Building a Rockstar CUSTOMER TRAINING DEPARTMENT

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1 Building a Rockstar CUSTOMER TRAINING DEPARTMENT

2 Overview You ve just been given the responsibility of building a customer training department. Now what? This guide outlines the foundational building blocks of a Rockstar Customer Training Department. It doesn t matter if you re new to training or a seasoned veteran with a list of academic credentials. This guide applies to everyone tasked with customer training, regardless of company size. Getting Started This document will help you get started. It will get you thinking about where to start, and what you can do to keep moving forward. In certain situations some of this information may not apply to you, but that s okay. If at the end of this document you are left with more questions than answers, then you are surely on the path to not just an average training department, but a rockstar customer training department. 2

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4 01 Aligining Business Objectives Customer training is critical to the success of your customers and scaling the growth of the business. You may find that you are under-funded and under-resourced for the work ahead of you welcome to the training world! Fortunately for you, customer training is seen by most business leaders as a necessary part of doing business and so you will have fewer uphill battles than your counterparts focused on internal training initiatives. This early stage is critical to predicting success or failure and requires the alignment of objectives between you and the business. Aligning with leaders across your organization is critical. This can make or break your efforts, and is often easier said than done. Getting on the calendar of a busy executive can be challenging and if you need to meet with 5-10 busy business leaders it may be a while before you can even begin to get everyone on the same page. You may be in this role because you have previous training experience, and it will be tempting to jump right into the design and development of content, or seeking out a learning management system. There are a few reasons why your business has decided to put some focus on customer training. Your business will want you to focus on one, or more, of these objectives: Reduce customer attrition and strengthen customer loyalty Professional services and customer support team is constantly conducting informal trainings and hence not being the most efficient Improving overall customer experience Create a new revenue stream for the business Increase overall revenues and product usability Reduce cost of customer support Professional appearance: Improve brand awareness 4

5 According to Emmet and Mark Murphy, authors of Leading on the Edge of Chaos, depending on the industry, reducing your customer defection rate by 5% can increase your profibility by 25% to 125%. It is 6-7 times more costly to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing customer White House Office of Consumer Affairs 33 % How much more repeat customers spend than new ones 800% Companies that extend learning to customers achieve a whopping year-over-year increase in revenue per FTE than those that don t.* A 10% increase in customer retention levels results in 30% increase in the value of the company Bain & Co. *Customers and Learning: Extending the Boundaries. Aberdeen Group, 2013 Building A The Rockstar Customer Training Department 5

6 Key Stakeholders Executive Team Which executives you involve depends on the size of your organization. If you are working in a Fortune 500 company you may not need to go ALL the way up to the CEO, but there should be a high-ranking executive who is informed of your efforts. Customer Training Review Committee Forming a review committee allows for executives to delegate responsibility to someone on their team who can be available to support your needs. This person will need to communicate your plans and decisions back to the executive level. With consistent management of the process and documentation of committee outcomes, you can make it easy for everyone to stay properly informed of your progress. Finance If you are going to sell your courses you will need to include someone from Accounting or Finance on your committee. They will help you get accounts set up, and help you better understand how to deal with the flow of money via whatever service they recommend. They will also be beneficial in helping you understand pricing in relation to the company s other products. Information Technology (IT) This partnership will be the most critical in all phases of your project. No matter what development or delivery strategy you define, you will need the IT department to support your technology. IT will be keenly interested in security concerns, as well as technical hardware and software specifications from the vendors you choose to work with. Using a cloud-based learning management system often relieves a lot of the concern from the IT department, but they will want to know a few things about the systems running the LMS you choose. 6

7 Marketing You are already planning to ensure that the look and feel of your training content maintains the company branding. But you also want to make sure that you leverage existing marketing collateral including logos, imagery, copy, etc. If you haven t already developed a close relationship with your marketing team, then now is your opportunity to do so. It s an important relationship to foster as you will also need to market your courses. Even if you don t plan to sell them, you will need to effectively market their existence in order to provide business value and meet your objectives. Product Managers If your company has more than one product you will want representation from each product line involved in the training plan phase. The most important person to align with will be the Product Manager. In some businesses there are product marketing specialists embedded within the product teams and they will be quite helpful. Keep in mind that the product marketing function will be helpful to you but may have different goals and objectives than the company s marketing team. Ideally, the product manager will take an interest personally, especially if you intend to sell your courses. Customer Service Having someone who deals with customers directly on a regular basis is extremely important; getting someone from the customer support team who is senior enough to have some historical perspective is a bonus. The customer service team is the closest you can get to the customer without actually engaging the customer directly. A large portion of your customer-related questions can be answered more efficiently by addressing the customer service team. This is the team that will also be on the front lines answering questions about your training products. Not only is it important for them to share with you, but it s even more critical that you spend time training them on your training products and systems. 7

