In the last decade, the fastest-growing position within the C-Suite has been that of the Chief Learning Officer (CLO). With the rise of the C-Suite investment in Customer Education (CE) and the race to hire an intelligent CLO, the message is loud and clear: The key to a successful business is customer education, retention and growth.

Companies are increasingly realizing that customer education is important to build as a scalable strategy. While this takes time and resources, the payouts are worth the investment, and a CLO helps a company through it all. Keep reading to learn more!

The C-Suite Transformation

The primary responsibility of any C-suite, regardless of industry or market is to future-proof their business. That requires a workforce that knows how to tackle problems in real-time and understands what steps need to be taken next. This is where the CLO enters and reshapes the organization’s learning capability.

It is the CLO that ensures employees are developed, engaged, and retained. This, in turn, impacts three metrics directly:

• Customer satisfaction (97% of CEOs believe this is the key to success!)
• Retention
• Adoption rates

And one metric indirectly — your revenue. As the importance of a CLO continues to grow, the AVADO research uncovered that there has been a number of changes in executive titles from 2013 to 2019 in response.

The role of the CLO is ever-evolving as learning and education, both at an employee and a customer level, are becoming regarded as key levers for success. Companies are realizing that their education and learning strategies need to go beyond just onboarding to incorporate the latest technologies or tools that allow execution at scale in a repeatable manner.

The New Trends

In 2022 and beyond, companies are seeing a clear trend —  customer loyalty stems from their proficiency in the technology. That loyalty translates to higher customer satisfaction, increased product adoption and stronger retention.

All of this is possible in just two ways — by educating and enabling both your employees and customers.

Keep in mind that education is not just a short-term strategy but a long-term one that keeps proactively pivoting as the product evolves. Giving the CLO a seat at the table sends a clear message that the company regards education as a strategically important function.

Fun fact: Most Fortune 50 companies and Fortune 500 companies have a CLO!

The Challenges

With every journey comes its own set of challenges. Even though companies are beginning to acknowledge that education is crucial and not just an afterthought, there are still issues that need to be addressed.  

• Resources — Companies need to invest in a CLO and a team to support education goals. While not every company has the same resources, it is important to prioritize this aspect of your business.
• Expertise — Since customer education is still new to some companies, having access to the right individuals with the right expertise can be a challenge. Ensure that you are hiring the correct employees who have previous experience and can help take your customer education efforts to the next level.
• Time — No one can build teams overnight. It will take effort, focus and determination but it’s worth it in the long-run.

If you are dealing with any of the challenges above, there are two main solutions.

1. Use the resources you already have (and the CLO) to invest both time and effort in building a team from the ground up to deliver customer education and learning strategies.

OR

2. Work with a partner such as ServiceRocket to accelerate the process.

Learn more: Listen to ServiceRocket’s podcast to gain insight on the role of customer education in customer success.:

You Don’t Have to Do It Alone

According to a Forrester study, 90% of companies who invested in an education and training program saw a positive return on their investment. However, keep in mind that you don’t have to do this alone.

Entering into a partnership ecosystem that can help you both grow and scale might just be your ideal solution. At ServiceRocket, we meet you where you are and support your growth with agile, custom education strategies that are aligned to your business goals.

We personalize, digitize and atomize learning to ensure its effectiveness. When you partner with us, you get:

• Access to the rich pool of expertise
• Quicker time to value
• Custom yet repeatable data-led proactive education programs at scale

All at a fraction of the cost.

Our offerings were created specifically for companies who understand that education and training are crucial to business growth but have expertise, budget or time constraints to do it in-house.  We're here to help.

If you need a growth partner that can quickly set you up for success, let’s talk.