For education teams, passion isn’t enough. If you can’t show how training drives revenue or retention, it’s hard to be taken seriously as anything more than a cost center.
We recently sat down with Julie Cochrane, VP of Global Education Services at Charles River Development (CRD) to talk about connecting educational services to crucial metrics such as customer retention and lifetime value which really show its value. You can watch the webinar on-demand here, or keep reading for your highlights.
Fee vs Free: “You Have to Give to Get”
The metrics that you track will vary depending on the nature of your business. Because CRD sells to financial institutions, their customer contracts may be as long as five to seven years. This long customer lifecycle means that although CRD sells software, renewals is not a metric that easily proves the value of customer education.
Instead, Julie’s team started tracking the behaviors of customers who took onboarding training, which is included as part of the initial contract. 80% of customers who took that training came back for additional training, which they happily paid for. “Upfront, we delivered what was part of the contract. But because of the experience they had and the value that the client found, we were able to generate additional revenue.”
While training wasn’t specifically tied to renewals or the sale of additional software products, the business saw an 80% upsell or cross-sell movement simply by bundling training with the sale of software in the first place.
Finding the Right Metrics for the Right Listeners: “What’s the Value Outside of Revenue?”
While revenue figures might speak to some internal stakeholders, others may not recognize the efforts that go into education services or why it matters. For some, tracking education’s impact on Time-to-Value (TTV) is a great way to show how training moves the needle, while for others, measuring the depth of customer engagement with training and correlating that with CSAT scores is the way to go. This can show how those who are more engaged with training feel more informed, have multiple touches across the company and adopt with greater depth and efficiency — contributing to better satisfaction scores overall.
Don’t forget qualitative feedback. Julie shared how Education Services are always asking for feedback to ensure training is relevant and impactful. This is more than asking your customers to rate on a scale of 1-10 how they feel, but really getting information on whether the training that you’re delivering is meeting the needs of your audience, and whether it is relevant for their role. Because if it isn’t, you’re not going to be generating any revenue — whether it’s baked into the contract or not.
Another area to look into is support calls. What calls are coming into support? How many? Where are users searching for online help, and are they finding what they need? One great measure of impact that Julie shared was to track a topic that the business has developed content around, and measure if there is a reduction in support calls for that specific topic once you’ve raised awareness for it.
Customer Health Scores: “Having Strategic and Value-added Conversations with Clients”
By staying in touch with the data, Julie discussed how Charles River can use this information to evaluate client health and performance, and proactively reach out to encourage those with poor health to engage in training. Let’s go back to CSAT scores as one example.
“When client satisfaction scores are low, we can see where clients aren’t utilizing training resources. And it’s important to be able to inform them and say “this is what’s available, maybe you’re not taking advantage of it.”
Rather than focus on support issues and firefighting, your team can have more strategic conversations that shift the conversation from being reactive and addressing problems, to highlighting the benefits and the solutions that can give the client more value, thereby boosting their satisfaction with the brand and the product.
When and How to Monetize Training: “It Depends!”
In our own research at Thought Industries, we have found that 65% of organizations are monetizing customer training in some way. We asked Julie how the team decides which components of training to monetize, and found the strategy has really evolved over the years. Training was initially wholly instructor-led and always a line item on the contract, which made it easy for customers to turn it down in their quest to keep costs low. As CRDtransitioned to a more scalable model, the team decided to bake a baseline level of foundational training into the initial contract, in order to give everyone a level playing field and a basic understanding of the products using a scalable, self-service approach.
When training is customized for a client, requires an instructor, or goes above and beyond the basics, this is where training comes with a price tag. “Whenever it’s the one-to-one versus the one-to-many, that is where we start to monetize beyond what’s included in the contract.”
Want to look deeper into monetization strategies? Download our latest guide to monetizing training here.
Managing Education Programs Like a Business: “It’s the Dream!”
Julie waxed lyrical about running the educational services team at Charles River as a business. “It gives us independence. It shows that we can positively impact the bottom line in both tangible revenue and non-revenue contributions. If you’re looking to make that shift, my recommendation is to do it in phases because you can’t boil the ocean.”
Here are Julie’s top tips for making that happen:
- Define success with leadership. What goals and metrics do we have, and how are we going to measure them? Have these decisions ready up front so that you’re aligned on your focus and the value that educational services is offering the business.
- Have conversations with Finance. Understand the true cost of producing training, and what goes into its development. Think about it from a salary and a tool perspective, and put it all together so you can set pricing that’s fair for the organization as well as the client.
- Consider developing tiers: Different tiers for different offerings allows you to provide options to customers, and cater to budgets and business needs without outpricing yourself. This also allows you to reduce budgetary barriers with clients as you scale.
We loved picking Julie’s brain about all things monetization, and there’s so much more we don’t have time to share in the highlights! Watch the full webinar to unlock:
- Training as its own product: The mindset shift you may need to take to think of education as its own product with a distinct value proposition.
- More on Time-to-Value: How training speeds up time-to-value, leading to better conversations with professional services, and a quicker customized workflow.
- The leadership shift: Julie shares how leadership has changed its response to education since it became a profit center, and how she proves her ROI.
