Every SaaS company has its own strategies for minimizing customer churn. According to research from Bain & Company, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95%, so even a little effort can go a long way.
Customer retention and success strategies, while unique to every software company, often include a variety of proactive and reactive tactics.
Reactive strategies might include focusing your engagement efforts on customers deemed “at-risk,” or offering increased incentives to your most profitable accounts. And nearly all successful software companies make it a standard practice to ask customers for feedback often.
On the proactive side, many software companies employ strategies to simplify new customer onboarding and to continually educate existing customers when new features or capabilities roll out. But scaling those efforts, particularly with a growing customer base, can be challenging.
Scaling Customer Onboarding and Training With Video
One-on-one software training with a customer success associate almost always requires a significant investment in people resources. With only so many hours in a day, live customer onboarding means either paying to staff up in line with sales growth or forcing new customers to wait longer and longer to receive training. Neither option scales well.
Whether you’re a small start-up or large global software company, you need a way to train new and existing customers without requiring your associates to schedule weeks of training calls with clients.
For many companies, creating a series of software training videos and video tutorials has become the most efficient and effective means to scale customer onboarding and training in a way that is engaging and still feels personal.
But how do you create professional-looking software training videos that connect with customers — the kind that empower them to learn how to use everything from the most basic to the most advanced features of your software — without video production becoming the same drain on your budget that one-to-one training was?
It’s not a small concern. Some methods for recording training videos might require several point solutions to capture a video that’s optimized for learning and audience engagement. These can include the following:
- Screen recording software
- Cursor focus app
- Audio recording app
- Video editing software
Fortunately, with just a laptop with a built-in webcam and microphone along with the right training video software, producing these kinds of videos can actually be much easier.
Record Engaging Software Training Videos In 5 Easy Steps
1. Prepare Your Script and Training Presentation
Presenting a how-to training session in a video is no different from running one in person or virtually in a video conference. You’ll want to outline your talking points and prepare the supporting media you want to show, such as a screen share of you demonstrating the software and PowerPoint slides that communicate big ideas. Once you have your presentation planned, you can even record yourself practicing to ensure your training comes across clearly.
2. Choose The Media You Want To Record
Panopto’s training video software enables you to record a detailed multi-media presentation in high definition with minimal AV equipment or other stand-alone recording tools. With just a laptop that has a built-in microphone and webcam, you can capture your training presentation as well as your slides and screencast a live walk-through of your software. When you open Panopto’s video recorder, it will automatically detect any connected audio or video devices (such as an external USB microphone or webcam), requiring just a few clicks from you before you start recording.
Watch an example training video recorded by one of Panopto’s engineers:
3. Press Record and Present Your Training
Once you’ve selected the media for your software training video, you’re ready to press “Record” and start presenting. Pause recording as needed and press stop when you’re done presenting. Another useful tip: if you make a mistake, keep recording, take a deep breath to pause and begin again — you can edit out the sections of the video you don’t want after you’ve finished recording.
Panopto’s training software is optimized for learning, engaging your audience in side-by-side multiple screen videos that make your customers feel like they are right there in the same room as your trainers. You can even turn on mouse-tracking to make on on-screen demonstration easier to follow. And everything is recorded in crystal-clear high definition.
4. Edit Your Training Video
Panopto syncs all the media feeds you recorded in the cloud and makes quick work of basic editing tasks. Trim unwanted sections from your training video, splice in new video to update an older training, and even switch between video inputs if you recorded video with multiple cameras. You can also embed quizzes in your training videos in the editor. Video editing in Panopto is non-destructive, which means you can always revert back to the original recording if you don’t like something. Learn more about what you can do with Panopto’s online video editor.
5. Upload and Share Your Videos
Unlike most video recording software, Panopto automatically converts and uploads your videos to a secure video library where they can be easily accessed and played by your customers, from anywhere and on any device. You control who can see what — set viewing permissions for your entire library, specific folders, and even individual videos, so everyone can access public videos and private videos stay private. We call this a video content management system (or video CMS) and it’s like your own internal YouTube.
What’s more, Panopto enables you to create video playlists, so building an on-demand customer onboarding course with multiple videos is easy. And, with an advanced video search engine, customers can search your entire training video library for something specific they want to learn. Panopto indexes every word spoken and shown on the screen, so your customers can just to exact moment in the video that’s important to them within seconds.
Related Reading: How a Video CMS Solves the Challenges of Training with Video
Try Recording Your Next Software Training Video With Panopto
Panopto makes it easy for anyone in your organization to record, edit, and share software training videos, freeing up your valuable people resources to spend more time working on other solutions. Contact our team to request a free 30-day trial of Panopto’s video training platform.
Using Panopto’s Video Platform In Software Development
Video can support software companies in other ways beyond customer training. Watch our latest webinar below to learn how Panopto’s video platform can help improve productivity, knowledge sharing, and more to give your software company a competitive edge.
The post How To Make Professional Software Training Videos appeared first on Panopto Video Platform.