LeaseAccelerator slashes training costs by 75%, improves customer experience, and creates new revenue stream with WalkMe

For years, LeaseAccelerator, like many companies, used a traditional LMS to meet its onboarding and training requirements. The system was not only expensive, costing $500K per year to administer and manage, but the user experience left customers and employees wanting more.

Since overhauling its digital adoption strategy — including implementing WalkMe and TeachMe — LeaseAccelerator reports:

• 75% lower customer onboarding costs
• Increased NPS by 53 points
• 99.4% customer retention

LeaseAccelerator is a SaaS platform that provides lease lifecycle automation, certifications, and more to thousands of enterprise, educational institution, startup, and governmental users across the globe. Historically, the company relied on a traditional LMS training model to onboard and update both customers and employees.

With an all-in cost of $500K a year and a 10-person management team, the LMS was expensive and inefficient – and, because the LMS could not respond to users’ challenges in real-time, it provided a subpar user experience.

The company needed a modern digital adoption solution that would be flexible and adaptable to customers’ needs and the evolving regulatory landscape, as well as enable the business to reallocate headcount to more revenue-generating areas of the business.

WalkMe was the perfect fit. By transitioning its LMS content into WalkMe Resources and Smart Walk-Thrus, LeaseAccelerator was able to sunset the LMS. Now, WalkMe ​​provides training to more than 6,000 users in-app, in-context, and in real-time.

LeaseAccelerator uses WalkMe Insights to identify user behavior trends and possible friction points, and quickly resolve any pain points.

The company also uses TeachMe to power the LeaseAccelerator University — which opened up a whole new revenue stream for certifications and a competitive advantage.

WalkMe costs just 25% of LeaseAccelerator’s previous training tech stack and provides a significantly improved user experience: since bringing in WalkMe, LeaseAccelerator has seen its NPS score leap by 53 points and certification users’ satisfaction rates trend just shy of 100%.

LeaseAccelerator is a SaaS platform that helps companies manage assets they don’t own: leased office space, real estate, and equipment. By providing lease lifecycle automation, certifications, compliance, and more, LeaseAccelerator helps its clients save money and confidently manage their properties.

Historically, LeaseAccelerator used a traditional learning management system (LMS) to onboard and train new users, but as the company grew — and leasing regulations continued to evolve — that learning strategy couldn’t scale to meet their needs.

The LMS required LeaseAccelerator to manage separate licenses and logins for every customer, and the company was dedicating 10 employees to creating and maintaining the onboarding content and managing the system and users on an ongoing basis.

“The total cost, including headcount, to use the LMS was $500,000 a year and trending upward,” says Heather Wurtz, LeaseAccelerator’s Senior Director of Customer Experience.

Even with that investment, the results were less than ideal. LeaseAccelerator prides itself on intuitive, consumer-grade user experiences, and the LMS wasn’t living up to their standards.

LeaseAccelerator needed a solution that was more accessible to users and responsive to the needs of the business. One that could help them prevent mistakes and explain processes and calculations at the time of need.

“The learning experience felt disconnected,” Wurtz says. “It was ineffective because it lacked context and provided no avenue for real-time remediation or measurement.”

LeaseAccelerator went in search of a new approach — one that would be more efficient, flexible, user-friendly, and adaptable to ever-changing leasing regulations and real estate industry compliance standards.

LeaseAccelerator uses TeachMe — a WalkMe capability that packages WalkMe experiences into intuitive, formal learning modules to simplify onboarding, drive knowledge retention, and expedite time-to-competency within the flow of work — as the foundation of its LeaseAccelerator University, which LeaseAccelerator has since monetized.

Training happens within the app itself, making it more easily accessible and practically applicable; users get the “theory” via modules and can immediately apply and practice the theory within the platform. This center of excellence lets users certify on the platform while learning critical lease accounting skills.

LeaseAccelerator initially purchased WalkMe to bring its onboarding and training out of the LMS and directly into the LeaseAccelerator application. To begin, the company’s learning team converted existing training assets into WalkMe Resources (quick links to assets) and Smart Walk-Thrus (guided tours). In just 9 months, LeaseAccelerator migrated and transitioned 400+ hours of learning content to WalkMe, implemented TeachMe, and was able to fully sunset the LMS.