8 Key Questions to be answered in this phase What is the single main objective for an organization to launch a customer training initiative? How will your success be measured? What is the timeline in which the training department has to be started? Who do you need in your team to be successful - this includes the advisory team and the immediate training department? Are there any benchmarks along the way that need to be signed off on? Building A Rockstar The Rockstar Customer Customer Training Training Department Department 8

9 02 Curriculum Design Your customers will want to know which courses they should take and what is the recommended order in which to take them, so you will need to define this learning path. Much of your training content may already exist. It may be in the form of technical specifications or other design documentation generated during product development. This is the best place to start as it will give you the foundation for your training based on the product s intended purpose. However, ultimately you will need to understand exactly HOW a product is being used in order to create the most useful and effective training for customers. And for that feedback and input you must talk with and even observe your customers putting the product into action. Sample Generic Curriculum Structure: Overview Topics Product Specific Details Product Application to the Business (the customer s business) Create Functional Training Courses based on the product design. This is often first because it s the easiest to create since most of the documentation is already created in the form of spec docs, internal presentations, etc. Since this learning content is mostly fact-based, the development process is also easier as there are scores of templates for quickly creating fact based e-learning. Create Operational Training Courses based on the application of the product. This requires more analysis of the real world and support from your customers. Cases studies might make for a good starting point, but those on your team who work directly with your customers will be an invaluable resource for this information. A product roadmap and information about planned feature upgrades should influence your training product roadmap and help you better define the resources required to keep up with the pace of the business. Since much of your product team s updates will be driven by feature requests from your customers, including your customer service rep on these conversations will be important in defining why the new features are important and how they will be used by your customers. You will have need to manage two curriculum structures: 1 2 The one you publish on your web site, and promote as available training products to your customers. The second is your internal development curriculum which is a visual representation of what is LIVE and what is in your development pipeline for future releases. 9

10 Key Questions to be answered in this phase Did you work with product experts and customers to create first draft of a curriculum? Did you touch base with customer support to identify areas where most questions are coming from? What is your plan to consistently update and refresh content with product releases? How will you create a roadmap of curriculum desired? Will you create learning paths for users to move up to a certification level? Should the curriculum include in-person training or e-learning components? Who needs to approve the curriculum? Have you fully involved key business stakeholders in the design process? Building A Rockstar The Rockstar Customer Customer Training Training Department Department 10

11 03 Content Creation With a review committee in place as your communication channel to the business, and solid curriculum structure in place, you have a foundation ready to support the execution of training development. As mentioned previously, the temptation will be to jump right into content creation, but in the long run you will be happy that you spent the extra time building the solid foundation of a review committee and curriculum. Much of your work in defining a curriculum can be applied to the development process. In defining your curriculum you should have a solid understanding, at least from a high level, of the product and your customer base. But now you need to dig a little deeper into the details. This is something your designers will do. So whether you decide to outsource the training development or create it inhouse, you already have a solid understanding of what you are asking a developer to create. Since you are creating training for your customers you need to be more concerned about the look and feel of your presentation than if you were just releasing content to your internal employees. This is even more critical if you intend to charge your customers for this training. The visual presentation is what will create the users initial perception of value. So, don t overlook the importance of visual appeal and quality. Working with your marketing department is the key to aligning your visual design with the business s corporate branding. Their designers can help you maintain a consistent look and feel to your content. If you are simply producing instructional videos then you may only need a 5-10 second introduction graphic, a closing graphic, and matching lower thirds graphical elements to create a consistent look and feel. Any supporting documentation will most likely already be branded and approved for you to share with customers as part of your training content. What Training Do Organizations Use? A breakdown of organizations training via the following delivery methods 21.4% 18.5% % 17.7% 11.4% % Classroom Synchronous e-learning Asynchronous e-learning Formal on-the-job 16.6% 12.1% 18.6% 10.9% Other *Customers and Learning: Extending the Boundaries. Aberdeen Group,

