BLOG

Boosting Revenue and Retention: How 4 Innovative Companies Built Lasting Customer Relationships

figure-3
post boosting revenue
Rachel Rheinhart
September 10, 2024
figure-1

Building a strong, long-lasting customer base is the key to driving business growth. Let’s face it, acquiring new customers is expensive while keeping existing ones is significantly more cost-effective and contributes to long-term profitability. By fostering strong customer relationships, organizations will create an environment where customers become brand advocates, generating referrals and positive word-of-mouth. It’s a win-win as happy customers means an increase in revenue and retention.

Crucial Learning, ArrowStream, Industrial Training International (ITI), and Sales Gravy all leveraged Thought Industries’ platform to revolutionize their training programs, retain customers and boost their revenue. As a result of the partnership, these companies realized impressive gains:

  • Crucial Learning achieved a 220% revenue surge in online on-demand training 
  • ArrowStream maintained an impressive 100% renewal rate 
  • ITI boosted sales by 260% by consolidating its training resources into a single platform
  • Sales Gravy achieved revenue growth by leveraging Thought Industries’ platform to create diverse revenue streams

These success stories underscore the potential of a robust learning platform in enhancing learner satisfaction. Read on to see how each of these organizations boosted customer retention and revenue with Thought Industries’ innovative learning platform to drive business growth.

Crucial Learning grew revenue by 220% in online on-demand training

Crucial Learning is a corporate training company that helps businesses improve their culture and results by changing employee behavior. Its courses are available in a variety of formats including classroom and online training

In an effort to scale its operations, Crucial Learning faced significant challenges due to the limitations of its legacy platform. The previous system lacked self-service capabilities, a robust eCommerce function, and clear performance metrics. These issues negatively impacted the customer experience and prevented the company from scaling effectively. To address these problems, Crucial Learning sought a new solution that could scale and help it overcome bottlenecks and inefficiencies created by its former system. 

This is where Thought Industries comes in. The platform not only addressed Crucial Learning’s existing pain points but also introduced new capabilities that exceeded its expectations. The positive impact was immediate to clients during the testing of the new learning site that Crucial Learning ended up accelerating its platform rollout.

“In addition to solving for [our primary] challenges, we also gained substantial capabilities with eCommerce, client-based reporting, highly configurable notifications, and flexible permissions management.”  

Russ Rollins, Senior Director of Product Technology, Crucial Learning

Key Takeaway: By implementing Thought Industries, Crucial Learning significantly improved customer retention and revenue, achieving a 220% revenue surge in online on-demand training. The implementation of the platform also delivered  an 80% reduction in client setup time, near-perfect transaction accuracy, and significantly improved content management – ultimately driving business growth.

ArrowStream Maintained 100% Renewal Rate Since Launch

As a leading provider of food service supply chain management, ArrowStream is dedicated to providing the industry with the right resources to manage the supply chain, adhere to food safety and quality standards, and improve overall efficiency. This dedication is demonstrated through the company’s hands-on approach to customer onboarding and training.

However, the food industry faces the significant challenge of high employee turnover. Given ArrowStream’s growing customer base, this presented a key hurdle in scaling customer onboarding and training. The company was also conducting training sessions 15 times per month, with sessions lasting up to eight hours. This, combined with live, in-person training sessions to introduce basic platform features and functionality, proved inefficient due to the high turnover rates. 

To address these challenges, ArrowStream partnered with Thought Industries to help it scale its onboarding and training, maintain focused customer conversations, replicate the engagement of live training, and importantly, preserve its 100% renewal rate. ArrowStream also leveraged Thought Industries’ interactive features which incorporate learning paths to guide its customers through a sequence of milestones to get them up and running. 

“We’re very proud of the launch of our learning site. Switching to this hybrid model where we’re offering online training as the first step before customers can join the live in-person training came with a high risk. We’ve been impressed to find that this hasn’t had a negative impact. In fact, after taking the onboarding course, we’re having more focused conversations with our clients around their specific use case instead of basic feature introductions.”

