How to Build Customer Training Academy Using an LMS [Checklist + Tools]
- Ivy Lobo
- Apr 9
- 8 min read
Updated: Oct 1
Grab any 2-minute Maggie Packet and flip it over; you'll always spot a recipe for a tasty dish. They're not just selling you a product; they're showing you how to make the most of it.
This is what your customer training academy is all about — teaching customers how to get the best out of your product.
This learning process breaks down the complexity (which might seem a bit too technical) of your products and services, helping to move leads smoothly into dedicated customer onboarding and creating an easy sales funnel.
It’s high time! Surface the value of your product by educating your customers and letting them become experts in what they’re using. Because an expert product user is hooked to become your brand advocate.
So, shall we start by understanding why you need a customer-training portal for all this education and how to build customer training academy using an LMS?
Why Do You Need a Customer Training Portal?
The primary objective is to create an academy to educate your customers about your product. But why is a customer training portal essential for this? Is it a valuable investment?
When purchasing online, every customer requires varying levels of information, which ultimately influences their buying decisions.
In simple terms, you need an advanced approach to identify your user’s expectations, goals, nature of work, requirements at their job, etc to create a personalized learning experience.
And hell no, you’re using excel sheets & data segmentation tools to accomplish that process, you need an intuitive portal. You need an AI-tech-driven portal that accommodates a few factors:
Provides a personalized customer experience through Intuitive Onboarding
Reduces churn by providing value-driven solutions
Upsells your sales funnel
Enables your users to become Brand Advocates.
Increases Lifetime value (LTV) & customer retention rate.
An expert user is like a loyal addition – they will see the value earlier in your sales cycles. Even if they’ll consider activating or up-gradation your higher-end services as your academy serves as a gainful experience, they will stick for longer.
To elevate your educational standards, consider providing top-notch industry-related education. This will position your organization as a thought leader in your field. Additionally, it enhances your reputation as a robust brand, attracting more leads and facilitating easier conversions.
How Companies are Using LMS for Customer Training?
It's likely that you already have customer onboarding set up through different methods, such as resource sections (blogs, ebooks, case studies, etc.), an auto-responder email sequence, live webinar sessions, or even a live demo of your product. However, these strategies can be time-consuming when it comes to reaching your sales objectives.
Continuously monitoring the customer life cycle and adapting the training process is crucial for promoting a self-paced learning environment. A dedicated customer training portal supports this by delivering a personalized blend of content, guiding customers in effectively using your product until they reach their "Aha!" moment.
Segment the courses from basics to expert-level of your product. That’s exactly what Hubspot Academy does with its education academy. They created courses on how to use every tiniest feature of their product, resulting in users buying their premium features to explore more.
How Do You Build a Customer Academy Using LMS?
Let’s take the example of Articulate 360 academy to understand the need for a dedicated training portal. Now, you don’t have to align your goals based on these current academies, just a tap of how successful an academy can be for inclusive lead generation.
This portal was built using Rise 360, a top-rated online course platform (application) and LMS. Rise 360 is a white-label solution with full-customizable features to educate the customer and train the employees or provide courses to a wide audience.
Tips for an Effective Training Portal
When we talk about tools that any organization can employ to create an effective academy – there is a wide variety to implement a training portal. Depending on your S.M.A.R.T goal set in to channel the purpose of your academy. Example you can use tools to establish a knowledge hub.
They have an integrated system, providing a range of features to achieve your academy goals.
The Following are Effective Training Portal Features
Lesson-segmenting capabilities
Course-access restriction
Interactive E-books
Interactive Video Content
Media Solutions (Visuals, Audio, Exercises, Quizzes, and Text-format)
These features help enable a unique learning experience for your users and encourage them to upskill enjoyably.
Quick Checklist to Build Customer Training Academy (Using an LMS)
A self-hosted LMS can be costly to set up, whereas a cloud-based LMS might be comparatively less expensive. Although acquiring a learning management system is crucial for improving your training programs, if you're reluctant to invest the time in setting up your platform correctly, your training efforts might not achieve success.
We’re going to assist you in properly setting up your LMS today by guiding you through the checklist of an LMS setup, are you ready? (Sip up a coffee, you might need these pointers for later whiteboard sessions)
Schedule a launch date
Prioritize the first steps
Define your KPIs
Familiarize yourself with LMS
Set up Integration
Establish User Roles
Set up Customer Portals
Upload Relevant Content
Customize Email Notifications
White Labelling & Branding
Finalize Courses & Platforms
Onboard & Enroll Users
1. Schedule a Launch Date
Select a day or date when your platform will be ready to welcome users. This marks the initial step of implementation. Let's begin from the very start.
We understand that launching your LMS may not be as significant as Elon Musk's rocket launches, but setting a deadline will facilitate the planning process for a successful training program launch.
We simply suggest collaborating with your team to pick a date on the calendar, ensuring your business and stakeholders are well-prepared to move forward confidently.
2. Prioritize the First Steps
Concentrate on building the key features, integrations, and learning resources prior to launching your LMS. Essentially, some features, functionalities, and course recommendations might need thorough examination, yet they aren't essential for the initial rollout of your training programs.
