Customer Education is all about teaching customers how to use, and to realise value from your products or services. This kind of education is especially important if you’re an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and provide a technical product that requires some understanding to purchase, use and problem-solve. How well educated your customers are has a direct impact on 3 things: (1) Your support volumes, (2) your self-service resources, and (3) your levels of customer satisfaction.

How? Why? And how do you know if you’re doing a good job?

Continue further fearless reader, and we’ll share everything we know.

The benefits of investing in customer education

As mentioned above, how well educated your customers are has a direct impact on 3 things: (1) Your support volumes, (2) your self-service resources, and (3) your levels of customer satisfaction.

The more informed your customers are, the more empowered they feel. That feeling of ‘value gained’ from ‘belonging’ to a brand goes a long way to supporting the value of your brand. It’s not necessarily measurable, but it supports referral marketing - where your extremely well educated and satisfied customers share their knowledge gained from your brand, along with a recommendation to others to join the same brand. Think “ooh, yes, I know how FTTH works [insert description], you should sign up to [insert brand], they do a great job”.

Obviously you need to support your great customer education with great services, but that’s another discussion.

A well educated customer is often supported by a great online self-service or knowledge base resource. This is a worthwhile investment that has many other benefits, customer education being one of them.

A better educated customer will be able to self-solve more issues than an uneducated customer - reducing pressure on your support teams.

10 signs you’re great at customer education

But how do you know if you’re great at customer education? And if you’re not, what could you do to improve? Here are our top 11 points to consider:

#1 Your content provides ACTUAL value

We live in an age where content is king. This value-add is a double edged sword though and the flip side is that people are BOMBARDED with information - constantly. What this means for your business is that whatever you put out there, needs to be of value to your customers - from the infographics you share on social media, to the help articles you post on your knowledge base.

If your content ACTUALLY helps your customers with a problem, it means it’s of value. ;)

#2 Your content’s a strategic function in your business, not just something you do

There’s a difference between doing something for the sake of it, and doing it because it forms part of your business strategy.

Customer education would form part of your business strategy if you have a customer-centric focus to your business. As detailed above - there are many (many) benefits to this approach.

#3 Your content reaches different user levels

As your business grows, so too will the users of your product or service. This means that ALL of your customers need useful content - from the person who barely knows how to operate the service, to those who are super-users.

Therefore, as your help platform becomes more sophisticated, you’ll be able to provide useful and meaningful educational content to all users.

#4 Relevant content reduces the burden on your support team

When your support team constantly has to answer questions regarding the use of your product or service, it puts strain on the team’s ability to assist with the really critical issues. BUT, if your education, or help platform is so sophisticated and extensive, it will lighten the load on your support team and make you seem like real rockstars.

#5 Scalability - you’re able to support more customers, without hiring more people

As a business grows, one tends to have to hire more people - it’s a fact. BUT there’s the other side of it where you want to be in a position to be able to be functional and efficient without having to hire more staff the second you take on a new customer or client.

PLUS, you don’t want your support team answering the same questions and duplicating responses where it could be as simple as having a help article that explains it all and making that available to your customers to use.

#6 Your content serves multiple purposes

Now when you’re really great at customer education, you’ll use your help articles and blogs as part of your customer onboarding and training programmes. Why? Simple - all the information is there. Why duplicate and create more work for your team, when you could be putting that time back into the business elsewhere.

Which leads us to the next point:

#7 You’ve improved your customer onboarding process

When your customer education system is top notch, you’ll be able to improve your customer onboarding process through some particularly meaningful and useful content.

#8 You’ve increased brand loyalty and customer retention

There’s nothing worse than losing customers or customers being unhappy with your product or service. Nothing.

Since content is truly king these days, helpful, useful content can really save face by providing your customers with the help they need, in a simple, easy to understand way. And they won’t ever want to leave you!

#9 You’ve improved customer satisfaction

This one is so simple. If your customers are happy, they’ll continue to see you as a business partner. Which is exactly what you want. Great customer education helps keep your customers happy through engaging and useful content.

#10 Your content is easy to understand

Once you understand that your customers are all different, with different needs and levels of understanding, you’ll ensure your customer education content is made to cater for all levels, which means KEEP IT SIMPLE.

So ask yourself - “how easy is this to understand?” If you’re able to understand what you’re publishing with little or no extra help, you’re winning.


As your business grows, so does the need to be able to serve your customers in a scalable and sustainable way, including customer education. Ask yourself whether your customer education platform is doing the right things, in the right way, and you’re on your way to success.

Whether it’s self-help articles in a knowledge base, or training videos, it’s essential to ensure the content you deliver is answering the right questions off the bat. This will empower your customers and ultimately improve customer satisfaction.