12 Key Questions to be answered in this phase Do you want to create content in-house or outsource content creation? If inhouse, which tools will you need to develop it? Do you need to procure the content creation tools? What features will you need in the content authoring tools? Do you have a prioritized list of content that needs to be created? How will you manage the content creation and review process? Building A Rockstar The Rockstar Customer Customer Training Training Department Department 12

13 04 Delivering Content How you deliver your training content to your customers can be different from how your company delivers internal training. The good news is that, in general, you have more options to deliver an engaging experience to your customers because you are not hindered by the corporate firewall. And since your content will be approved for external viewing you don t need to worry much about security and access issues. In many cases the training content you create for your customers will also double as marketing content for those evaluating your product. And this is another reason why you need to pay particular attention to branding and consistency in your look and feel. Many enterprise learning management systems do not offer the ability to easily deliver, manage, and sell content outside the enterprise firewall. This means looking into learning management systems that are designed for your specific customer training needs. You need a system that can support registration for not only self-paced learning but for the occasional live training event as well. Mobile delivery is an important consideration as well. Your customers will appreciate content that can consumed on-the-go, and in small chunks as opposed to hour-long sit down e-learning courses. The entire course may in fact end up being that long, but allowing users to go through at their leisure, taking in small pieces at a time, is much more conducive to the current work habits of your standard corporate worker. Reporting your success and tracking usage is another critical factor to consider when choosing a delivery system. Using this data will help you identify what works and what doesn t. You can put these findings into your communication review process to keep the business updated on impact and user feedback. Primary Delivery Modality by Content Domain For each content domain, what is the primary training delivery method? 12.3% 16.3% IT Skills 11.6% 38.4% 13.3% 3.1% 9% 15.5% Business Skills 59.3% Classroom-based ILT Asynchronous e-learning Synchronous e-learning Formal on-the-job Other 21.4% Source: Cheif Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board,

14 Key Questions to be answered in this phase Are your training materials branded appropriately to reflect company guidelines? Do you have the capability to collect user registrations for the classes you want to deliver? Are you set up to deliver your content on the go? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you re going to track and how often will you collect and report on what you ve learned? How will you collect user feedback, and how will you respond to those users? Building A Rockstar The Rockstar Customer Customer Training Training Department Department 14

15 05 Monetizing Training By now you have a pretty good idea whether monetization of training courses aligns with your business goals. If so, you will need to productize your offering and curriculum in a way that makes sense to your sales team. The sales team will help you understand what their customers want and how best to package the content to increase the value of a deal. When there is a cost associated with training, this can also be leverage for the sales team to use in closing a deal. Discounting costs for training is much easier than discounting product costs. Some deals even add a certain amount of training for free which makes a deal look more enticing. If you are new to the productization of training don t be shocked if the product manager puts a price tag on your courses that seems too high. Depending on the overall cost of the product you are selling, that number is most likely quite small when placed in the larger context of the overall contract amount. Everything from design and content to curriculum and delivery will play a role in determining how you productize your offerings. This is where you need to be very clear on what defines your product. If you are delivering a two-day training event at your site location, you will need to offer a calendar of options for six months to a year, or more. Remember, your customers need time to plan for their travel. If you are delivering online, self-paced e-learning, you will need to define how they can access your course, and what systems are required. You will also want to let them know which media can be accessed via their mobile device. Your learning management system should make mobile delivery possible. 15

16 Key Questions to be answered in this phase Will you offer live training, self-paced, or a combination of both? How will your curriculum catalog be marketed and sold? via sales or via website? How will you offer sign ups online? Does your company have a system in place or do you need procure an LMS? Make a list of features you need in an LMS - supports sign-up, ecommerce, calendar How will you handle billing and scheduling courses? How will you notify learners on registration and reminders? Do the learners need to be able to access e-learning via mobile devices? Building A Rockstar The Rockstar Customer Customer Training Training Department Department 16

17 Ending Summary By now you should be starting to see how this process will work for you, and the relationship between your end users, your product development team, and your training products. The building of your review committee is the foundation of your internal processes and will keep you on track with the changing needs of the business. And always keeping a high level view of your curriculum will reflect your alignment with those business needs. Your communication process with the review committee should include this alignment in one form or another. The choice is yours. 17