Unlock the Power of Customer Relationships through Customer Enablement

Customer enablement, also known as customer success enablement, focuses on providing customers with resources to help them use your product more successfully, effectively, and efficiently. The main goal of customer enablement strategies is to help them have a better experience with your product, which can promote customer loyalty and retention, increasing the likelihood of repeat customers. In the B2B industry, happy customers can also translate to more referrals and higher sales numbers.

Strong customer enablement programs support the customer success team by improving customer satisfaction and reducing customer service issues. Examples of customer enablement include the following:

• Onboarding new and existing customers with live or pre-recorded video tutorials
• Showing customers how to use the product successfully before they buy in
• Live training
• Providing self-service tools

Many B2B and SaaS companies use client enablement programs that consist of onboarding procedures to help customers learn how to use their product, decreasing the potential dissatisfaction that comes from customer confusion.

Companies can also track customer data to ensure they have a positive customer experience by sending automated emails and tutorials based on actions they've taken when using the product.

The main goal of customer enablement strategies is to give customers the resources they need to properly use the product, thus eliminating the need for customer care later on with more complicated software.

Customer enablement increases overall satisfaction, helping your business retain customers. When a customer purchases a product or software, they expect to be able to use it immediately. Unfortunately, new software can be confusing, but by providing customers with support systems they can use on their own, they can quickly learn how to use your product without contacting support.

Customer enablement is often confused with sales enablement. Both strategies provide people with resources. The main goal of sales enablement is to help sales reps close deals. On the other hand, customer enablement is an approach to customer education and success that provides them directly with resources to learn how to use a product.

Build strong customer relationships

The key to enablement is building strong relationships with customers. By making them your top priority, they can use your product more successfully. Providing buyers with resources, tips, and tutorials can increase trust, making them not only more likely to purchase your product but more likely to use it successfully as well.

Your customers want their voices heard. Engaging with brands and feeling valued can help them build a more personal relationship with your business while increasing customer retention and overall satisfaction.

It's much more costly to acquire new customers than it is to retain your existing ones. Focusing on building a foundation of trust that facilitates communication between customers and your business can help your customer enablement strategy succeed.

Strategies for establishing strong customer relationships

Remember, customer enablement focuses on providing customers with the tools they need to use your product; it's a customer success strategy that improves satisfaction and helps you build stronger customer relationships.

Customer support teams build these relationships through active listening, empathy, personalization and customization, and consistent and timely communication.

If your customers inquire about a specific feature, you should always respond in a timely manner. However, the main goal of enablement is to help customers avoid needing customer support by providing them with the knowledge they need to use your product without friction. To do this, you can:

Educate customers

Customer enablement initiatives educate customers to help them successfully use a product. Providing them with resources for how to use your product is key to customer success. You can send them automated emails based on their behavior or where they are in the customer journey, or you can add resources to your website, like a knowledge base that consists of community tips.

In addition, you can develop a learning management system (LMS) to facilitate customer learning. Educational and training organizations typically use this software to track training activities and provide everyone, from employees to students, with online learning resources they can use.

Your business LMS doesn't have to be as comprehensive as a college course, but it should offer valuable resources that improve customer success by facilitating learning.

Provide ongoing quality support

Customer success often hinges on what happens after someone buys a product. While customer education can reduce the number of support tickets you see, providing ongoing support is one of the best customer enablement tips we can give you.

Delivering support by having a dedicated customer support team can give your customers an additional resource for how to use your product when they can't figure it out on their own.

Providing good customer service after onboarding new customers can help you build better relationships, making them more likely to become loyal customers.

Incorporate customer feedback

A strong customer enablement strategy prioritizes the customers and their needs. Customer feedback can help you determine which resources you should provide and when. For instance, your customer may be telling you there's a particular feature that's difficult to understand or use.

In these cases, you may create educational materials about that specific feature or offer live walkthroughs of the product to allow customers to ask questions.

Offer different types of support

Customer success teams should be available through multiple different channels, allowing customers to contact them in several different ways. Customer satisfaction may hinge on your ability to be available when they need your help navigating the product.

You should always ensure your customer enablement strategy consists of various customer success channels, such as texting, social media, and live chat on websites to facilitate their education of the product.

Assigning customer service reps

Customers prefer a single customer success manager to work with during their onboarding and afterward. Providing them with a single source for all their information will make them more comfortable contacting the business when they have questions, feedback, or concerns.

You can assign specific customer service agents to different accounts based on various factors, from geographic location to specialty or niche. Then, let them manage customer needs while building a rapport with customers to increase their satisfaction.

A customer enablement strategy doesn't just improve the customer experience after they've purchased the product; it can help you attract new customers through ongoing search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

The customer enablement resources you produce can be optimized to rank on search engines like Google, making your business even more visible online. Here are a few ways you can leverage customer enablement for SEO:

Enhancing customer experience on your website

Focusing on the customer experience on your website can help you further educate customers. Your website should have user-friendly navigation and an intuitive design that can help them easily find resources to help them use your product. In addition, you should have valuable and relevant content that educates them about the various features and how to use them.

