Businesses spend a significant amount of time creating onboarding materials, training courses, product tutorials, webinars, knowledge bases, help articles, and other learning resources for their customers. But how often do we actually stop and ask customers whether those resources are helping them? Creating learning content based on what we think customers need can be very different from creating content based on what customers are actually telling us they need.

Customer feedback can give businesses a much clearer picture of where learning content is working, where it is falling short, and what customers need next. The key is asking questions that produce information you can actually use. A generic question such as "Did you like the training?" may give you a satisfaction score, but it doesn't necessarily tell you whether the content helped the customer accomplish anything. Effective customer learning feedback should help connect the learning experience to relevance, confidence, application, and ultimately customer success. (Qualtrics)

That is why I recommend focusing on five questions that go beyond simply asking whether someone enjoyed a course or found it useful. These questions can help businesses understand what customers need from their learning content and where there may be opportunities to improve the overall customer education experience.

1. Was the learning content relevant to what you were trying to accomplish?

This is one of the most important questions you can ask because customers don't necessarily care how much information your organization can provide. They care about whether the information helps them accomplish something. A customer may complete an entire onboarding course and still walk away feeling like the content didn't address the reason they needed the training in the first place.

Asking customers whether the content was relevant to their goals can help identify whether your learning strategy is actually aligned with their needs. You can take this a step further by asking, "Which part of the content was most relevant to what you were trying to accomplish?" That additional question can help you identify which topics, examples, or resources are providing the most value.

Relevance should be one of the first things businesses evaluate when reviewing customer education content. If customers don't see a connection between the content and what they're trying to accomplish, even a beautifully designed learning experience may not have the impact you're looking for.

2. What information were you expecting to find but couldn't?

This is one of my favorite questions because it can uncover something your analytics may never tell you. You might know that customers are visiting your knowledge base, watching your videos, or completing your onboarding courses, but that doesn't necessarily tell you what they were actually looking for. Customers can tell you.

Maybe they needed a walkthrough of a specific feature. Maybe they wanted an example of how another company uses the product. Maybe they needed help troubleshooting a particular process. Maybe they couldn't find information about something that seemed obvious internally but wasn't obvious to the customer.

This question can uncover content gaps, which are incredibly valuable when you're deciding what to create next. Instead of your learning or enablement team guessing what customers want, you're getting direct information from the people you're trying to support.

3. After completing the content, how confident are you that you can apply what you learned?

There is a big difference between consuming information and being able to use it. Someone can watch a 10-minute product tutorial, complete an eLearning course, or read an article and still not feel confident applying what they learned. That's why confidence and application are worth measuring separately from satisfaction. You can ask customers to rate their confidence before and after training, or simply ask them whether they feel prepared to complete the task independently.

This can be particularly valuable for customer onboarding. If customers are completing your onboarding program but still don't feel confident using your product, that's a signal that something needs to change. The problem could be the content itself, the amount of practice provided, the complexity of the product, or even the timing of the learning experience. The answer doesn't automatically mean you need more training. It means you need to investigate what is preventing customers from successfully applying what they've learned.

4. What type of learning content would make it easier for you to learn or use our product?

Not every customer wants to learn in the same way. Some people want a short video they can watch in a few minutes. Others prefer written documentation they can search when they need an answer. Some customers may want interactive walkthroughs, live webinars, instructor-led training, certifications, or hands-on practice.

Instead of assuming you know which format customers prefer, ask them.

More importantly, connect the format to the situation. Rather than simply asking, "Do you prefer videos or articles?" you could ask, "When you're trying to learn how to complete a new task, what type of resource is most helpful to you?" That gives you more meaningful information because it focuses on how customers actually use learning content.

The answer can influence how you build your customer education ecosystem. You may discover that customers don't need more long-form courses. They may need shorter, searchable resources that they can access while working in the product. Or you may discover that customers want more opportunities to practice rather than simply consume information.

5. What is one thing we could change about our learning content to make it more useful?

Sometimes the simplest question can produce the most valuable answer.

Give customers an opportunity to tell you what they would change. Don't limit the response to a rating scale. Give them a place to explain what isn't working, what is missing, or what would make the experience better.

You may discover that a course is too long, the terminology is confusing, the examples don't reflect real-world situations, the navigation is difficult, or the customer can't find the information again after completing the training. You may also discover that customers love a particular resource and want more content like it.

This type of open-ended feedback is especially valuable because customers will often identify problems your internal team doesn't see. Combining quantitative questions with qualitative feedback gives businesses both measurable trends and the context behind those trends. (isEazy)

Don't Just Collect the Answers—Use Them

The most important part of asking these questions isn't actually the survey. It's what happens afterward.If customers repeatedly tell you they can't find information about a particular feature, that's a content opportunity. If they consistently say they understand the concept but aren't confident applying it, you may need more practice or performance support. If customers tell you they don't have time to complete a 45-minute course, perhaps the solution is to rethink the learning experience rather than simply encouraging them to complete it.

This is where customer education, instructional design, and enablement come together. Customer feedback gives you the information. Instructional design helps turn that information into an effective learning experience. Enablement connects that experience to the customer's ability to successfully use your product or service.

The goal shouldn't be to create more content simply because customers are asking for more content. The goal should be to create the right content, in the right format, at the right point in the customer journey.

Your Customers Are Telling You What They Need

Businesses don't have to guess what their customers want from learning content. Your customers are already giving you clues through support tickets, product usage, onboarding behavior, course completion, search activity, customer conversations, and survey responses. The opportunity is to start asking better questions and then actually use those answers to improve the experience.

For me, that's the real value of customer feedback. It's not about collecting another set of survey results that gets placed into a spreadsheet and forgotten. It's about taking what customers are telling you and using that information to make smarter decisions about customer education, training content, onboarding, enablement, and the overall customer experience.

The best learning content isn't necessarily the content with the most information, the most impressive graphics, or the longest course. It's the content that helps the customer accomplish what they came to accomplish.

And sometimes, the fastest way to figure out whether you're doing that is simply to ask them.