In today’s competitive market, customer education is no longer just a “nice-to-have”—it’s essential for scaling your business and building lasting customer relationships.
By providing impactful learning experiences, your team can help your customers get the most out of your product, drive retention, build loyalty, and foster a community of engaged customers.
As customer acquisition costs continue to rise, focusing on customer education allows you to create value at every stage of the customer journey—from onboarding to renewal.
In this blog, you’ll discover the critical components of an ideal customer education technology stack and how the right tools can help you scale your training programs, engage customers at every touchpoint, and grow your business.
Keep reading to learn the seven essential features your customer education platform must have to drive success and stand out in today’s market.
Skip ahead:
- Why customer education is a tool for growth
- Using Thinkific Plus to promote growth through customer education
- The ideal customer education tech stack
- Conclusion
Why customer education is a tool for growth
Customer education costs have skyrocketed by 222 percent over the last eight years, making it increasingly difficult to rely solely on acquiring new customers to fuel growth. Instead, your business needs a strategy that prioritizes customer retention and nurtures long-term relationships. That’s where customer education becomes a game changer.
By educating your customers, you’re not just helping them use your product—you’re creating ongoing value that encourages loyalty, drives product adoption, and promotes growth.
When your customers know how to fully leverage your offerings, they’re more likely to renew contracts, expand their usage, and even become advocates for your brand.
In this evolving market, providing education that delivers continuous bursts of value—rather than a one-time effort—gives your business a competitive edge. Integrating customer education into every stage of the journey, from onboarding to advocacy, sets your customers (and your business) up for long-term success.
This new era of customer education spans multiple stages of the customer journey, including:
- Onboarding
- Adoption
- Renewal
- Expansion
- Advocacy
With the right customer education technology stack, organizations can now build learning programs that foster long-term relationships with customers, increasing customer loyalty and converting more users into brand advocates.
“We get excited about educating the next generation of social media pros. Through integrating online learning into these higher education classrooms, students come out with a certification they can showcase… and land their dream job in social.”
– Sarah Whyte, Former Education Marketing Specialist, Hootsuite
The results speak for themselves. Companies with comprehensive customer education programs report average annual revenue increases of 7.6 percent. Plus, there is an average 38.3 percent increase in product adoption for products targeted by training, a 26.2 percent improvement in customer satisfaction, and a 35 percent increase in average lifetime value per learner.
What does this mean for you? You can scale your revenue with purpose by providing targeted customer education that equips your customers with the knowledge they need to succeed — and build enduring lifetime value.
Using Thinkific Plus to promote growth through customer education
To deliver impactful learning experiences that keep your customers engaged and coming back, you need a scalable customer education platform that supports growth at every stage.
Platforms like Thinkific Plus are purpose-built for this, giving you the tools to create, customize, and deliver effective training programs that help your customers see your product’s full potential.
With Thinkific Plus, your business can design inspiring, interactive learning experiences that strengthen customer relationships. By helping them succeed with your product, you’ll improve satisfaction and loyalty and drive product adoption, renewals, and even expansions over time.
Thinkific Plus is designed to scale alongside your business, handling everything from course creation to learner management without technical limitations. Whether educating hundreds or thousands of customers, Thinkific Plus ensures you can deliver the training they need to maximize the value they get from your product—leading to lasting customer loyalty and growth for your business.
“Thinkific Plus offers exceptional scalability, enabling businesses to grow their course offerings and student base without any limitations. It can handle unlimited courses, students, and bandwidth, ensuring businesses can expand their e-learning offerings without worrying about technical constraints.”
– Guy Marion, Chief Marketing Officer at Chargebee
The ideal customer education tech stack
The right customer education tech stack is essential for creating meaningful, long-lasting customer relationships. Your tech stack should allow you to deliver customized, engaging learning experiences that meet your customers’ needs while supporting your business goals. With the right tools, you can scale your education programs effortlessly, reduce customer churn, and empower your users to get the most out of your product.
In this section, we’ll discuss the seven essential features your customer education platform needs to create impactful learning experiences and drive long-term success:
- Content Creation Tools
The success of your customer education program depends on the tools you use to build and deliver content. To create engaging and scalable learning experiences, you need content creation tools that are intuitive, flexible, and easy for your team to use—regardless of their technical expertise.Platforms like Thinkific Plus offer a robust set of content creation tools, including:- Drag-and-drop course builder – Easily create and organize your courses without needing coding skills.
- Multimedia support – Incorporate videos, quizzes, surveys, and downloadable resources to cater to different learning styles.
- Interactive features – Engage your customers with interactive quizzes, assignments, and gamified elements.
- AI-powered content generation – Speed up course creation with AI tools that help you design courses, quizzes, and outlines in minutes.
- Online Community and Engagement
Building a strong community around your customer education program drives engagement and fosters long-term loyalty. Platforms like Thinkific Plus include community-building features that allow your customers to connect, share knowledge, and grow together as they learn.
Key features include:
- Discussion forums – Create dedicated spaces where customers can ask questions, share insights, and support one another.
- Mentions and threaded replies – Foster deeper connections by allowing learners to engage in meaningful conversations within your platform.
- Personalized recommendations – Send customized learning recommendations, award digital badges, and deliver certificates to recognize learner achievements.
- Social sharing – Encourage learners to share their accomplishments and your content across social platforms, expanding your reach organically.
By integrating community-building tools, you can create an environment where customers actively engage with your brand and each other—ultimately boosting customer loyalty and retention.
With Thinkific Plus, social media management platform Hootsuite was able to boost loyalty at every step of the customer journey, training 500,000 learners, enrolling 1000+ universities, and issuing 72,000 certificates in just two years.
