Stop Overwhelming Your Users With eLearning
Have you ever been asked to develop a customer training curriculum for a product or service without a clear understanding of what the users actually need? Maybe someone handed you a list of topics that cover the full range of product features your company offers and asked you to get started. It's a common problem in customer education, and it almost always results in a curriculum that overwhelms users with too much information, or teaches them features that are not relevant to their needs.
To avoid this problem, it's important to design a curriculum that focuses on moments of value—the key features that provide the most value to your users. In this article, we will discuss the hazards of designing a curriculum that is unfocused. We'll also explore how to identify resources in your organization that define moments of value for your customers.
Customer Training Curriculum Mistake: Training On Everything
Developing a comprehensive customer training program can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you want to provide users with a thorough understanding of your product or service. On the other hand, you risk overwhelming them with too much information, or teaching them features that are not relevant to their needs. This approach can be detrimental to the effectiveness of your customer training program and put a strain on your internal resources. Below are some of the negative side effects of creating too much training content:
1. Overwhelming The Learner
This is probably the most obvious negative consequence. If you develop training on every single product feature, you risk overwhelming the learner with too much information. This can lead to extraneous cognitive overload, which means the learner cannot process all the information effectively due to the manner of presentation. The result is that the learner is less likely to retain the information or apply it in real-world situations.
2. Lack Of Focus On Key Features
When you develop training on every single product feature, it can be challenging to prioritize the features that are most important to your customers. Your LMS will eventually begin to resemble a help center, except it will naturally cost much more to maintain. If a help center is a library, an LMS is a school. A customer training program should be designed like a curriculum that brings customers directly to moments of value in your product.
3. Increased Development Costs
Developing training on every single product feature can be time-consuming and expensive. This can lead to increased development costs that may not be necessary. If you incorporate video and eLearning content in your program, upkeep can quickly become unmanageable. If your training program includes screenshots or videos of your product, it will need to be updated regularly as the UI of your product changes. It's essential to focus on the most critical features and provide training that effectively teaches users how to use those features in order to maintain a curriculum that your department can reasonably update at regular intervals.
Instead of developing training on every single product feature, it's important to focus on the key features that provide the most value to your customers. This allows you to develop training that effectively teaches users how to use those features and provides them with the skills and knowledge they need to be successful. It's also important to keep the training concise and focused, so that learners are not overwhelmed and can apply what they learn in real-world situations.
How To Develop A Customer Training Curriculum Focusing On What Matters
To build a customer education program that guides users to moments of value, begin by identifying the moments of value in a user's journey. These are the moments when your product or service provides the most benefit to the customer—the "aha moments" when your customer realizes how much they need your product. Think about email. Its value is right there in the name. You can send mail to people immediately from your home. A B2B product doesn't usually sell itself that easily. Typically, a high-ranking stakeholder buys your product and the rest of the company has to learn how to use it. They may not know what value your product is supposed to deliver. They also may have switched from a similar product that they preferred. That's why it's crucial to design your training in such a way that it puts the value of your product front and center. Here are a few tips to identify the moments of value:
- Ask around
Depending on how mature your company is, you may already have a customer journey map that highlights moments of value. Ask your ops and UX teams if they've created a customer journey map. - Talk to stakeholders
You should talk to stakeholders who have direct contact with customers. They can provide insights into what features or functions customers use the most and which ones are critical to their success. They can also point out pain points in your product. - Conduct customer surveys or interviews
Surveys or interviews with customers can provide valuable feedback on what features are most important to them and what they consider to be the moments of value. This can help you to identify key features that should be prioritized in the training program. - Analyze user data
Analyzing user data can help you to identify patterns and trends in how customers use your product or service. This can provide insight into which features are used the most and which ones provide the most value to customers. - Conduct task analyses
A task analysis involves breaking down a task into its component parts to understand the steps involved. This can help you to identify which features are critical to completing the task and provide insight into what the moments of value are. - Review customer feedback and support requests
Customer feedback and support requests can provide insights into the features or functions that customers struggle with the most. This can help you to identify areas where training may be needed to improve customer success.
You don't need to complete all of these steps to identify moments of value, but the first two are essential. They also create a pretext for making connections with other departments in your organization. This can help to identify co-workers who can help champion your training program to your customers.
Conclusion
Developing a customer training program that focuses on moments of value is more effective than creating training for every single product feature. By overwhelming learners with too much information, failing to prioritize key features, or incurring increased development costs, an overly comprehensive approach can ruin your program's effectiveness. Instead, it's essential to focus on key features that provide the most value to your customers, based on input from stakeholders, customer feedback, and user data. By doing so, you can create a training program that is concise, focused, and effective, helping your customers to achieve their goals and reduce frustration. A targeted approach to customer training will increase the likelihood of successful product adoption and lead to higher customer satisfaction and retention rates.
