Do you get your coffee from Starbucks? If so, you probably exhibit the behaviors of a well trained customer.
You order at the counter (queuing along the glass display), you pay the order-taker, then dutifully move along to the curved collection station to pick up your beverage.
You don’t wait at the checkout to collect your coffee. Not in Starbucks. You know that’s not how it works there.
The result of your good behavior? Starbucks can process you faster, take more orders, sell more coffee, make more money.
A well trained customer is a huge benefit to a business – and the best thing is: customers love to be trained. They love knowing how to make their buying experience easier and faster.
Consider also the rise of self-diagnosis. If we are sick, we are more likely than ever to research our symptoms before we visit a doctor.
If our phone stops working, we Google the problem expecting a fix we can implement ourselves.
So, customers like to be trained. They like it when we help them become better buyers. And we know that they self-educate to save time and money.
The question is: are we going to let them learn about us organically (if at all). Or are we going to intervene to ensure they receive the best education about us, from us?
Here are four approaches you can take to educate your customers:
1. Add value to the buying experience
No one reads the instruction manual, right? Take the pain out of getting to grips with a new piece of hardware or software. By providing timely training on your products, you build customer loyalty, and improve customer satisfaction.
Example: Apple provides free training on Apple products in any of their store and online.
2. Provide training ‘takeaways’
Some products and services can only be activated in the home or office, for example a piece of software can only be activated using a PC. If you can’t be there to help your customer in person, make sure they have something that goes beyond a product spec. A customer just bought one of your power drills. As well as a guide to using the drill, you could also show them how to put up a set of perfectly straight shelves.
Example: Home Depot offers free home improvement technique cards which not only improve the customer experience, they also take the brand into the home, advertising additional Home Depot products.
3. Introduce customers to ‘the family’
Do you sell a range of compatible products or services? Do your customers know how they all fit together? Probably not. This is upselling as a value-add. And it works.
Example: AT&T provides online tutorials that demonstrate how compatible products work together, and how to link them up in your own home or office.
4. Help customers join the dots
We don’t know what we don’t know. If I’ve just bought a ski jacket and ski boots, chances are I like to ski! But do I know that my local travel agent is offering reduced fares to my favorite resort? If not, I’d certainly like to know.
Example: Amazon’s ‘People who bought X also bought Y’ service educates customers on products that may complement the one they have chosen, or that may appeal to someone with their taste.
These examples illustrate education being utilized as a component of marketing. But while marketing stops at awareness and desire, education engages with the customer at a deeper level and leaves them with something tangible and valuable.
Customer education also increases trust, leading to repeat business, increased share-of-mind, and loyalty. It helps give you the edge over your competitors – after all, you are offering something above and beyond the product and service range.
In other words, educating your customers increases sales; decreases support costs, heightens brand awareness, and improves customer retention rates.
And if that isn’t reason enough to start thinking about training your customers, consider this: If you don’t educate them, someone else will.