“We used WalkMe and TeachMe to move from the traditional LMS training approach to a more customer-centric, in-app digital adoption strategy,” Wurtz says. “And, we use those same tools internally, for employee onboarding. For us, WalkMe gives us the total experience: customer and internal adoption and engagement.”

Now, as soon as a new customer signs up for LeaseAccelerator’s platform, WalkMe content is immediately available. Onboarding on the LeaseAccelerator app is accessible, accurate, and seamless. Most notably, users can learn processes and familiarize themselves with the platform in their preferred learning modality – be it system documentation, animated videos, or step-by-step guidance.

Users can watch process specific animated explainer videos, without leaving the app and find answers to questions as they arise. To personalize the learning experience, LeaseAccelerator branded its WalkMe content “Alex,” a welcoming and knowledgeable concierge.

Wurtz and the Customer Experience team use WalkMe Insights (analytics) to analyze user behavior patterns and quickly identify customer pain points, enabling the team to address issues promptly (and sometimes proactively), without requiring engineering or development resources.

For example, “Special Characters” are allowed in some LeaseAccelerator form fields, but not in others. With Insights, the LeaseAccelerator team noticed that customers were struggling to understand these requirements – and this user confusion led to repetitive support tickets. Wurtz and the Customer Experience team quickly built and deployed validation SmartTips that reinforce the correct behavior.

Now, even if users make a mistake, they’re immediately redirected. As a result, the customers don’t experience unnecessary delays and LeaseAccelerator alleviates the burden on its support team. TeachMe also includes analytics that help the team measure learning effectiveness and continuously optimize their learning materials.

WalkMe has also become part of their Operational Customer Communication strategy, augmenting the traditional email campaign. Instead of relying on emails that might get lost in inboxes or requiring significant development resources to build in-app communication, WalkMe enables LeaseAccelerator to communicate with users quickly and effectively, when and where the customer needs information.

“Investment in digital adoption extends our reach and deepens our relationship with our customers. We use WalkMe to alert customers to new features, product changes, planned downtime, and more – directly in the application,” says Wurtz.

Further, Wurtz plans to use additional WalkMe features to target users with the right content at the right time. “Now that we have behavior-based segmentation, we’ll soon be able to proactively boost sales and retention by encouraging engagement based on known user behavior,” Wurtz says.

LeaseAccelerator now provides in-app training to over 6,000 business users — over 4x the number of users it could serve with its traditional LMS solution – and with WalkMe, they have a scalable, flexible solution that can keep pace with their growth and customer experience demands. And customers have noticed.

“Customers and end users are excited to see the changes in our product, due in large part to our ability to meet them where they are, to identify the pain points via Insights, and respond quickly,” says Wurtz. “The response has been outstanding.”

Since implementing WalkMe, LeaseAccelerator reports a 99.4% customer retention rate, the company’s NPS score has increased by 53 points, and certified customer experience surveys are trending at 100% positive. (They were also recognized as a Finalist in the Innovative Company Category for Customer Experience in WalkMe’s Realizer Awards 2022.)

“Our mission is to enable compliance for our customers,” says Wurtz. “WalkMe has opened the door to direct customer communications. We now have a direct line to communicate change, prevent mistakes, explain calculations, and guide the user step-by-step to success.”

The customer experience and product improvements have also been applauded by LeaseAccelerator’s executive team.

“Our ability to quickly respond to changes has made our existence within the company invaluable,” says Wurtz. “Stakeholders in every vertical call on us to address issues that they aren’t immediately able to solve – and we’re able to meet or exceed their expectations in short order and at no additional cost.” The team has tapped into WalkMe for training on new releases, proactive nudging for underused features, as well as marketing and operational communications.

“Our digital adoption strategy — WalkMe and TeachMe — has become a revenue stream,” she says. “It costs only 25% of our previous customer onboarding solution, requires less than half the resources to manage, and we’ve been able to create a competitive advantage our sales team is excited to talk about.”