How to Retain Customers & Make Your Expertise Indispensable

Every organization has a bank of institutional knowledge and expertise. Your knowledge or ability in a certain area is the reason you were able to attract customers and build a business in the first place.

The question is, however: Are you leveraging your institutional knowledge base to the best of your ability? Further, is there an opportunity to better leverage your expertise? 

Remember, your know-how is your greatest asset. The more products and services you build around that, the more valuable and sustainable your customer relationships will be.

Industry-leading organizations understand how to transform their institutional knowledge into online resources that customers find invaluable. In this post, we’ll explore how you can turn that deep, untapped well of information into a magnet for attracting and retaining successful customers.

If you sell a product:

No one knows your product better than you do. Well, not always.

When a high-quality learning program is put in place, you can equip every one of your customers with that same knowledge base, thereby transforming them into power users.

For businesses selling a complex product (e.g., An enterprise software company operating within a niche), online training can serve as a way to bridge the gap between “green” users and those that are product experts. 

In fact, for today’s product-first companies, in-depth customer education initiatives are quickly becoming the rule, not the exception.

You can also leverage your expertise to offer education around topics that are not product-specific and, instead, cater more to the sector that you and your users operate within. Then, your brand promise extends beyond your product as you begin helping people become more effective in their roles. Undoubtedly, this will set you apart from competitors in your industry.

Promising to make your customers experts in their field, and delivering on that, only strengthens your relationships in a way that a product never could. It’s also something that’s far more difficult for your competitors to duplicate.

To develop your program’s courseware, consider engaging other leaders within your business. This includes the Product team, Marketing org and Customer Experience team — The more, the merrier! 

If you sell a service:

If you make a living by selling your expertise or providing a service, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to provide your clients with everything needed. Your time is finite, but your customers’ expectations certainly are not.

Let’s pretend, for example, that you’re a consultant who typically works with clients one-on-one. Over time you might acquire more clients, but you’ll never get more time in your day. As such, scaling your business always presents a challenge. You can expand by adding more partners, associates or subcontractors to your company, but that’s not the same thing as scaling your expertise.

In this scenario, online training offers an opportunity to turn your expertise into a value-added service for clients. Use courses to expand on, or reinforce, points you touched on during instructor-led sessions. Or, offer follow-on material for them to cover at their own pace. Providing a robust catalog of on-demand educational material also expands the value proposition of a consulting service.

In short, online courses are a great way for a service-oriented business to reach more people and allow their teams to manage their time more effectively. 

Training increases customer satisfaction.

At the end of the day, improving customer satisfaction (CSAT) is the name of the game for any business. Users that have a positive experience, grow in their roles and are able to drive business results for their department are more likely to become brand advocates. 

Simply put, happy customers are one critical path to unlocking growth.

Ultimately, this is why leading product- and services-based businesses invest in customer education programs. By doing so, first moves have been able to improve retention, build a brand and, ultimately, drive growth. 

Don’t let your institutional knowledge go to waste. 

Now, are you ready to transform your expertise into learning that’ll keep your customers coming back for more? 

Learn more about Northpass and how we can assist you.