Sources Of Big Data To Have In Mind Beyond Your LMS
When it comes to measuring your training offering, it’s important to collect as much data as possible, from as many different sources as applicable, to ensure you have all the information you need before you make any big business decisions.
The reports you can compile from your LMS reporting engine are obviously important to give you an idea of how your eLearning offering is performing, but today we’re going to take a look at the other sources you can go to for information on your business.
1. Social Media
One quite quick way to get some insight into what people think about your training company is to look at what people are saying about you on social media. Whether this is direct comments posted on your social media profiles, or just what you find while browsing related hashtags on Twitter, it can give you a little bit of insight into how your customers perceive your company as a whole, and how they perceive your training offering.
Here are some quick ways you can use social media to get some data to help with your training measurement:
Direct Comments On Social Media Channels
Don’t ignore those comments on your Facebook wall or Twitter feed! If you have current or potential customers reaching out to you on social media, it’s important to reply or you could come off as uninterested in your students' opinions and questions. Even if it’s just to ask them to email your team to get the problem dealt with in more detail, it’s important to reach out and make a connection. These comments will also give you insight into students' opinions, and let you see what sorts of problems customers are coming across that they need your help with. This insight will allow you to make positive changes to your website, your content, or your customer journey, in order to hopefully prevent these issues from cropping up in the future.
Reviews On Facebook
As well as reading the comments customers post on your Facebook wall, there is also a review feature where students can give you a mark out of 5 stars and leave a more detailed review in the form of a comment. You can reply to these reviews, and this is a great way to show your customers that you tackle criticism and problems head-on.
Tweets Directed At Your Company Or On Related Hashtags
On Twitter, you can take a look at tweets directed at your company and see what students or potential customers are saying. A lot of people may use Twitter to reach out to you, as it's really quick and easy, while it also allows their comments to be shared with all their followers. You can also look through related hashtags to see if anything is being said about your training company, as well. Again, don't be afraid to address problems head-on, offering help and support to your followers when they need it.
Using social media will allow you to gain additional insight into what your students are saying and thinking, as chances are your students may not submit these comments through more traditional channels, such as a contact form on your website. It’s a great chance to see what you're doing well, and you may also address any problems which you spot before they become bigger issues, all while publicly showing your students and potential customers that you are there to help them whenever they need it.
2. Customer Feedback Surveys
One great way to get data and feedback on your business is just to come straight out and ask for it! Student feedback surveys are an excellent way to gather lots of juicy data and use it for your training measurement purposes.
The quickest and easiest way to issue surveys on a large scale, which if you’re sending them to every student on every class you run will probably be very handy for you, is to use online surveys!
Online surveys allow you to create exactly the survey you want or multiple versions if you want to ask different questions to different student groups, and then send them directly to your students using their contact email address. Being able to custom-create your own surveys is key because then you can make sure you are asking the questions which will be most helpful to your training measurement. Moreover, you can ensure you are getting data back that you can actually use in a helpful way. The students can fill them out whenever is convenient for them and send them straight back to you, with much less hassle than if you used a paper survey.
Once you have the results back, you can use them along with the information you already have in your reports to see what your students really think of your classes and what changes you can make to improve your service in the future.
3. External Review Sites
A final good way to get more data on your training offering is to take a look at external review sites and see what your past and present students are saying about you. These reviews may give you a slightly more honest answer than a student survey, as students may be more comfortable saying exactly what they feel on an external site, rather than sending their answers straight to you.
You may wish to direct students to leave feedback for you on an external site, much like TripAdvisor, rather than have a reviews section on your own website anyway. Students will be able to browse an independent site in order to see all the training offered and read the feedback before they make a decision, rather than have to actually find your specific website to reach your training.
Again, these sites may offer you the chance to reply to any comments left, so you can show what changes you have made to your offering to address any problems that have been raised.
Next Steps
As with the data you pull from your LMS reports, it’s important to use all the data about your business at your disposal when you make business decisions or when you look to make changes or improvements to your business. Pull all the data you can find from all these different sources and see if you can spot any patterns which may suggest a problem, but also highlight the things that you are already doing well! That way, when you sit down to see what steps your business is going to take next, you will have all the information you need.
