9 Companies That Get Customer Training Right

You already know how important it is to train your team members, but what about your customers? It turns out there are many benefits waiting for organizations that invest in training their customers too. In fact, over 75% of organizations have achieved improved product onboarding through customer training.

Customer training is more than instructions or educational content on using your product or software—it’s about setting your customers up for long-term success. This commitment leads to real benefits, like happier customers (because they feel confident using your
software), fewer support questions (because they understand your product better), and a positive impact on your revenue (thanks to enhanced customer loyalty, hence less churn).

In this article, we show you nine organizations that nailed customer training. Keep reading to see how they excel in customer training and learn valuable insights from their approaches.

What is customer product training?

Customer product training refers to educating and instructing customers on how to use a particular product effectively. Customer product training aims to empower users with the knowledge needed to maximize the value they get from the product. So, overall, customer training equips customers with the skills to troubleshoot, enhancing their self-sufficiency and reducing reliance on customer support.

Check out this case study to learn how Asana scaled the delivery of training to its customers using Skilljar.

What should be included in customer training?

Effective product knowledge training for customers should cover various areas to ensure users have a comprehensive understanding of the product and its applicable use cases:

• Product overview: Provide an introduction to the product, including its purpose and the biggest problems it solves.
• Installation and account creation: Guide users through the installation process and initial setup to ensure a smooth onboarding.
• Basic navigation: Provide an interactive tour or walkthrough of the product’s key features and functionalities.
• Core features: Highlight and explain essential features that users are likely to use regularly. You may also want to mention new features you want to launch soon.
• Advanced features: Explore more advanced features and capabilities for users looking to maximize the product’s potential. These features are generally available in high-tier subscriptions or plans.
• ICP-centric use case scenarios: Highlight typical situations where the product proves valuable for different customer needs or ICPs. For example, in the case of marketing automation software designed for SaaS companies, the ideal users could be marketing managers tasked with coordinating diverse marketing campaigns across multiple channels.
• Security guidelines: Review security measures and best practices to ensure users understand how to keep their data and accounts secure.
• Support resources: Introduce available support channels, such as customer support team contacts, chatbots, Facebook groups, or knowledge base files.
• Feedback mechanism: Remember to build a mechanism for users to provide feedback on the training sessions or how you can improve the quality of training.

Read this case study to discover how SmashFly joined forces with Skilljar to amp up its training program for 2,000 customers worldwide.

Customer training examples for brand, product, and business strategy

Learn how well-known companies such as Zendesk and LinkedIn teach their customers. We’ll also share what we love about each of these companies.

Best Customer Training Examples for Brand, Product & Business Strategy

1. LinkedIn

LinkedIn has created a unified, sustainable education platform featuring distinct domains across three lines of business—Talent, Sales, and Marketing. They’ve made it easy for customers by organizing live events and offering self-service training in 13 languages, including Mandarin, Japanese, Italian, and Turkish.

What we love about LinkedIn:

Three distinct learning domains all using the same LMS is pretty impressive, and these three divisions at LinkedIn work closely together to learn from each other. Also, the LinkedIn Learning Center (for LinkedIn Talent Solutions) is language-friendly—you can select any language you prefer, making it globally accessible.

Related Content: Hear from Jill Glynn, Manager, Scaled Engagement for LinkedIn, why choosing the right learning management system is so important for customizing learner’s needs.

2. Zendesk

Zendesk offers free and paid customer training programs to onboard their customers at scale. Their program consists of distinct learning paths for admins, agents, CX analysts, sales teams, and developers. Zendesk Training also includes a wide variety of ways to learn, including:

• On-demand content
• eLearning
• Credentials and certification
• Custom training
• Virtual, instructor-led training (ILT)
• In-person and virtual community user group events

What we love about Zendesk: At Zendesk, customers can pick content that suits their role and learning preferences, improving the user experience and boosting engagement. Also, Zendesk uses various engines like Examity, Caveon, and Credly to set up certifications and ensure a great customer experience.

Related Content: Learn how Zendesk uses certifications as part of their customer training strategy.

3. RingCentral

RingCentral University offers self-service education for their customers, including live training, webinars, videos, and guides, for three products: MVP (Message, Video, Phone), Contact Center, and Engage (Customer Service). Each product has learning paths for different product users—from end users (for MVP) to agents, supervisors, and admins.

What we love about RingCentral:

RingCentral’s design is simple and clean, making it easy for customers to find what they need based on the product and their role. They even included a restructuring course guide that maps the original courses to the new ones to help users who might have started a course in the original setup.

