Tuesday Oct 25, 2011
Road block avoided with organization of course purpose and goals
When you create a course, you may have great content but if it is not organized with a clear direction, your learners may become confused rather than educated.
For this reason, taking a few minutes to organize your information and thoughts before you start formatting your course will be very effective.
The first step in course authoring is defining the course purpose. The purpose includes what you are trying to achieve through the course as well as what your learners should understand upon completion of the course
Be specific when defining the purpose. Don’t just say “to train users on platform.” Say something along the lines of “To train PowerPoint 2010 users, giving them the ability to understand fonts, embed items, print layouts and navigate the tabs on the ribbon.”
Secondly, based off your course purpose, create course objectives, which are the means to achieving the course aim. Objective examples for the PowerPoint course mentioned above are:
-Adjust Font
-Create excel document to embed
-Navigate the ribbon
Creating the course outline is the third step to a successful learning environment for your learners. When creating the course outline, the following points are recommended:
-Arrange objectives into logical groups to create a course outline
-Title each main section
-Assign each section your ideal content
-Assign the section a quiz if you choose
Example
I. Introduction
II. Navigating the Ribbon
A. The home tab (screencast)
B. Formatting Tab (article)
C. Insert Tab (upload video)
D. Quiz
Then you can create your content around your outline, knowing exactly what you need for your course. Also, if you create a written document to use as a guide for content creation it will help you ensure that you are covering everything.
These initial three steps will guide you into an easy production of your course. After they are created, the next step is to create a compelling introduction. In the introduction, keep the following tips in mind:
-Get your audience excited
-Make sure it summarizes what will be covered in the course
-It can be a PowerPoint, a screencast or another format of your choice but grab the learner’s attention
-Know the objectives of the course and make sure the introduction sets out the objectives
These steps will give you confidence that your course will make sense and flow well.
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Friday Oct 21, 2011
Customer retention is one of the most powerful indicators of a company’s success. We just finished the third in a six-part webinar series called “Increasing Adoption & Retention of your SaaS App” and one of the things we've been discussing is building a relationship.
A lot of salespeople remain quiet between the point of sale and the time for renewal. What keeps a customer loyal to using your solution if he or she never hears from you? You can bet the competition will reach out to them.
So how does a salesperson build relationships?
-listen, Listen & LISTEN!!!
“To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.”
- John Marshall,
Supreme Court Chief Justice, 1801-1835
Always be listening to your customers to find out more about them. Get to know them; find out about their likes and dislikes. This way when you are following-up with them you will have something better to say than “how’s the weather?” Also if you know more about your customers, you will ask the right questions and build more rapport.
Building the relationship includes being an advisor as well and helping the customer to be successful throughout the customer lifecycle.
Salespeople must continue to build relationships with their customers beyond the point of sale. Building relationships establishes you as an authority in their eyes. Being an authority leads to repeat business and repeat business will often earn you referrals.
So what are you waiting for? Go out and build relationships!
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Thursday Oct 20, 2011
Many SaaS companies are able to draw excitement and attention to their new app. Many users may even buy, but how do you get them to adopt quickly? How do you get them to fully understand your solution and all its features so they will become loyal?
This post is from the desk of one of our team members Tayo Rockson, and here is his answer to the above questions:
Well there are number of ways to adopt and I will get to them soon but first of all you need to be able to know why your customers might stop using your app and make sure you address all those issues in your onboarding process. If you put yourselves in your customer’s shoes and try to think like them, you will have a better chance of making your app more user friendly. So get your thinking cap on and think of reasons they might leave.
Some of the reasons KeyStone OnDemand has found are as follows:
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Users are unable to get over the initial learning curve to achieve successful outcomes- If there is an ineffective way of communicating how to use your app then your users will be unable to get over the learning curve.
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Low organizational adoption and usage- Make sure that everyone that will use the app in the organization that you sold to is actively involved. You can do this by engaging the heads of the departments that will be using your app so they can in turn effectively communicate the benefits of using your app to their teams and users.
