Читать книгу The Customer Education Playbook - Daniel Quick - Страница 20

In a 2021 webinar with Thought Industries, Maria Manning-Chapman from TSIA spoke about how, if your customer education department remains a cost-center, you'll always be similar to the teenager going to their parents for money when they want to go out with their friends.¹ In short, if you're not making your own money, you don't have control over your own behavior or growth.

We know many customer education professionals who are reluctant to charge for customer education, often citing that they don't want a price tag to be a “barrier” to learning content consumption. However, the barrier to content consumption is more often related to a lack of consumption strategies than it is to whether training content has been monetized. There are many programs that have customers who gladly pay for valuable training content! In fact, benchmark data suggests that the split between fee-based and free content is about 75 percent paid to 25 percent free. Sure, no one is going to start charging for support articles or marketing content – that's included as part of the 25 percent. However, when you think about that 75 percent, whether it's going to help the customer get better at their job, provide a certification for their resume, give them some kind of digital badge for their LinkedIn, or open their eyes to industry best practices – that's worth a price tag.

Don't be worried that charging for content will turn the customer off from engaging. When people pay for content, they are often intrinsically more motivated to see training through than they would be if the content was provided for free. The cost of the education is a signal to the market that says, “Hey! This training has value, it's going to help you in your career – it's worth your time.” Most users are comfortable with the idea that these benefits come with a price tag and may even see the training as more desirable because of the cost.