4 Ways to Help Customers Get the Most Out of SaaS Product Training

You value your customers, and you strive to create a constantly-evolving product with the right features to solve their problems and improve daily operations. Wouldn’t it be a shame if the software your teams worked so hard to build, market, and sell is eventually tossed to the side because your customers just don’t know how to use it?

When a platform isn’t intuitive for users or training resources aren’t readily available, customers aren’t going to fight an uphill battle to keep using the product. And one of the leading indicators that a SaaS customer is getting ready to churn is that they’re using the software less and less.

If you want to keep your customers and make sure they’re getting the full benefits of your software solution, you must provide product training that is convenient for them.

Very few customers have the time to sift through text-heavy pages of product information to find the answer to their questions. Even fewer customers want to spend hours on the phone with you trying to establish a solution.

By understanding your customers’ needs and crafting a comprehensive set of accessible training materials, you can ensure that your software is being used as intended and is truly meeting the requirements of the customer. And that in turn means lower churn rates and greater customer satisfaction.

Here are four ways you can make sure your customers get the most out of your SaaS product training:

1. Focus Training On The Benefits

One way or another, we have all attended a training session for which we were less than enthusiastic participants. Chances are whether you were physically sitting in a conference room or mindlessly scrolling through a never-ending onboarding document, you’re more likely to have retained the grocery list you composed in your head during that training than the information itself.

To curb this behavior as you train your customers on how to best use your product, also focus your product training on the benefits gained by the software, not just the product features and how to use them.

By transitioning your focus away from features and towards benefits, you won’t run the risk of alienating or boring your customers. You’ll increase engagement in the training (whether the training is done remotely or in person) by helping customers understand what’s in it for them, and why they should want to master your product.

2. Use Scenario-Based Learning

Of course, a benefits-focused training approach does not mean you should simply ignore your product features. Introduce the capabilities of your product by telling a story. Scenario-based learning and benefits focused training go hand in hand. As with any good story, set the scene, build a conflict, and provide a resolution.

For example, when our team is conducting product training for customer support teams, we appeal to a common complaint: while customer support employees juggle dozens of tickets at any given time and strive to find the best solution, some customers are left waiting for a response. This is a golden opportunity to train our customers on the Q&A engine in our knowledge sharing platform. We show them how they can use the Q&A tool to build a searchable database of FAQs so that support reps can quickly find answers to common questions and provide their customers with a fast response.  

Once you’ve got your customers’ attention, you can dive into the nitty gritty of the product feature without losing your audience.

3. Keep It Short, Sweet, And Searchable

We cannot emphasize this enough. Whether you’re conducting a training in person, over a webinar, or by allowing your customers to self-guide through your product training via an online knowledge base, focus your trainings on specific subjects that should take no more than 15 minutes to complete.

When your customers access your knowledge base because they have encountered a problem with your product or do not understand how to use a feature, they need that information right away. Understand that this is how humans operate and do not force your customers to scroll through a poorly indexed novel of product training to find what they are looking for. Give customers the option to search for guides by keywords or by browsing relevant categories.

4. Make Training Available On Demand

No matter the methods you use for your product training, customers should be able to revisit trainings as necessary, digest them at their own pace, and take the time necessary to truly process the information. So invest in a customer-facing knowledge base that will act as a portal through which customers can access the product trainings you’ve created.

With a knowledge base, your customers can immediately identify a solution to any problem that may occur while using your product. And if they don’t find the information they need in the knowledge base, they can publish their question and get an answer from a product expert (provided your knowledge base has a Q&A engine). Your customers should never feel like they’re in the dark when it comes to using your software.

The needs of your customers should be central to everything you do. By developing a meaningful, accessible, and (most importantly) on-demand training program, you will stand out from your competitors and help ensure that your customers continue to find value in your product. Invest in the right technology, use scenario-based learning, and match training to the customer journey to give customers the support they need to succeed with your software.