4 Trends in Customer Training You Need to Know in 2022

Whether the goal of your customer training is to get new users up to speed quickly, ensure they understand the safe use of your product, or turn them into enthusiastic power users, one thing is certain: Your customers are constantly changing. To meet customers’ needs in this shifting landscape, you need to anticipate those changes so you’re ready to effectively respond and not be left behind.

Here are four trends that could reshape customer training in the year ahead—and beyond.

1. The Evolution of Customer Expectations

In response to the pandemic, people have been reevaluating their priorities about everything. How they engage with brands is no exception. Customer expectations have never been static, but this latest shift is massive. According to Accenture, as many as 50% of people have become “reimagined consumers” who have changed their buying behavior based on what’s important to them in life. For example:

• 72% of reimagined consumers expect companies to address their changing needs during times of disruption.
• 50% have already switched brands due to lagging customer experience.
• 76% want to do business with companies that operate ethically.

In other words, more and more customers say they’ll only do business with organizations they can trust to do the right thing and to be responsive to their needs. Will that be you?

2. The Rise of Remote Work (and Learning)

With abrupt office closures, entire industries were forced to figure out how to work remotely. Now, many organizations plan to make remote and hybrid work arrangements available permanently after discovering unexpected benefits like increased productivity and job satisfaction.

Why might the shift toward remote work impact customer training? Because your customers are employees too. The more globalized organizations become, and the more comfortable people get with working remotely, the more they’ll expect that ethos extended across all areas of their work—training included.

3. Digitization of Products and Services

The trend toward digitization may be decades along, but the rate at which this process has accelerated in the past two years has been startling. According to a report from McKinsey, the digitization of customer interactions jumped ahead by at least three years in 2020, and virtual product and service offerings have been advanced seven or more years. Similarly, a survey from Twilio found that 87% of enterprise decision makers recognize that digital interactions with customers will be crucial to their success. Customers expect businesses to meet them where they are, so organizations that don’t provide responsive online options will be left behind.

4. Organizational Transformations

A related but distinct trend is how organizations are prioritizing digital transformations more than ever before. This goes far beyond the fragmented digitization of specific processes. It involves a reinvention of how the organization operates using integrated technologies and data analytics.

For example, digital leaders constantly engage in robust data analysis around engagement with their customer training systems, including:

• when and where learners log in
• how long they spend looking at specific concepts
• how many times they return to those concepts
• video-watching behavior, including pausing, replaying and skipping
• number of attempts on assessments

You can see how this rich information could be applied to evaluate and improve training modules—and even subsequent product and service road maps—in a fast and highly responsive manner.

Drive Growth with Customer Education

The common thread running through all these trends is that the old ways of doing things won’t cut it anymore, and customer training is a glaring example of the need to be proactive. Going forward, you’ll need to anticipate customer education needs, and provide personal, responsive customer education that transcends time and place.

To get started, download your copy of The Executive’s Guide to Driving Growth with Customer Training now.

Download nowThe Executive’s Guide to Driving Growth with Customer Training

Written by

Karen Karnis

Karen Karnis has a BA in sociology from the University of Guelph. She has worked in social services, higher education, communications and journalism. Karen is currently working toward a Master of Education in Sustainability, Creativity and Innovation through Cape Breton University.