, and the
production pipeline, based on the prioritization you made.

7 steps to set up Customer Training 6

 4 Develop your training content
To develop your training content, it’s important to define what will be the best format to use, as that will set the
tone for everything else from this point on. From the many options available to you, whenever possible, choose
video. Video will allow you to have more options to convey your message in an effective way, due to the wide vari-
ety of styles you can use. Video is known for having better retention results and is the most engaging format com-
paring to other formats available.

All you need to do is adapt your training goals to specific video styles. Here are some examples of how you can use
them:

Screen casting (or screen recording)

Perfect style for your user guide style content, or to explain a platform your customers use to interact with you.

Presenter
Welcome message form the CEO or the Head of Customer Success. It’s also great to add a more personal feel to any
type of training, even if just for the introduction and conclusion.

Role-playing
This style is very useful to train your CS agents, as you can portray real situation and how to handle them.

On-site recording
Demonstrate how to assemble a product, for example how to assemble a piece of furniture.

Animation
Great to explain complex concepts relevant to your product, its usage or its understanding.

Tip
If you are unsure of the best way to convey a message and / or you don’t have the in-
ternal resources you need to create your training content, work with an external
team or agency. Ideally, choose a team that knows your training platform well and
has the instructional design knowledge to make each piece of training content as ef-
fective as possible.

7 steps to set up Customer Training 7

 5 Deliver your training
Create a course plan and select the best way to deliver it. The clear benefits of online video training are making
more and more companies turn to this type of solution. Online video training gives you:

Flexibility
The flexibility to create all types of content and to reach all your customers regardless of location or time zone.

Available 24/7
Your Customer Academy will be available 24/7 and this will give your customers the comfort to access information,
support and training wherever they need.

Training personal and personalized

It will help you keep training personal and personalized.

Share the training

It will be easier for your customer to share the training with other (new) members of their team.

Cost-friendly
It will be cost-friendly, because the same content can be available to all your audience, without the need to repeat
sessions.

Find the online video training platform that best fits your goals and needs. Look for a platform that can easily be
managed by you or a team member, and that provides a seamless audience experience.

E.g. If your customer needs to check how to use a specific feature out of your team’s business hours, with an
online academy where you have product training, your customers will be able to finish what they are
doing immediately. This will eliminate the need (and frustration) of having to wait for your team’s reply
the next day.

Tip
Keep it simple. Find an easy to use, self-service online video training platform. No
one has the time for complicated software and unpleasant user interfaces! Make sure
you keep control of your customer academy and can easily manage both content
and audience, make changes and retrieve reports without the need for external help.

7 steps to set up Customer Training 8

 6 Make training and sharing part of your brand
Promoting and maintaining a culture of making training available to your customers will make your customers feel
appreciated, empowered and part of something bigger.

Offering your customers a place to find consistent product knowledge and great support 24/7, and also to brush up
their skills and industry knowledge is key to building trust, increase satisfaction and increase your pool of ambassa-
dors.

The key to a great Academy is to help your customers be better at their job. If you can accomplish this, you have
customer loyalty for life.

E.g. Try to include content about your company culture, mission and values and keep a steady, consistent
offer of relevant and updated product and skills training that are relevant to your customers. This will
keep your training academy (and, of course, your brand) in their top of mind as the go-to source of
knowledge and training in your industry.

Tip
Try to incorporate a feel of community between your custom-
ers in your academy. Your customers will be able to help
each other by sharing experiences, best practices and
achievements, and it will create trust – because it shows you
are comfortable with customers openly sharing their experi-
ence with each other.

7 steps to set up Customer Training 9

 7 Track, report and analyse results
If you are reading this, it is very likely that your job includes (at least on some level) evaluating performance and re-
porting on results. Most jobs do, right?

An online training platform allows you to easily track and measure training performance and results and use them
to understand its impact on your business KPIs. Whether they are to reduce customer onboarding time, reduce
churn, increase product usage or customer satisfaction… make sure you define your metrics and KPIs in advance,
to guarantee you can measure everything you need.

E.g. By cross referencing the customers that interacted with the Customer Academy and their training jour-
ney and academy usage, with business KPIs such as product usage, customer satisfaction or churn,
your will be able to understand how the training impacted those customers and take action to motivate
other customers to have the same experience in your Academy.

Tip
Create a training pilot first, so you can test the type, format,
retention and impact on results before rolling it out to all the
customers. This will give you the chance to get feedback
from these customers and measure the pilot success. This
will help you understand if you need to make adjustments
and verify if you are setting realistic goals.

7 steps to set up Customer Training 10

Final tips

Create a communication plan for your customer academy. Make sure you have a consistent and effective communi-
cation for your academy’s launch and keep your customers engaged with it in a continuous way. Have mini commu-
nication plans, or communication templates, in place for new courses, new content topics, new product updates
and any other launch or change. The ultimate goal is that your academy is their go-to source of knowledge and
training for anything related to your industry.

Whether you need to increase customer retention, reduce onboarding time, increase product adoption and usage,
or any other goal(s), make sure you align your customers’ training goals with your business KPIs.

Statistics

67% 5%
of customers reported hanging up Increasing customer retention
on an automated system out of rates by 5% increases profits
frustration at not being able to anywhere from 25% to 95%.
reach a live person. Bain and Company

Glance

Out of all self-service

85% channels, customers
By 2020, 85% of customer
interactions with brands will take use knowledge bases
place without speaking with a
human.
the most.
Forrester
Gartner

With these 7 easy steps, you can now set up your Customer Training Academy. If you need any help, we’re here
for you.

7 steps to set up Customer Training 11

With bugle, training your customers is easy

Bugle is an easy to use, beautiful online video training platform, with all the features you need to offer effective and
enjoyable onboarding and training, including a community feature that will help you keep a high engagement level
with your customers. Schedule a personalized demo with the bugle team and get your free trial.

Want to try bugle? Talk to the bugle team

Request a free demo About Customer Training solutions

Request now Request now

7 steps to set up Customer Training 12

About bugle

Bugle is your easy to use online video training platform (SaaS ) that will help you achieve your business goals
through engaging and effective video training.

At bugle, we believe in simple, effective, and beautiful training solutions. You can have your platform ready and
fully branded in just a few hours and start taking your training experience to the next level. No need for specialized
staff or training facilities.

Bugle can be used to train sales, customer support, operations, marketing and other key business units, welcome
new assets, share knowledge, teach specific skills or align corporate messages.

Ready to try bugle?

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