Achieve Higher Product Adoption Rates with an LMS Platform

Among the biggest concerns for all enterprises, especially SaaS businesses, is churn, which is the number of customers that abandon your product after a specific amount of time. One way to reduce churn rate is to improve product adoption, making it easier and faster for your customers to see the value of your product. This article provides practical strategies to improve your product adoption rate. We'll also discuss how to use a Learning Management System (LMS) to manage customer education.

Why does product adoption matter?

Here's why getting people on board (adoption) is important for your business:

• Cultivates customer loyalty: When your user base gets the value of your product, it fosters high product adoption. These satisfied customers are more likely to become loyal advocates and drive customer retention.
  
  
• Moving beyond acquisition: A great first impression gets new users in the door, but adoption keeps them there. By understanding how users interact with your product after initial sign-up, you can identify areas to improve and ensure they continue to find value.
  
  
• Securing business sustainability: Customer acquisition is expensive. When users don't adopt your product, they churn (leave) and you lose potential revenue. High user adoption means less churn, and this leads to a more predictable and sustainable business model.

Proven strategies to boost your product adoption rate

Here are some winning tips to achieve higher product adoption rates:

• Improve onboarding experience: The customer’s first experience with your product can set the tone for their entire customer journey. Simplify the user onboarding process so they can get started faster and easier. Reduce form fields, remove unnecessary steps, and automate parts of the process where possible. The goal is to minimize friction and make the introduction to your product as smooth as possible.
  
  
• Deliver proactive customer service: Anticipate users’ needs and address issues before they escalate. One way to achieve this is to schedule periodic check-ins. This can be through emails, phone calls, or even user feedback surveys to ensure customers are satisfied and identify unresolved issues. You can use tools like Google Forms to gather NPS (Net Promoter Score) and overall satisfaction metrics of your choice (e.g., customer satisfaction score, customer health score, etc.)
  
  
• Conduct quarterly business reviews: Schedule regular check-ins with your customers to go over progress, track satisfaction, and highlight areas for improvement. A quarterly business review (QBR) is an opportunity to review the impact of your training efforts. Customer Success Managers will often lead QBR meetings, which are an important tool for Customer Success teams to use to increase customer satisfaction and retention.
  
  
• Expand customer education and training initiatives: Offer training to your customers and help them understand your product's full capabilities. Use varied learning formats, including videos, live demos, and step-by-step tutorials, to cater to different learning styles and enhance the user experience. Remember to keep the training content updated to reflect product updates, new features, or other changes.

How training and education can help improve product adoption?

Here's how a training program targeted to customers can drive product adoption:

• Lowers perceived complexity of your product: Customer churn is often caused by frustration with a product's perceived complexity. Education plays a key role in mitigating this confusion. By providing clear instructions, training clarifies complex features, which in turn empowers customers to use your product with confidence.
  
  
• Helps customers achieve their desired outcomes faster: Customers who see early value from a product are more likely to stick with it. Customer education accelerates time to value by shortening the learning curve. Targeted instructions on core functionalities, especially if introduced within the product itself through in-app messaging, minimize the time it takes for customers to begin using your product effectively.
  
  
• Reduces customer support tickets: A high volume of customer support tickets strains resources and leads to longer wait times. Training plays a key role in mitigating this by providing self-service options. If you equip customers with ways to troubleshoot common issues, they can find solutions to their pain points on their own. The result? Support teams are freed to handle more complex customer concerns.
  
  

Check out this case study to learn how Clever (an educational single sign-on & access platform) reduced support ticket volume by 25% using Skilljar.

How to use an LMS to manage customer education?

A Learning Management System is a platform used to create, deliver, manage, and track educational courses and training programs. Here's a five-step roadmap to effectively deliver and manage educational content using your LMS.

Step 1: Identify learning objectives

Think about things from your customer's perspective. What are their primary goals when using your product? What challenges do they face? If you don't have answers to these questions, conduct customer research through surveys or support ticket analysis to identify common pain points.

Then, map the different stages your customers go through, from initial onboarding to advanced use cases. At each stage, pinpoint the specific knowledge and skills they need to progress and unlock the full value of your product. Remember, effective learning objectives describe what learners will be able to DO after completing a course.

Step 2: Organize courses by target audience

Chances are, your product caters to a diverse user base with varying needs and experience levels. This is why organizing courses by target audience becomes important. The first step is to create detailed user personas for each distinct group within your customer base. These personas should paint a clear picture of their goals, technical expertise, typical use cases, and potential challenges.

With these personas in mind, categorize your courses by target audience. Asana Academy does this well—they list courses by user roles (e.g., team leader, IT/Asana admin) and even by specific use cases someone might encounter (e.g., Asana for marketing and marketing ops).

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Read this case study to learn how Asana scaled customer training using Skilljar and saw 2x+ growth in users for eLearning platform

Step 3: Incorporate different content formats

Gone are the days of dry, text-heavy training manuals. What are the alternatives? Short, informative videos are perfect for introducing key concepts, demonstrating workflows, and providing step-by-step tutorials. They're easily digestible and can be accessed on-demand, making them ideal for busy learners.

Live sessions offer a valuable opportunity for real-time interaction with instructors or product experts. These sessions are well-suited for in-depth discussions, Q&A sessions, and demonstrations of complex features. Plus, interactive PDFs with quizzes and fillable forms can enhance knowledge retention. Downloadable cheat sheets, quick reference guides, and case studies provide valuable ongoing resources for users.

Step 4: Automate communication and reminders

Use the automation features within your LMS platform to streamline communication with your customers and ensure they stay updated throughout their user journey. For example, manually enrolling users and assigning courses can be time-consuming, especially with a large customer base. These processes can be automated by setting up rules to automatically enroll users in relevant courses based on their account information or previous course completions.

Alternatively, it’s a good idea to use automated email and notification features to keep users informed. This can include pre-course welcome emails, reminders about upcoming deadlines, progress updates, and post-completion surveys.

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Here’s a detailed guide on how to scale efficiency with automation and AI

Step 5: Analyze learner engagement data

Most LMS platforms have analytics dashboards that provide metrics on learner engagement and course effectiveness. Some also allow you to track revenue generated by courses tied to specific product features. This valuable data provides insights into which educational offerings deliver the most value to your customers.

But LMS analytics can go beyond basic insights. Some platforms even feature a group analytics report page that allows you to drill down and analyze student activity and course consumption data by specific student groups.

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Read this case study to see how IPRO (Information Governance and eDiscovery software) increased user engagement by 78% using Skilljar.

Accelerate product adoption with Skilljar

Skilljar's LMS removes friction from product adoption by offering self-service customer education. The user-friendly platform lets you build targeted training programs for different customer segments. Content authoring tools and online course management keep your training materials organized. By empowering customers to learn at their own pace, Skilljar's LMS sets them on the path to product mastery and maximizes the value they get from your product.

‍Get a demo to learn how Skilljar can provide the tools to accelerate the product adoption process and drive long-term customer success.