Customer Education - Part 8: Beyond Vanity Metrics
A Defensible Guide to Measuring the ROI of Customer Education
Are you measuring what your C-suite really cares about? While metrics like course completions and assessment scores are foundational for managing your programme, and even critical in contexts like compliance or certification, they don't tell a story of business impact. To secure budget and prove your team's value, you must connect your work to the financial health of the company.
This article provides a realistic guide to navigating the complexities of measurement, avoiding common logical fallacies, and building a defensible case for the ROI of your work.
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Step 1: Choose Your Metrics and Confront the Attribution Dilemma
A credible measurement strategy requires two types of metrics, but it must also honestly address the challenge of proving that your programme is the cause of the results.
Leading Indicators (Programme Health): These are essential for managing your programme but are not business metrics. They include content engagement, assessment scores, and completion rates. Track them, use them, but do not lead with them in an executive summary.
Lagging Indicators (Business Impact): These are the core business metrics your programme influences. Examples include:
Reduced customer churn or increased retention.
Faster time-to-first-value for new users.
Increased adoption and depth of use of key product features.
A measurable reduction in support ticket volume or customer effort score (CES).
Increased expansion revenue (upsells/cross-sells).
The Attribution Dilemma: Moving Beyond "After, Therefore Because Of"
The biggest mistake in measurement is assuming that because a positive outcome happened after a customer took a course, it happened because of it. This is a logical fallacy, and your CFO will see right through it. You must build a case for your influence.
The Academic Ideal (Control Groups): The purest way to prove causation is to compare a group of users who received training against a similar group who did not. However, for most businesses, this is a logistical, ethical, and technical nightmare. It is often not a realistic starting point.
The Pragmatic Reality (Building a Correlational Case): Instead of claiming direct causation, your goal is to show a strong, consistent correlation over time. Track your lagging indicators and segment them by education engagement. If you can demonstrate that trained users consistently outperform untrained users on key metrics quarter after quarter, you build a powerful, defensible argument for your programme's influence.
Step 2: Implement Your Measurement Practice: The High-Tech vs. The Scrappy Path
There is no single way to gather data. Choose the path that matches your team's resources.
The High-Tech Path (Integrated Systems): The ideal is a learning platform seamlessly integrated with your CRM and support desk. This allows for automated, real-time dashboards that correlate learning activity with business outcomes. Be aware that this path requires significant investment in developer resources, clean data hygiene, and ongoing maintenance.
The Scrappy Path (Manual Correlation): For teams without developer resources, the answer is a spreadsheet. On a regular basis (e.g., monthly), manually export data from your separate systems (LMS user reports, CRM data, support ticket logs) into a central spreadsheet like Google Sheets or Excel. While manual, this approach allows you to find the same powerful correlations without the upfront technical investment.
Step 3: A Defensible Framework for Calculating ROI
This framework is designed to withstand scrutiny by acknowledging complexity and using conservative estimates.
Assign a Credible Financial Value (and Its Nuances)
Partner with other departments to agree on financial values, but be prepared to discuss the nuances.
For Reduced Support Tickets: Don't just multiply tickets deflected by an average cost. Work with Support to analyse the types of tickets being reduced. Deflecting simple, low-cost tickets is a different value proposition than deflecting complex, time-consuming ones. Agree on a value that reflects this reality.
For Increased Retention (The Influence Factor): You cannot claim 100% of the revenue from a retained customer. Instead, introduce an "Education Influence Factor." Work with stakeholders to agree on a conservative percentage that represents education's role in the retention decision (e.g., "We believe education influences 10-15% of the retention decision for this segment"). Your formula becomes:
(Number of Customers Retained) x (Average Revenue per Customer) x (Education Influence Factor %) = Influenced Revenue.
Calculate Your Total Investment
Be transparent about all costs.
Direct Costs: Technology licences, content creation costs, etc.
Team Costs: Salaries and time of the education team.
Operational Overhead (The Cost of Knowing): The time your team spends on data analysis, dashboard maintenance, reporting, and cross-departmental meetings to manage this measurement programme.
Calculate and Present a Defensible ROI
Using your more conservative "Influenced Revenue" and your comprehensive "Total Investment," you can now calculate ROI: ROI % = [(Influenced Revenue - Total Investment) / Total Investment] x 100.
Present this as a trend over time, telling a story of compounding value that your stakeholders can trust.
Your Challenge:
Identify one key business metric your programme influences. How could you use the "Scrappy Path" (manual data exports) to build a correlational case for your impact? What conservative "Education Influence Factor" would you propose to your stakeholders for retention, and how would you justify it?
What’s your take on today’s topic? Did I miss something, did something resonate?
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