4. Jamf

Jamf launched its Customer Education department as a separate function in 2020. The program continues to grow through its training platform (for online certifications) and online training catalog (for online Customer Education). The training catalog is the entry point for all Jamf customers to learn how to set up and start using their products.

What we love about Jamf: Jamf continually innovates to find new ways to reach customers. Recently, they’ve had success with a new content format. “Jamf Shorts” are quick, easy-to-follow videos that guide you through everyday tasks, highlight product updates, and show new features on the Jamf platform.

Related Content: Learn how Jamf uses short-form video content to amplify their GTM strategy.

5. Hubspot

At Hubspot Academy, you can dive into lessons, courses, boot camps, quizzes, and learning paths to gain valuable business skills, especially in marketing operations. Hubspot users love earning badges from the free certification program, proudly showcasing them on their LinkedIn profiles. With 31 certifications available, you can explore topics ranging from inbound sales and social media marketing to revenue operations, digital advertising, and beyond.

What we love about HubSpot Academy: HubSpot Academy is a fantastic example of how teaching customers can boost brand awareness and product usage. HubSpot has become a top player in educating marketers about inbound strategies and a big reason for this is its excellent customer training content.

6. Outreach

Outreach provides free customer training to actively tackle support queries from existing customers and help new customers get the hang of things faster. Instead of having their Customer Success Managers (CSMs) individually train customers, Outreach expanded its customer success efforts by incorporating Customer Education to enhance team efficiency. Outreach University offers different levels of learning, starting with the basics and detailed instructions for admins who wish to get a certification.

What we love: Outreach University includes set tracks, or learning paths, for different job functions (sales reps, closers, admins, and managers). When customer support tickets arise, the Outreach team guides customers to training materials most relevant to their needs. The team also assesses previous training outcomes to offer personalized suggestions. They give clear instructions on how users can earn and display badges to highlight their learning achievements, offering visibility to Outreach as well.

Related Content: Learn how Outreach used customer training to accelerate user growth and improve the way the Customer Success team works.

7. Procore

Procore’s Learning Portal uses on-demand customer training to drive brand awareness, generate prospective customers, and improve customer retention. Procore provides a free training and certification program for anyone in construction management, even if they’re not using Procore services. The program includes specialized training courses for different roles like project managers, architects, engineers, and field workers. It also offers in-depth training on Procore’s tools and the chance to earn continuing education credits.

What we love about Procore: When a Procore customer completes training, they can display a certificate on their LinkedIn profile. This has helped Procore build its LinkedIn community and establish the company as an industry thought leader through its private Procore Certified User Group. There are currently more than 3,700 members.

Related Content: Learn more about how Procore launched its certification program for customers.

8. OSIsoft

OSIsoft Learning is a customer and partner education portal that goes beyond a basic customer training course catalog to offer a holistic learning experience. In OSIsoft’s customer training, every online course includes lab environments, allowing customers to get hands-on practice with the products.

OSIsoft’s program also includes role-based learning paths with short eLearning modules that learners can easily find and access. Plus, OSIsoft offers virtual instructor-led training (VILT), providing more in-depth customer training opportunities and live interaction with OSIsoft engineers.

What we love about OSIsoft: OSIsoft provides training in nine languages and 21 locations worldwide, allowing you to choose between on-demand or instructor-led sessions. Whether you prefer hands-on online labs or direct interactions with OSIsoft trainers globally, each training option is designed to suit the needs of different audiences, including end users, administrators, developers, power users, and project managers.

Related Content: Learn how OSIsoft drove a 1,000% increase in self-paced online course registrations after overhauling its customer training portal.

9. Red Hat

Red Hat Training offers an extensive customer training curriculum, which can be sorted by type of offering (course, exam, certification, free), certification path, product lines, and products. Red Hat customers can purchase either a one-year individual subscription to grow their technology skills or enterprise plans to meet the needs of a growing team.

What we love about Red Hat: Red Hat offers multiple options for subscription customer training so customers can find a plan that meets their needs and budget. The options are tailored by country and presented in the local currency. This serves as a strong example of how certification-based training can be a valuable way to generate revenue.

Improve your customer training with Skilljar

Many companies are starting to understand the benefits of customer training to help drive product adoption, customer satisfaction, and retention. Skilljar is an award-winning learning management system (LMS) for onboarding and educating customers. Companies use Skilljar due to its wide range of practical tools, including intuitive learning paths, white label features, integrations, and advanced analytics.

Sign up for a Skilljar demo and see how it can help you create an efficient training platform that delivers results for your business.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in 2018 and has been updated in 2024.