Your website should also contain interactive features and engagement opportunities that help customers learn and engage with your brand.

Optimizing for customer-focused keywords

After purchasing your product, customers might not realize your website contains all the resources they need to use it. Instead, they might search for help online.

By identifying relevant keywords based on your customers' needs and incorporating them naturally into the website, you can help existing customers find the resources they're looking for. Instead of going to third-party sites to learn how to use your product, they can get all the information they need from your business directly.

Leveraging customer reviews and testimonials for SEO

Reviews on your website can improve your search engine rankings while acting as valuable trust signals for your customers. You should encourage customers to leave reviews and showcase the positive ones on your website to help not only attract new customers but help them make a purchasing decision.

Customer reviews can also tell you more about your customers and their expectations. Internally, you can learn more from negative reviews than positive ones. While you may not want to post all the negative reviews on your website, you should monitor them for common trends and find solutions that enhance your sales and marketing strategies.

For instance, customers might find your product too difficult to use. This could tell you that you're not providing enough valuable resources on your website that help customers use your products successfully. At the same time, it might all point back to your SEO.

If customers find your product difficult to use and try to search for answers online, your website should appear in the top search results. If it doesn't, your customers won't be able to find the information they're looking for, which can lead to a poor overall customer experience.

Customer enablement relies on your ability to educate customers, making it easier for them to use your product and increasing their satisfaction. To effectively support customers and their journeys, you'll need robust tools and technologies to help you communicate more effectively. A few examples include:

Customer relationship management (CRM) software

CRM software supports sales and marketing by helping you get to know your customers, collect data, and stay current on where they are in the buyer's journey. A robust CRM can help you track customer interactions with your business online and send automated notifications to them based on their behaviors.

If a customer begins using your software, you can set up an automation that sends an email to them with resources about using a specific feature. At the same time, your CRM will keep track of all customer communications to ensure a more unified experience.

Customer analytics and data-driven insights

The more you know about your customers, the better you'll be able to market to them and improve your overall customer success strategy. Customer analytics and data-driven insights can help you identify opportunities and areas of improvement that can support customer success teams, allow them to focus on serving customers, and provide them with the resources they need to use your product.

In addition, customer analytics can help you determine best practices for your enablement strategy. You can determine if your strategy is effective by tracking traffic on the resources pages designed to provide training programs and additional resources to your existing customer base.

At the same time, you can track customer service metrics to help customers get fast responses to their inquiries to obtain the desired outcomes for both businesses and their customers.

Marketing automation tools for personalized interactions

Customers expect personalized communications, especially through email messages. Marketing automation tools can help you reach and engage with more customers by allowing you to build the customer journey and send automated emails based on user behavior.

Tailoring your customer enablement approach to individual customers based on their needs by using automation to create more personalized interactions with your business can dramatically increase satisfaction with the product and your business as a whole.

Your CRM can integrate with software, websites, and other tools to help you learn about customer behavior. With automation, you can create workflows that send automated notifications and messages to facilitate customer learning.

If customers view a specific resource page on your website, you can send them an automated email with more information and training videos to help them use your product better.

Social media monitoring and engagement platforms

Social media is becoming a popular sales enablement tool, but it can also help existing customers learn how to use your products. Social media gives you a valuable opportunity to connect with customers and prospects more personally.

Instead of posting branded content that doesn't provide customers with value, you can focus your strategy on empowering customers to use your products by sharing videos, photos, and infographics. In addition, you can post links to your resources pages to help educate existing customers about your product and its features.

At the same, social media allows you to manage relationships with prospects and customers. These individuals might reach out with questions publicly or as a direct message. Having the right social media monitoring and engagement tools can help you find customers who may be struggling with your product and help get them on the right path.

Using a social media management tool can also support customer enablement strategies by allowing you to target your content to customers. While email marketing can be automated based on actions customers have taken on your site or software, social media can provide customers with additional resources they need to either make a purchasing decision or use your products successfully after buying them.

Your customers will also reach out directly to your business on social media. If you want to give them a positive experience, you should provide customer service teams with tools that allow them to manage these interactions more effectively and efficiently.

Measuring and analyzing customer enablement

Measuring customer enablement can help you determine your strategy's strengths and weaknesses. This is a collaboration between marketing, sales, and customer service, so you should analyze key metrics that pertain to each portion of your strategy, including content performance, such as website traffic, customer engagement, conversion rates, average selling price, and knowledge retention.

You can also gather feedback directly from your customers by sending them surveys and tracking your results.

Improve retention by empowering customers to use your products successfully with Mailchimp. With Mailchimp CRM, you can send automated messages, build a following on social media, and create valuable, educational content to enhance your customer enablement efforts.