T&D+Life

The Business Case for Training Your Customers

Here is a good article, How to Train Your Customers, by Bill Perry of Chief Learning Officer magazine. Perry presents a solid case for why it is good business to train your customers. He gives anecdotal evidence of how some businesses are taking the concept to heart. The telecom companies that I’ve worked for in recent years have been doing more and more customer education, and I have found that it does make good business sense to train the customer.

Traditionally, businesses tended to shy away from training customers, and I know from experience that many employees fear the effects of an educated customer. (Any number of ”Dilbert” cartoons reflect this sentiment.) Perhaps the first fear that comes to mind is that if you train customers about your products and services, they will no longer need to call in for help. I have actually heard employees voice this concern. In other words, we consciously or otherwise shy away from educating our customers in the name of job security. We think that if we keep the customers “dumb,” for lack of a better word, they will continue to need us.

But in this new world of educated and empowered consumers, our customers demand more. Indeed, if we educate our customers about the many features, benefits, and uses of our products, as well as troubleshooting knowledge, we will gain in loyalty what we lose in fewer calls to our call centers and tech support.

Another fear that I have heard is that if we educate our customers too much, they may learn just enough to cause them to choose the competition. To that I would say that if you are that insecure, or uncertain, of your own product’s quality, then your problem is much bigger than customer education. If you are confident in your product or service, you should want to educate the world about it.

Training customers on your product or service results in relationships, which ultimately results in loyalty to your brand and your product.

Ever Changing Nature of Learning Content

A good article by Bob Mosher of Chief Learning Officer magazine gives a sort of “State of the Industry” of learning content. Mosher writes about what many of us in the T&D world know all too painfully: that our learning content has little to no shelf life anymore.

In his article The Diminishing Shelf Life of Learning, Mosher writes, “…the classroom needs to be less about information dissemination and more about information aggregation.” He points out what I have learned and have had to preach for several years now, which is that the formal learning class is just the beginning of the learning experience. Mosher adds, “If anything, learners need help filtering and finding the right information for a specific moment of need. Formal learning can still teach foundational skills, but it needs to shift a good part of its time and efforts to help learners remain current and effective once the formal experience is over.”

Indeed, a greater and greater portion of my training class is not filling learners’ heads with a set chunk of information, but rather teaching them how to find current information themselves, and how to use all of their resources to do so. I agree with Mosher that there is just too much information today to be taught formally, and that such an undertaking would be fruitless as much of that information is obsolete by the time the ink dries. In fact, content found in printed manuals I find myself teaching as “historical” rather than current information.

The Evolution of Entertainment Technology: Pan and Scan

This topic doesn’t really fit with either of my blog themes of “Training and Development” or “Life and How to Live it,” but I couldn’t resist writing about one of my favorite pastimes, which is my awe and wonder at the evolution of entertainment technology.

One of my favorite hobbies is to watch and collect science fiction and horror classics from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. While most movie viewers shun these classics as outdated, fake, and “cheesy,” I marvel at them on various levels. These films give me a deep appreciation of the special effects and technology that we enjoy in today’s movies. I also appreciate the finer dialogue and acting that was required to make up for the lack of special effects.  But more than anything I watch in awe the work of these early moviemaking pioneers as they tried to create supernatural stories with such primitive technology.

Working in the telecommunications industry (video, internet, and telephony) gives me a front row seat to all that is on the cutting edge of technology and entertainment. In a recent training session, I happened to view a video that details the evolution of letterbox, or “pan and scan” technology. While I thought I understood the basic gist of pan and scan, this video, Turner Classic Movies: Letterbox, gave me a greater appreciation for what it took to create a “panned and scanned” movie to fit standard definition TVs. While I view pan and scan as, actually, a step backwards in technology, it is nonetheless very interesting to learn how it was done, and what was sacrificed in its making.

If you have a similar interest in entertainment technology I think you will enjoy this clip: Turner Classic Movies: Letterbox.

Learning Transfer: The 6Ds of Breakthrough Learning

I recently participated in a webinar entitled, “On Beyond ADDIE: Introduction to the 6Ds and Learning Transfer.” The webinar host, Roy Pollock, co-authored “The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning,” with Calhoun Wick and Andy Jefferson. Their book stresses the importance of moving beyond ADDIE and to a new “finish line” of learning transfer and improved performance.

While an advocate of the ADDIE model, Pollock points out that most training programs stop with ADDIE. “We still need to practice ADDIE,” says Pollock. “It’s still absolutely relevant, but it isn’t sufficient anymore in a world that demands learning transfer.”

In the webinar, Pollock points out the conundrum that learning professionals face, which is that while managers can clearly see the cost and time expended on training, they oftentimes cannot “see” the improvement or the results of training. And if they cannot see the results, the ROI of training, they will conclude that the training failed.

Pollock believes that even with a great training event, when learners leave the training they are faced with what he calls a “moment of truth.” Back on the job the learner has to decide, “Am I going to accomplish this work task in the old, comfortable way, or should I use the new way that I just learned?”

Pollock points out that learners are faced with two key propositions when it comes to applying what they learned:

1. Can I do what they taught me? Did the program actually teach me how? Am I confident enough to try?
2. Even if I can do it, am I motivated to make the effort? Do I think it will help me? Will anybody notice if I do or don’t? What does my boss think? What do my peers think?

In their book, the authors identify 6 disciplines that differentiate high-impact from low-impact training programs:

D1 – Define business outcomes – Be clear about what the training program is meant to accomplish for the business.

D2 – Design complete experience – Think about and include what happens around the actual class, not just the content itself.

D3 – Deliver for application – Make sure learners can actually use what we’re teaching.

D4 – Drive learning transfer – Make sure the transfer happens.

D5 – Deploy performance support – If we are going to hold people accountable to use what we have trained, we must provide the necessary support tools.

D6 – Document results – Document the results and use those results to improve the rest of the process.

Pollock says that one of the greatest variables that can make or break learning transfer (and improved performance) is the learner’s immediate leader. We as learning professionals can drive that support with things we do on our part. “Our success as learning professionals actually depends in large part on line managers,” he says. “So we need to get a lot smarter and better about helping line managers reinforce the training on the job.”

He adds that part of the learning professional’s job is to provide job aids, worksheets, checklists, etc. that line managers can use to coach their people. Managers won’t come asking you for it, so you need to provide it for them. “Give managers specific, practical things they can use for coaching,” Pollock notes.

Finally, he stresses that we must realize that training is a business function and exists solely to support business outcomes. He says that too often we lose sight of the fact that training’s product should not be our courses and programs, but rather “improved performance.” Training’s value is in how much performance improves, not whether people liked our courses.

The finish line for learning, says Pollock, is no longer the learning event itself, but the results, the improved performance. Learning transfer, or behavior change, is how we get to this new finish line.