Imagine a scenario where a potential customer walks into your store looking to buy a new smartphone. They approach a sales associate for assistance. While showing them the product, the associate doesn’t just list all the features but explains them thoroughly. Not only this, but they may also further enhance the customer’s experience by suggesting accessories that complement the smartphone, such as headphones, screen protector, etc.
They can do this only if they have the optimal product knowledge to help the customer make an informed decision leading to a purchase that satisfies their requirements.
This article explains in detail what product knowledge is, its types, and how it benefits organizations in different scenarios. Continue reading!
Let’s start with product knowledge definition:
In layman’s terms, product knowledge is developing an understanding of a company’s products or services. This included knowing their features, unique selling points (USPs), and benefits.
When your employees have strong product knowledge, they are better positioned to communicate the product's value to potential customers, effectively address any concerns, and close the deal.
Types Of Product Knowledge
Contrary to what’s commonly believed, product knowledge doesn’t only focus on the product – although it’s a major part. It’s an umbrella term covering various other aspects categorized below:
- Target Audience: As the name suggests, it entails knowing your target audience and their expectations. Knowing this will help you tailor the experience to their requirements.
- Your Brand: It includes knowing about your competitors, market position, and other key details about your organization.
- The Customer Journey: This is about knowing and understanding the entire process a customer goes through when buying your product and/or service. Knowing the customer’s journey will give them a better idea of their role in the customer’s lifecycle.
- Features: Your team must be familiar with all the product's features, even the technical details. This will allow them to guide customers and influence their purchase decisions.
- Pricing Structure: If your product has different pricing tiers or models, it’s of the utmost importance that your team, particularly sales staff, understands them clearly. They must also be able to answer any queries related to pricing.
- Service And Warranty: This applies to electronics. Your team must be aware of all the information about the product’s warranty and service to better serve your customers. Also, providing them with information about its repair can influence their decision.
Acquiring high levels of product knowledge can benefit companies in more than one way, including:
More Sales
Let’s start with the obvious. As explained in the example above, when the sales team is equipped with optimal product knowledge, they are in a better position to make more sales. They could use this knowledge to effectively explain the product's utility to the potential customer, resulting in an increased chance of generating sales.
Effective Customer Support Services
The better your customer support team can satisfy the customers’ questions, the higher the chances of sales. So, besides your sales team, it’s the customer support team that benefits the most from product knowledge. It provides them with a thorough knowledge of the product, its technical functionality, and how it can benefit users so that they can answer all customer queries effectively. The end result? increased sales and customer retention.
Increased Product Adoption And Retention
Extensive product knowledge equips your employees with a vital and invaluable skill: the ability to train your customers effectively. By using this skill, they can educate customers to use the product optimally, resulting in product adoption.
Furthermore, it enables your team to support the customer throughout their journey with your company, resulting in a higher retention rate. This perfectly demonstrates the Importance of product knowledge.
Boosts Confidence
An underappreciated yet very substantial benefit of product knowledge is that it helps boost the confidence of both employees and customers. For example, when employees know more about the product, they can satisfy customers’ concerns and convince them to purchase.
This makes them more confident in their skills. For customers, it gives them enhanced peace of mind that your business understands their requirements.
Merely knowing about the product isn’t going to suffice. Your team must know about the product's intricacies to better train your customers. The following handy tips can help you in this regard:
Offer Practical Experience
Don’t merely rely on theory; instead, focus more on offering practical experience. This will provide them with exposure to the product, making them more resourceful when it comes to selling it. When they share their own experience with the product, it adds the element of personalization to their selling abilities.
Encourage Diverse Information Sources
Use different sources to help your employees get to know the product. This could include using customer feedback, reading product literature, and online forums. Visiting product manufacturers is an unconventional yet effective way to better understand the product and get well-rounded knowledge.
Implement Role-Playing Technique
Even if you know everything about a product, you may not be able to convey it to the customer if you do not have enough practice. Interactive learning sessions, such as role-playing techniques, can help in this regard. For example, you can have two employees take the roles of a salesperson and customer to practice their product knowledge.
Use Microlearning
A microlearning approach proves beneficial when employees prefer processing information in smaller chunks. This technique enables them to understand one module per product, making it convenient to process and retain what they have learned. For example, short videos can help your team gain product knowledge.
Provide Consistent Training
Every employee must undergo the same type of training. This helps maintain consistency across the team. You can use a learning management system (LMS) to ensure this. These solutions are designed to streamline the employee training and upskilling process, helping them continue learning efficiently and effectively.
Offer Incentives
Another effective way to improve product knowledge is to implement an incentive program. This program includes awarding employees when they excel in training exercises or knowledge tests. You can also offer perks when they complete additional training sessions or reach certain point levels. This approach keeps them motivated and enthusiastic about their roles and product sharing.
Regularly Assess Employee Knowledge
Remember that training employees vis-à-vis product knowledge is an ongoing process. However, to enhance their product knowledge, it is important to evaluate it regularly. This can help you analyze employees’ strengths and formulate new strategies to further optimize product knowledge. Ensure the use of measurable criteria to make these assessments as objective as possible.
What Is A Product Knowledge Training Program?
This type of employee training focuses on upskilling the team in terms of product knowledge. It helps them better understand the product’s benefits, customer insights, latest features, and policies.
Product knowledge training benefits different departments in an organization in different ways. For example, it helps the sales team create a perfect pitch to convince the buyer and evoke a favorable reaction from them. Similarly, it helps the customer support team get answers and possible solutions to commonly asked questions and concerns.
While the process of creating a product knowledge training program depends on various factors, certain elements must be part of it. These include:
- Rewards and bonuses
- Real-life examples
- Assessments
- Visual aids
- Product usage
The following examples demonstrate how do you show product knowledge in different scenarios:
Tech Support
A user is experiencing frequent crashes due to a software glitch. Frustrated, they reach out to tech support and explain their issue. After obtaining all the necessary details, the agent guides them through troubleshooting steps using their extensive product knowledge.
These steps may include clearing the cache, updating the software, or adjusting different settings. Once the issue is resolved, the agent explains what caused the problem and the significance of each step performed. This way not only is the problem fixed, but the user’s confidence in the product and customer support is restored.
Hospitality
A guest with dietary restrictions at a high-end restaurant is curious about a particular dish. They talk to the server, who attentively describes the product, detailing each ingredient. Going the extra mile, they also mention cooking techniques that enhance flavor. And if the product contains ingredients the guest is allergic to, they suggest other alternatives catering to their taste.
This shows that the server has a deep understanding of the menu and knows how to make guests feel valued and welcomed at the restaurant.
Now that you understand the importance of product knowledge in sales, customer support, and other departments, it’s time to put this knowledge to good use. While there are many ways to do this, selecting the right LMS is the key to making the entire process simple and effective. You can do this by contacting us at (661) 384-7070 and letting our experts help you make an informed decision.