“Thinkific Plus offers the power and flexibility to help us achieve the business goals that we want. If we had started using Thinkific Plus one or two years previously, we would have gotten to where we’re at now much faster. ”
– Ryan Chynces, Former Online Education Manager at Hootsuite
- Commerce Engines
Your customer education platform should not only deliver value through learning but also offer flexible ways to monetize your content. Platforms like Thinkific Plus provide built-in commerce engines that make it easy to generate revenue through your education programs.Key commerce features include:
- Multiple pricing models – Offer flexible options like subscriptions, memberships, and one-time payments to cater to different customer needs.
- Advanced sales tools – Manage promotions, create bundled offerings, and run discount campaigns to maximize sales opportunities.
- Built-in payment processing – Secure, seamless payment options with integrated tax management to simplify transactions.
- Recurring revenue models – Boost long-term income by offering subscription-based courses or exclusive membership content.
- Integrations and Connections A seamless customer education experience relies on how well your platform integrates with the rest of your tech stack. Look for platforms that offer robust integration capabilities, allowing you to connect with the tools you already use and streamline your workflows.
Key integration features include:
- CRM integrations – Connect with platforms like Salesforce to manage customer data and track learning progress alongside customer interactions.
- Email marketing – Integrate with tools like MailChimp to deliver personalized learning reminders, course updates, and engagement campaigns.
- Analytics platforms – Sync with Google Analytics or other business intelligence tools to track learner engagement and course performance.
- Automation – Use integrations with your tech stack to streamline and automate workflows like enrolling customers into courses based on triggers, such as product purchases or support inquiries.
- Customization and Scalability
Customization is key to creating a customer education experience that reflects your brand and meets your business needs. Platforms like Thinkific Plus provide a range of customization options that allow you to tailor your learning environment to your brand and extend its functionality.Key customization features include:
- White-labeling – Fully brand your learning platform, mobile app, and course pages with your own logo, colors, and domain for a seamless experience.
- Custom coding options – Access advanced customization capabilities through coding to modify the look, feel, and functionality of your platform as needed.
- API access – Leverage open APIs to integrate deeper with your tech stack, allowing you to extend the platform’s functionality and automate custom workflows.
- Flexible course design—Customize the structure of your courses, including learning paths, prerequisites, and course layouts, to fit your customers’ specific needs.With these customization features, you can ensure that your customer education program reflects your brand and delivers an optimized learning experience that aligns with your business goals.
- Enterprise FeaturesAs your business grows, your customer education platform must scale alongside it. Platforms like Thinkific Plus offer enterprise-ready features designed to handle large-scale operations, ensuring that your customer education program is secure, efficient, and scalable.
Key Features Include:
- Single Sign-On (SSO) – Streamline your users’ access by allowing them to log in using their existing corporate credentials.
- Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – Enhance security with additional layers of authentication, protecting user data and your platform.
- Unlimited admins – Empower your team by allowing multiple administrators to manage courses, users, and reports without added licensing costs.
- SCORM compliance – Ensure seamless content integration by supporting SCORM, allowing you to import courses from third-party systems.
- Enterprise-grade security – SOC 2 compliance, secure user authentication, and privacy controls keep your customer data safe and ensure compliance with industry standards.
- Analytics and InsightsTo continuously improve your customer education program, you need deep insights into how your learners are engaging with your content. Platforms like Thinkific Plus provide robust analytics tools to help you make data-driven decisions and enhance your program’s effectiveness.
Key analytics features include:
- Learner progress tracking – Monitor individual learner progress, course completion rates, and engagement levels to identify areas of success and improvement.
- Custom reports – Generate tailored reports to track key metrics like learner activity, content effectiveness, and overall course performance.
- Data export – Easily export learner data to integrate with your preferred analytics or business intelligence tools for further analysis.
- Engagement insights – Understand which courses, modules, or features are most engaging for your users, allowing you to refine and optimize your content.
With these analytics tools, you can eliminate guesswork in customer education, measure your program’s success, and continually enhance the learning experience to drive better results.
Conclusion
Building an effective customer education program requires the right technology stack. To deliver impactful learning experiences and scale your customer education efforts, make sure your platform includes these essential features:
- Content creation tools: Intuitive and flexible tools that allow your team to build engaging, interactive courses with ease.
- Community and engagement: Features that foster a sense of belonging and interaction among learners, boosting retention and loyalty.
- Commerce engines: Integrated payment processing, multiple pricing models, and tools that help monetize your content effectively.
- Integrations: Seamless connections with your existing tech stack, allowing you to streamline workflows and improve efficiency.
- Customization: Full branding and flexibility to tailor your learning environment to meet your unique business needs.
- Enterprise-ready features: Scalable, secure options like SSO, MFA, unlimited admins, and compliance tools to support large organizations.
- Analytics and insights: Robust data tracking and reporting to continuously improve your customer education program and drive better results.
By choosing a platform like Thinkific Plus that includes these critical features, you’ll be well-equipped to deliver high-quality education at scale and see measurable improvements in customer engagement, retention, and growth.
Unlock The Full Potential Of Customer Education.
To unlock the full potential of your customer education program, you need a platform that’s built for scalability, flexibility, and ease of use. With Thinkific Plus, you can deliver personalized, impactful learning experiences that empower your customers to get the most out of your product—driving higher satisfaction, retention, and revenue.
Ready to evaluate whether Thinkific Plus is the right fit for your business?
Download our Customer Training Evaluation Guide to explore how Thinkific Plus can help you build a world-class customer education program that drives growth and engagement.