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Not enough customer stakeholders and influencers- You might not have enough of the stakeholders & influencers bought in.
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App is not utilized properly to gain full potential- The app is not being used to its full potential so there is a lack of appreciation for your app thus there will be no perceived value in using your app.
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App reliability- Your app was not able to do what it was supposed to do and it did not meet expectations.
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Competition- They might decide to go with a competitor of yours instead.
Now that you have identified these issues, here are 4 steps that will help your users adopt your app better and quicker.
Make them comfortable with a personal welcome message as well as give them a quick tour of your app and the benefits/advantages of using your app:
1. Have detailed interactive videos or presentations readily available for them to access upon login in to access your app.
The videos or presentations should:
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Explain your service and show the user where to access things- Make using your platform easier by showing them where things are. You can do this by creating a quick tour video that gives a high level overview of your solution.
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Explain the benefits of using your app in their environment- Let your users know why your app will help their company. People are naturally resistant to change so if you help them understand how your app will benefit them, they will be more willing to adopt your app.
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Explain the performance objective and job responsibilities of each of the users-Explain to each of the users what their role is and what their expected result is. So for example if your sales team is supposed to use your app differently from your development team, you want to be able to get that point across. That way there is no confusion and they can stay being productive in the app which grows into retention.
2. Call to Action
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Give them something to do like a quiz, test or an activity that allows them use different aspects of your platform.
3. Ask for feedback & have a solid follow up process
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Ask your users for feedback and find out if they are satisfied or if they would like some things added to your app- Let’s face it no solution or app is perfect but you can always make yours better by listening to your customers and finding out different ways you could help them.
4. Show Appreciation
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Show appreciation always- Whether it is with a card, a thank you note or a gift basket, let your customers know that you appreciate them and that they are appreciated.
In the onboarding process, you want to engage your new users and make them comfortable. Comfortable users will lead to better adoption. Lastly communicate with your users so you can help them better.
Building knowledge around your app will only enhance that tie and connection between you and your users. For more information contanct Tayo Rockson at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Wednesday Oct 19, 2011
How to edit your courses quickly after they are published!
As we said in a previous post, your courses don’t have to be perfect, and the beauty of creating and offering courses through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform is that you can edit content at any time, and your learners will be able to view those changes immediately.
Not only will publishing content give you confidence to continue doing so, it will also encourage your learners to use the content and provide feedback. This way, you will know if your courses should go in a different direction, if they are helping and what your learners need more of. Publishing content will help you understand how to publish better content, or enhance organizational policies, procedures and services.
So while you want to be sure your course will offer development for your learners, you do not need to over-think the process. If you realize you do not like how you worded a particular article or if you want to add a new video to the course that shows a new path in performing a task, you can easily edit and add content after the course is published. You can also quickly publish stand-alone content related to a certain category.
For example, if there is a common question that your users have been requesting help in, you may just want to create a quick screencast for that 1 minute solution without creating an entire course, and this should take you less than 10 minutes to complete and publish. Taking 10 minutes to quickly create and publish a screencast can save your employees hours helping their fellow employees or the organization’s customers. Don’t over think this one minute video; just publish it. Tweak it later if you need to.
In KeyStone OnDemand, your users’ viewership as well as quiz completion are tracked and they are not able to receive a certificate until they have reached 75 percent in both areas. So what happens when you add content to a course in KeyStone OnDemand, but your learners have already completed the “75 percent” viewed and quiz scores? Does their completed percentage decrease because there is new content in the course?
No, once learners achieve a certain percentage it will never go lower. They can go and review the updated content, and their percentage can increase, but the new content will not cause them to loose their status as complete.
If you want to update content later, your viewers will only be affected positively. You cannot go wrong here. In KeyStone OnDemand, you can always publish something to get people started, then you can go back later to edit or fix the details you want to polish up. So get started now with that course you have been holding out on.
