Without a Goal You Have No Customer Education Strategy

Before you even think about developing a customer education strategy, you must begin with a goal. It sounds simple enough, but too often, people who lead efforts to develop software training programs for customers just start developing a strategy, or worse, just start training customers on product features, without a clear vision for why education is necessary in the first place.

Having a goal, before you begin, matters because it determines your direction and what actions you will take to achieve that goal. Therefore, without a goal, you are both aimless and don't know what actions to take. 

Consider this example.

Two software companies may have two different goals. The first software company is focused completely on customer growth, and more specifically, on acquiring new customers. This company has a goal to add 200 new customers in the current fiscal year. The second software company is focused completely on increasing the product renewal rate. This company has a goal in increase the renewal rate from 87% to 92% in the current fiscal year.