When new users sign up for a SaaS product, they want to get started quickly — without digging through long help articles or waiting for support replies. That’s where instructional videos come in. They offer a fast, clear way to walk customers through features, setup steps, and common tasks.
For SaaS teams focused on customer education, video is one of the most effective ways to guide users. It breaks down complex processes through visual learning, improves product adoption, and helps reduce support tickets — all while lowering customer support costs and scaling onboarding more efficiently.
In this guide, we’ll explore how to use instructional videos effectively: where they fit in the user journey, what types of videos work best, which tools can help you create them, and the key practices that make them successful.
What Are Instructional Videos in Customer Education?
Instructional videos are focused, educational clips designed to help users understand how to use a product — step by step. In the context of customer education, they often take the form of customer service videos, product demo, or user onboarding walkthroughs - a critical part of building an effective onboarding strategy.
Here are some tips for creating a strong customer onboarding process.
The goal is simple: to teach users how to get value from your product without needing constant support. These videos differ from marketing or demo content. While marketing videos aim to attract and convert, and demo videos are usually high-level overviews, instructional videos are all about hands-on learning. They walk users through specific actions or features, often with screen recordings, voiceovers, and callouts that guide the experience.
For SaaS products, instructional videos play a big role in self-service education. They allow users to find answers on their own, speed up onboarding, and become confident with the product faster. This not only boosts user adoption but also reduces the burden on support teams by proactively addressing common questions — a key step in scaling customer success through education.
When and Where to Use Instructional Videos in the Customer Journey
To make the most of video-based education, it's crucial to integrate videos at the right stages of the customer journey. From the initial setup to exploring advanced features, videos can guide users throughout their experience — driving user adoption and minimizing the need for live support.
1. During Onboarding
Customer onboarding videos are typically the first introduction new users have to your product after signing up. These videos should focus on the key steps users need to take right away — like setting up their accounts, navigating the user interface, and completing the essential initial tasks. The goal is to provide a seamless, hands-on guide that helps users feel confident and comfortable, ensuring they can quickly start using the product without confusion or frustration. A well-crafted “Getting Started” tutorial sets the tone for a smooth, successful experience right from the beginning.
Video Format: Step-by-Step Guides (How-To Videos)
2. For Product Education
After users have grasped the basics, they’re often ready to dive into more advanced functionality. This is where feature-specific walkthroughs come in. These short, focused videos highlight individual features, integrations, or specific use cases — helping users understand how to apply them in real-world scenarios. By breaking down complex capabilities into easy-to-follow steps, you reduce the learning curve and empower users to get more value from your product over time.
Video Format: Product Tutorial Videos, Feature Highlights
3. For Ongoing Training
As customers grow more confident with your product, their needs become more advanced. This is the time to introduce how-to videos that cover complex workflows, newly released features, or tasks tailored to specific roles or use cases. These videos serve as ongoing training resources that help users deepen their knowledge, stay up to date, and continue discovering new ways to get value. The result is stronger engagement, greater product mastery, and long-term customer retention.
Video Format: Interactive Video Tutorials, Software Training Videos
4. In Support Videos
When customers encounter issues, customer service videos can offer faster, clearer solutions than lengthy text replies. These short, targeted clips visually guide users through troubleshooting steps — using screen recordings, annotations, and voiceovers to show exactly what to do. By proactively addressing common problems, these videos reduce repetitive support tickets, improve the overall support experience, and help cut down on support costs.
Video Format: Troubleshooting Clips, Knowledge Base Embedded Videos
How to Measure the Effectiveness of Instructional Videos in Customer Education
Creating videos is just one part of the equation — the real challenge lies in ensuring they’re actually helping your users and driving value. After all, the goal is not only to produce content but to make sure it’s improving your customers’ understanding, reducing their need for support, and keeping them engaged with your product long-term. So, how do you measure whether your videos are achieving all of that?
In this section, we'll explore practical ways to track the success of your instructional videos, from user engagement to customer satisfaction, so you can ensure your content is truly making an impact.
And if you’re still exploring what types of customer education content to create — and how to pick the right format — check out our guide on Different Types of Customer Educational Content for a breakdown of formats, use cases, and best practice
1. Track User Engagement Metrics
- Watch Time & Completion Rates: Monitor how much of each video users watch and the percentage who complete the video. A high completion rate signals that the video is valuable and engaging.
- Engagement in Video-Based Actions: Measure actions like clicking on links, downloading resources, or navigating to the next video or page. These actions show deeper engagement with the content.
2. Analyze Customer Success Impact
- Time to Value: Measure how quickly users can reach key milestones (e.g., first use, first successful task, etc.) after viewing onboarding or training videos. Faster achievement of milestones indicates better onboarding and quicker product adoption.
- Adoption Rate & Feature Use: Track how frequently users engage with the product's features after watching relevant instructional videos. Higher usage of core features suggests that the videos are effective in educating users on essential functionalities.
3. Gather Customer Feedback
- Surveys & Polls: Use surveys at the end of videos to collect feedback about their usefulness, clarity, and how well they addressed user needs. Direct feedback is crucial for improving video content.
- NPS (Net Promoter Score) & CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) Scores: Use NPS or CSAT scores after educational videos to assess customer sentiment and measure how videos influence overall customer satisfaction.
4. Support Ticket Reduction
- Monitor Ticket Volume: One of the key indicators of the success of your videos is a noticeable reduction in support tickets. By tracking the number of support tickets submitted before and after introducing your videos, you can assess how effective they are in addressing common user questions. A clear drop in tickets related to topics covered in your videos signifies a successful customer support reduction strategy.
- Category of Issues: Beyond ticket volume, it's also important to identify the specific issues your videos have helped resolve. By categorizing support requests, you can pinpoint recurring problems that remain unresolved and fine-tune your content to fill in those gaps. This not only ensures that your videos continue to drive customer education but also that they contribute to ongoing reductions in customer support needs.
5. Measure Retention & Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- Customer Retention Rates: Compare customer retention and churn rates for users who engage with educational videos vs. those who don’t. Higher retention rates for video-engaged users show the importance of continuous education.
- CLV (Customer Lifetime Value): Measure how your help videos contribute to the long-term value customers derive from your product, ensuring they remain engaged and continue using it over time.
6. Use Video Analytics Tools
To truly measure the impact of your instructional videos, you need to track their performance. This includes monitoring viewership, engagement, and user behavior to identify which videos are resonating with your audience. Video platforms, like WowTo, allow you to analyze data in-depth, offering actionable insights into how well your videos are achieving customer education goals. With WowTo, you can monitor video metrics helping you identify which videos are most effective and where improvements can be made for continuous optimization.
Power Your Customer Education with WowTo Videos
Incorporating WowTo into your customer education strategy means you’re not just providing valuable learning content but also streamlining your processes. WowTo helps you track video performance, optimize content, and lighten the load on your support team — making it the ultimate tool to elevate your customer success content and drive customer enablement.
Start leveraging WowTo today to create impactful videos that empower your customers and scale your support effortlessly.