3. Build an implementation team
The amount of time required for different businesses can vary greatly based on several factors:
The learning resources required
The scale of your business
The extent of training provided
Additionally, if your company is a start-up, hiring full-time eLearning and training managers or specialized training managers might be beyond your budget. In such cases, you can train your employees to implement the program. Begin by outlining the key questions you need answers to, such as:
Key Questions to Ask to Form the Customer Training Program Implementation Team
Who will be responsible for uploading and producing the content?
Who will consult with and hire specialists to assist in setting up the LMS?
Who will develop custom code for the LMS (if allowed)?
Who will handle marketing the new training system to your stakeholders, including customers and staff?
We understand that your company may have unique requirements, so even though these are general questions to consider when forming an implementation team, feel free to add more specific ones to better align with your goals.
4. Define your KPIs (Measuring Learner Performance)
This step guarantees that as soon as your LMS is operational, your team can promptly assess learner performance. Moreover, your company and its trainers can quickly monitor learner progress using the analytics and reports provided by your LMS.
5. Familiarize Yourself With the LMS
At this stage, you have scheduled a date for your LMS to be available for registered users to access courses, and you have assembled an implementation team.
The exciting part is about to start, so hold on tight!
Accessing the LMS. Depending on your business's size, only select members of your implementation team should manage the LMS, rather than the whole team.
6. Set Up Your Integrations
Integrations are one of the reasons LMSs are such in-demand training solutions for hybrid training of consumers, employees, and other audiences. Through integrations, your company can link external 3rd party programs with your LMS, so that they can support your training requirements.
Whether you utilize default features included in the LMS, it’s always worth checking with your provider to see if it can be connected while you’re setting up the integrations.
Google analytics
Facebook pixel
Hubspot
Salesforce
Other webinar solutions include Zoom, GoToTraining, and GoToWebinar.
Accredited single sign-on (SSO) (for storing CEU and certifications)
7. Establish User Roles
Your LMS needs a structured approach to clearly define the access permissions and responsibilities assigned to trainers and administrators concerning learners, much like how universities operate, where students take exams that are graded by professors.
8. Set Up a Customer Portal
Customer Portals serve as a dedicated training platform for different user groups you are instructing. If you're using the LMS for internal training and don't need to divide training by department, you can proceed to the next step.
However, for B2B training, your team needs to set up portals for each client. When setting up a portal, appoint an administrator to manage the training sessions for the group of learners involved.
9. Upload Relevant Content
You have so far started building your training programs in the LMS and uploaded some learning resources, but you haven’t fully developed a course that is prepared for users to enroll in. If you faithfully adhere to this LMS implementation plan, your courses are currently in the form of outlines or drafts rather than finished products (training courses) that are prepared for distribution through internal and external channels.
It’s now time to complete your training programs in the LMS to get everything ready for launch.
10. Customize Email Notifications
If you have a cloud-based LMS, your platform might already include an email notification system, depending on your LMS provider. What is the purpose of these LMS notifications?
4 Reasons Why to Use LMS Email Notifications
Sending out notifications to users to tap their learning progress.
Updating your learning about new resources or relevant courses.
Enhancing learner’s involvement in a course.
Promoting new training and courses.
The LMS can assist in keeping your learners more engaged and on track with completing their training programs. Therefore, it's important to customize your email notifications to align with your course requirements.
For instance, a trainee enrolling in a course through your LMS should receive an email with their account details and password. Those needing to reset their LMS passwords should also receive an email.
11. White-Labeling & Branding
Because numerous LMSs are white-label platforms, you can remove any vendor associations by adding your logo and brand assets to the platform. Your users may feel more comfortable when your training LMS is visually tailored to reflect your brand, including colors, graphics, and personalized pages and URLs.
Advantages of White-Labeling:
Enables a Learning Environment (customizable branded features)
Hide vendor ties
Provide personalized instructions
As each LMS is distinct, check with your provider about their white-labeling options before beginning customization.
12. Finalize Courses and Platform
At this stage, many of you are eager to click "Publish" and welcome your users. However, given the numerous factors that contribute to successful training, take all the time necessary to thoroughly outline your road map.
Once that's done, you can access templates to assess your training programs here, ensure everything is operating correctly, and refine all your courses and learning materials.
13. Onboard and Enroll Users
The team manager feature sells online staff training courses in bulk directly to businesses’ LMS eLearning platforms.
Put your LMS to the test right now. Get your team managers to send out bulk direct mails to businesses “LMS e-learning platforms” and onboard them into the LMS system. Easily said than done, we understand, that’s why you might need a customer training onboarding guide to keep your process in flow.
A high time to launch your customer portals as well if you’re conducting external training.
Make sure you implement the best practices you can go about onboarding users into the system if you haven’t already.
Challenges for Making a Customer Training Academy
Traditional customer training methods in different learning environments (Hybrid Workforce)
Course promotion and Increased competition
Lack of time or resources to finish objectives
Failing to make a good first impression
Using old training manuals
Burning out your customer training team
Conclusion
Customer education is an ongoing process. You may encounter challenges while setting up your smooth training program, but these obstacles are opportunities to reorganize your process and innovate using tools and strategies to transform your organization's dynamics.
So, to ensure your customer training academy is helping your customers to understand your products & services better – Start with a Free LMS Demo to have a peek at how it shapes your training strategy in a personalized manner.
Comments