Speakers and Attendees Discuss Future of Customer Training – and Its Ability to Drive Revenue for Thousands of SaaS Companies Worldwide

Skilljar, the leading Customer Training Platform for enterprises, recently wrapped up its inaugural customer conference, Skilljar Connect 2018. Over 150 executives from more than 40 companies came together to share best practices and deep insights about customer and partner training. The companies represented at Connect 2018 included Autodesk, Avalara, Cisco, MapR, Zuora, Zendesk, and more.

“Having a robust customer training program is essential for today’s SaaS companies, as their success is directly tied to how much – and how well – their software is used”

“Having a robust customer training program is essential for today’s SaaS companies, as their success is directly tied to how much – and how well – their software is used,” said Sandi Lin, CEO, Skilljar. “Our goal with Connect is to provide a forum for leading customer education experts to come together and share their experiences related to how training is accelerating product adoption, deepening customer engagement, and driving revenue.”

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Connect attendees participated in panels and roundtable discussions that delved into structuring customer education programs for success, strategies for creating effective content for voluntary learners and how companies can create data-driven education programs. Connect also provided a forum for educators to benchmark aspects of their education programs. Polls conducted at Skilljar Connect show only 16 percent of companies rely solely on instructor-led training (ILT), while 43 percent currently use a mix of eLearning and ILT. Further, and most importantly, only 32 percent of attendees are actively monetizing most or all of their customer training initiatives.

“Skilljar Connect provided a much-needed opportunity for customer education and training professionals to come together to discuss the most pressing challenges facing the industry and the proven, tactical strategies for overcoming them,” said Maria Manning-Chapman, VP Education Services at TSIA and panel moderator at Connect. “From best practices for developing content, to providing certifications, to how to demonstrate ROI, Connect wholly addressed the issues that matter most to customer education teams.”

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In addition to hosting multiple interactive sessions and panels at Connect, Skilljar also highlighted several product enhancements made in the last few quarters, including integrations with Zoom Video Communications, which allows customers to facilitate and track virtual instructor-led training events and access live events within Skilljar, and Zendesk, which enables mutual customers to seamlessly access Skilljar training activity next to support tickets on their Zendesk dashboard. Skilljar also announced the official launch of Skilljar Academy, designed to streamline and improve the onboarding and implementation experience for customers. Other recent product enhancements include new quiz question types and full support for international languages.

Skilljar also honored eight customers with the first annual Skilljar Customer Awards. The Impact in Customer Education Award, which honors training programs demonstrating innovation, thought leadership and industry-wide contributions, was awarded to teams from The Trade Desk and Zenefits. The Impact Award, which recognizes programs that set and achieved ambitious corporate business goals, was awarded to teams from Quick Base, MapR and Nintex. The Success in Practice Award, which recognizes programs that have achieved a remarkable milestone using Skilljar, was awarded to teams from Zendesk, U-Haul and Procore.

In 2018, Skilljar secured a $16.4 million Series A financing round led by Mayfield and Shasta Ventures, doubled headcount and has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology Award for Best LMS for External Training, the Best Customer LMS from the Talented Learning LMS awards, the 2018 Seattle Business Magazine Tech Impact Award and placement on Training Industry’s Learning Portal Companies Watch List.