You’re reading the fourth post in a five part series on recognizing whether and when you need to build an enterprise software training function. You can following the series here. Stay tuned to the ServiceRocket blog each week for the next post in the series.

by Bill Cushard (@BillCush)

Just when we think we have run out of reasons for how to know whether customers need enterprise software training, more pop-up in conversations around the office and during meetings with customers. Recently, we had a conversation with a potential customer who realized how much effort it took to train new hire employees on their products and started thinking their customers might need at least that much help. It seems obvious now, but when you are heads down shipping product updates to customers, these observations are easy to miss.

So we continue this journey to discover all the reasons your customers need training with four more. You know your customers need enterprise software training if...

1. It’s difficult for your own team to learn your products

We have had this conversation with numerous software companies that have come to us. One of the realizations they have about offering training to their customers is that they discover how long it takes for new hires to learn their product/technology. It occurs to them that new customers should receive no less support than new employees. Your customers might even need more support. After all, your new employees are in your office (ok, some may work remotely) and have the ability to lean over and ask questions for others who have been there longer. You're customers do not have that luxury. Think about it this way, if you find it difficult to train your own people on your products, and they come to work in your office every day, imagine how difficult it is for your customers to learn your product.

2. You want to get your customers up to speed on the language and specifics of your products to prevent them going off the rails

The newer your product or technology is on the marketplace, the more important it is to educate customers on your product, the underlying technology, and the language surrounding that technology. For example, if you are selling an emerging open-source technology into enterprises, your sales team will hear from some prospects, "I don't even know what this technology can do for me." If your sales team does hear this, the prospect might not be the right customer for your product...but hear that enough, and you might consider a program to educate the market on the technology that underlies your product.

3. You want to institutionalize your technology in the enterprise

It is one thing to run a smooth implementation that makes a customer happy. It is another thing entirely to establish your technology as a core need in an organization. If you can establish your product as a core need, you institutionalize it into the enterprise, and people cannot imagine working without it. Think Microsoft Office, Salesforce.com, or JIRA. One way to institutionalize your technology into the enterprise is to take a high-touch approach to on-boarding new customers. It is tempting to offer self-paced eLearning because of it's minimal delivery costs. To be sure, this may be the best way to train new customers on your technology. However, by conducing classroom training, you can gather new customers and make a strong impression of your brand, your product, and your technology with a captive audience that has invested the time and budgets to sit through your training. After a high-quality, live training session, it is difficult for new customers to not buy-in to your solution and bring that excitement back to the office with them.

4. You want to capture best practices around your products, not just inside of your products

Enterprise software training is not just about teaching people how to use the features and functionality of your product. That just scratches the surface of what your new customers need to learn. Once you realize that you need to help customers use your products in the context of everything else they do, you will begin to see the need for training. The real value of training is to help people learn a new way of working as a result of using your product. It is not just about your features, as great as they are. It is more often about changing people's mindset about how to work. Live training is a great way to teach this with specific use cases and scenarios. Without training, customers are left to find these new ways of working and other "ah-ha moments" on their own.

Convinced Yet?

If there is an overall theme among the reasons listed above, it is that if you want your customers to be successful in their own businesses using your products, you need to help them get to a point at which your software is a part of what they do, rather than a product that they use. This is not an easy task, especially when it is difficult for customers to see how your software can help them be successful. Training is one way to help your customers see that future.

How do you help your customers see how successful they can be with your software?

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