Brittany Tamul, Director of Customer Success, ArrowStream

Key Takeaway: Through a strategic partnership with Thought Industries, ArrowStream was able to take a hybrid approach to scale its customer onboarding and training. This led to a 74% decrease in time spent training staff, 100% renewal rate, and a stickier platform demonstrated through a 182% increase in customer logins.

ITI Boosts Bottom Line and Learner Engagement Through Platform Consolidation

Industrial Training International (ITI) is a global leader in safety training for the manufacturing and construction industry. The company trains thousands of professionals who operate cranes, utilize rigging, and conduct load handling activities. 

ITI faced challenges managing its training programs due to multiple, disconnected systems. This fragmented approach hindered learner progress tracking, increased administrative burdens, and impacted content consistency. ITI recognized the need for a centralized learning platform to streamline operations, enhance the learner experience, and improve overall efficiency.

With Thought Industries, ITI has transformed its training delivery by consolidating its training resources into a single, centralized ITI Learning Hub. Learners can now take control of managing their courses, scores and viewing all certifications from one place. This has significantly enhanced the learner experience for these high-risk professionals and driven substantial business growth. This partnership has enabled ITI to offer a variety of learning formats, including virtual reality simulations, and has resulted in a 520% increase in subscriptions within a year.

“We are dedicated to serving our customers and know that the content we provide impacts their future success and safety on the job. With Thought Industries, we can provide our training in so many different formats to create engaging and meaningful content. We’re able to be so much more agile in how we deliver training to empower and support our customers.”

Christina Lanham Managing Director, UK & Manager of Information Systems, Industrial Training International

Key Takeaway: Industrial Training International (ITI) boosted sales by 260% and increased online subscriptions by 520% after implementing Thought Industries’ learning platform. By consolidating training resources and enhancing the learner experience, ITI achieved significant revenue growth and improved customer retention. 

How Sales Gravy Multiplied Revenue with a Multi-Tenant Strategy

Sales training company, Sales Gravy, offers online training to learners across the globe. The organization was initially constrained by its homegrown LMS and struggled with scalability and customization. The legacy platform also lacked the flexibility to support diverse client needs and multiple revenue streams.

By leveraging Thought Industries’ learning solutions, Sales Gravy transformed its business. The Thought Industries platform allowed the company to create multiple revenue streams through individual subscriptions, team hubs, and enterprise LMS distribution. Thought Industries’ multi-tenant platform, Panorama, enabled the company to deliver tailored learning experiences to diverse customer segments. 

“If you’re a training organization and you’re considering Thought Industries, there is no other option. Dive in, jump into the middle of it and integrate it into your business. You’re not going to be sorry — it’s a fantastic platform. We’ve been using it since 2017 and it has reshaped our business, giving us a competitive advantage in our space that has allowed us to grow 10X over the last seven years.”

Jeb Blount, CEO and Founder, Sales Gravy

Key takeaway: This strategic shift, coupled with a focus on personalized learner experiences, resulted in 41,000 learners on the platform, a tenfold revenue increase, and a high customer retention rate. Thought Industries proved instrumental in propelling Sales Gravy’s growth and establishing a strong market position.

Driving growth through customer retention and revenue

By investing in a robust learning platform, these companies have demonstrated the power of customer-centricity in driving significant revenue growth. Through improved learner experiences, increased engagement, and efficient operations, Crucial Learning, ArrowStream, ITI, and Sales Gravy have transformed their businesses.

By following their lead, you can unlock your organization’s full potential and build a loyal customer base.

Ready to unlock your organization’s growth potential? Contact us today and schedule a demo to learn how we can help you boost customer retention and revenue for your online learning business.

figure-2
post top 5 sessions

Top 5 Sessions You Won't Want to Miss at Cognition24

Read More
post powering growth

Powering Growth: How MongoDB, Educate 360 and Sales Gravy achieved scalable and flexible digital learning

Read More