FACT CHECKED
Effective product training is essential for digital software, applications, and platforms.
Good product training does great things for that product’s creators:
- Users learn products faster
- Engagement goes up, frustration goes down
- Abandonment drops
- Productivity increases
These are a few of the main reasons to invest in product training.
Below, we’ll explore that ROI in more detail.
Then we’ll take a look at how to create great training programs for your products.
The ROI of Good Product Training
Poor training – or no training at all – increases metrics such as churn and abandonment rates.
Effective training, however, makes a real impact on key user metrics, such as:
- Engagement
- Productivity
- Satisfaction
- Retention
Metrics such as those mentioned above impact the lifetime value of a customer (LTV).
This metric represents the average dollar amount that a customer spends during their life with a company.
Generally, the longer a customer stays with a company, the more valuable they are.
This is especially true for digital products.
Web apps, mobile apps, and desktop software depend on user engagement.
Engaged users are more:
- Receptive to marketing messages and sales communications
- Likely to make purchases
- Willing to advocate for a brand
Over the long term, other elements influence engagement and LTV.
Ultimately, customers want products that solve their problems.
So they are concerned more with things such as usefulness, usability, and the relevance of product features.
But none of that matters if users don’t learn how to use your product in the first place…
Other Use Cases for Product Training
Product training can be used during any onboarding sequence, not just customer and consumer onboarding.
Here are a few examples:
- Employee training for enterprise digital adoption
- Help features inside a software program
- SaaS onboarding for enterprise clients
In each of these cases, onboarding makes a big difference in usage metrics.
In the example above, we explored how user engagement can impact customer value.
However, the same principle holds true for other use cases.
An enterprise that deploys new software, for instance, can benefit from training as well.
In this case, training would generate ROI through:
- Increased employee engagement, productivity, and output
- Lower frustration
- Shorter time-to-competency
- Decreased technical support costs
Below, we’ll explore a few ways to increase these results with cutting-edge training tools.
How to Use Digital Adoption Platforms (DAPs) to Accelerate Training
Digital adoption platforms (DAPs) are training solutions that dramatically enhances employee training, cutting costs and improving results.
Here’s how they work:
- The DAP interfaces with the product, such as an SaaS solution.
- It provides in-app suggestions and tutorials to users in real-time, inside the app.
- Over time, training metrics reveal opportunities for increased engagement and productivity.
In short, they offer in-app guidance that makes it easy to learn new software.
DAPs have distinct advantages over traditional learning, because they offer contextualized guidance on demand.
This approach beats traditional classroom-based learning, for a few reasons:
- It is highly focused, only teaching pertinent information
- Users retain more, because they put their knowledge to use immediately
- It is more scalable
- Online learning options are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
To name just a few.
Another added benefit of DAPs is that they can be applied to any of the use cases mentioned above.
DAPs are suited for a wide range of platforms, including:
- Enterprise-grade SaaS platforms
- Customer-facing software applications
- Sales tools and marketing tools
The more complex your product, the more you can benefit from a DAP.
Regardless of how complex your product is, you should implement some sort of training, even if it is very basic.
Getting Even Better Results with User-Driven Onboarding
Training and onboarding are not quite the same.
An onboarding program includes training, but it has other elements.
These can include:
- Welcome messages, via text, push notifications, or in-app messages
- Ongoing correspondence between product representatives and users
- In-app assistance, through bots, humans, or both
- Offline communications and correspondence
- Training that builds skills, trust, and productivity
Onboarding is orientation.
An effective orientation helps the user feel comfortable, welcome, and relaxed.
“User-driven onboarding” means that the onboarding program should be user-centric.
That is, it should:
- Be fueled by user data and feedback
- Learn from that information
- Adapt itself to the needs of those users
The more that you listen to users, in other words, the more your onboarding will meet their needs.
Final Thoughts
Today’s businesses recognize that humans lie at the heart of their organization.
Employees, customers, and users all drive a business forward.
Without those people, a business could not succeed – which is why today’s smartest digital adopters cater to their users’ needs as much as possible.
At the end of the day, this means creating human-centric:
- Products and services
- Training and onboarding
- Experiences
By making these experiences user-centric, you’ll create stronger relationships with your customers – and reap the rewards we discussed above.