Editing
If you use KeyStone OnDemand, editing is easy. You can edit content you have created or courses we have created that you have purchased licensing for. For example, if you decide you want licensing to our Project 2010 Course, you can edit any of the articles in the course to fit your specific organizational needs. Some tasks have multiple directions you can go, and there may be a specific way you want your users to learn how to do a task, so you can edit our courses to your liking.
To quickly edit your courses or ours, here are a few simple steps to take:
1. Open the article you would like to edit;
2. Click Edit;
3. A message will appear, and click “Create Copy and Edit;”
4. Edit your content and save the updates for your users to see.
We hope this gives you the confidence to publish that video or article you have been waiting too long to publish.
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Tuesday Oct 18, 2011
One of the biggest misconceptions in the software world is that support is training but that is false. It is important to understand the difference between both in order to improve the retention & adoption rate of your SaaS app. Support typically reacts to customer needs and is disruptive to customer productivity. Training proactively anticipates customers’ needs to reduce reactive support and increases customer productivity.
This is coming from the desk of one of the members of the KeyStone OnDemand team, Tayo Rockson. If you implement the right type of training, your customers will understand your product better and they will ultimately want to renew their contract with you.
So in order to correct this misconception and show you how training can help your company I’d like to introduce you to a manifesto that was created by KeyStone OnDemand
The SaaS Training Manifesto
1. Support is not training This is pretty self-explanatory. Like I said earlier Training proactively ANTICIPATES customer needs while support typically REACTS to customers’ needs. Give your users more training materials as opposed to just supporting them. The reason being you don’t want your customer’s productivity to be disrupted. They are complementary and should not be used interchangeably.
2. 24/7 apps require 24/7 training resources If you have a 24/7 app make sure you have training resources that can be used at anytime of the day anywhere in the world.
3. Agile apps require agile training resources that adapt to change In the software world, there are always updates and changes that come up constantly with your app so its imperative that your app has training resources that reflect these changes. You don’t want your user to read an outdated blog post or watch a video that is no longer relevant to your app now.
4. Business end-users expect on-demand, web training This trend of on-demand training used to be optional a few years ago but as more and more companies are adopting the cloud, on-demand web training is imperative. Think of it. Don’t you want your end users to be able to proactively learn how to use your app and access your any time at their convenience? It only makes BUSINESS sense.
5. Training resources should be available in both structured course and keyword searchable formats You always want to cater to the different type of end users that consists of your user base. Chances are that you will have two types of users. Some will like a more structured course like format to retain knowledge and others might be more tactile and like to dive in head first to access content without too much instruction. To help these type of users that learn better by experience, it is best to have a keyword searchable functionality so its easy for them to access content.
6. Every user is different. Training must support different learning styles This just builds on my last point. Everyone learns differently. Some learn better if they can visualize what they are supposed to retain, others if they can hear it and others if they can experience your application. Is your app doing this? Ways to address these are by offering a class room like environment, onsite training or on-demand web courses (which is probably the best option).
7. Every role is different. Training must be role-based that speaks to each role’s challenges and success Your users most times will have different roles so its best that your training reflects these different roles. This way its more personalized and they retain knowledge quicker.
8. Training should have measurable outcomes. Training should provide users with a path to becoming an expert One way to transform your casual users to power users is by creating a path for them to be experts. You can do this by certifying them. Reward them for their efforts with a certificate and you will find that a lot of your users will be proud of being certified because it distinguishes them from their peers. Another result that you may find is that your certified users could proactively form communities among themselves where they share what they have learned from your app. This only bodes well for your company and creates a loyal customer base.
9. Training should be tracked and measured You went through all that trouble of creating training materials why not track your users’ knowledge and activity in the platform? This is the only way that you can truly assess whether or not your users are retaining or adopting your software app so implement a tracking mechanism into your app whether it is a CRM or another tracking mechanism.
Support and training should not be lumped together because they are not the same thing. Support REACTS to your user’s demands but training causes users to PROACTIVELY use your app. I am not saying eliminate support just don’t lump them together.
Visit TayoRocksonSpeaks.com for more about Tayo and his blog.
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