The Customer Education Playbooks - From Principles to How

Part 1 focused on the The Customer Education Book's 1st principles in implementing a learning program:

Principle #1: The end point is 100% adoption, not deployment.

Principle #2: Don’t talk about the product! Instead focus on how it’s going to make the client's job easier.

Principle #3: Create content where the customer is already working. 

In part 2 we focus on a few "hows" for implementation.

From a practical perspective, because the focus is on delivering just in time content, and the goal is to lead clients to the learning, emphasis is on micro-learning. Micro-learning can be text or visual depiction with narrated audio and captions, and preferably both to cover bases. 

Yes, it's good also to offer longer form content, but in my office experience this is best suited for initial deployment or an onboarding learning journey.  We will get survey feedback that people want live in person training, but when we offer it attendance is low and rarely aligns with pre-registration as the pressure of work deadlines takes precedence. And as noted at the outset, 1:1 training cannot scale with small legal ops teams. To the extent longer form content is offered, best to make it on demand (and better to stitch it together from small digestible parts). As the book notes, mobile videos allow people to learn on fly when opportunity arises.  

The Customer Education Playbook (CEP) Rule #1  - Don’t breeze by learning objectives. The authors note that while it may be tempting to skip this step it is very helpful in clarifying what topics needs to be included and what should be left out. Extraneous content detracts from the learning goal.

To help with this, CEP outlines several methodologies, including Blooms' taxonomy, which emphasizes applied focus on real world tasks. In my 10 years at The Rockefeller Foundation I developed a strong preference for a practice or applied approach for professional training, over an academic approach. In part this was because I worked with doctoral students, for the most part in the sciences, who were headed into the field to conduct their research (and who were often woefully under-prepared by their university classes in North America for field conditions in Africa).  It was also due to my personal experience pursuing an MBA part-time, allowing me to apply what I learned the night before at work the next day. As a result, I've retained more from my NYU MBA than I have with my 2 prior university degrees.

When I began planning Ops in a Box, Legal Edition - A Magical Kit, in initial deployment I cut out lots of "nice to have material" to develop a grab and go kit that allows clients to produce the end work product within 2-3 business days. When I embarked on developing the material into a course, I initially leveraged experience working in higher education to develop an accreditation-eligible course with homework, but quickly pivoted and shifted back to an apply-to-your-current task list approach.

As you begin to translate your learning objectives into material it can be very helpful to have learning personas, or perhaps more concretely, bucketing your known universe of learners into three or so buckets. An example in the book that resonated with my was: Eager, lost, and reluctant. 

When developing context, it can be helpful to do field research to analyse the job task. Ask your prospective learners: How hard is this task to do? How often do you do this task? How important is the task to your role?”

Rule #2 - If a feature is not documented it doesn’t exist. As you build training make sure to cover features essential to the client's job responsibilities. At the outset of each segment offer sneak previews of "what you will learn..."

As you script, focus on "what's in it for me" (WIIFM) for your clients. Compose messages in digestible bites. Limit on screen text and use an informal conversational voice.  Talking heads can add relatability but may limit shelf life with turnover. For accessibility: optimize for screen readers; hyperlinks should have descriptive wording; use captioning; consider color blindness; cover your bases with text, video, audio and images. Consider language localization (such as field values or translations) if applicable.  To the extent possible link to the learning content directly in the location where the person will be completing the task.

For our business client facing content, we've adopted animated characters voiced by the attorneys with a combination of narration and "re-enactments." Feedback has been that the legal team comes across as relatable and the tone has lowered barriers to reaching out.

And don't reinvent the wheel. Make your task manageable by re-using content.  Ask first: What do we already have access to that covers this? In legal departments some of the content may come from the vendor, but be re-framed for your company context.

Rule #3 - Measure Impact. Start simple. The book provides an adaptation of the Kirkpatrick model in chapter 12 with suggested metrics for engagement, reaction, learning, behavior, results and ROI.  At the engagement level, for example, clients can be categorized as active, underactive and inactive.

Take an iterative design approach to incorporate feedback.  A live webinar is a great way to field test content, and to make adjustments prior to creating an edited recording.

Include a survey at the end of each lesson with no more than five questions (overall satisfaction, perceived difficulty, engagement, relevance, and meet expectations).

Offer an assessment. If everyone gets a question wrong, then there may be a need to fix the lesson or question.  And post rollout, look at questions your SMEs are still fielding. There may be a gap in content.

Again, be sure to communicate the impact back to your customer. Celebrate progress!

Rule #4 - There is no such thing as bad feedback.  Critical feedback may be an opportunity for clarification with respect to content or audience or to manage expectations.  Critical feedback at a Legal Ops 101 bootcamp was the impetus to create Ops in a Box, Legal Edition - A Magical Kit, and, honestly, it took me months to recast the feedback that led to an "Aha" moment. 

Don’t dismiss feedback you hear only once. 90% of people who disengage do not provide feedback. That voice may be the lone key to transforming your content from meh to YEAH! For example, if the feedback says the course is too long, take a look at your completion rates. If the feedback says they can't connect the content to their job, look at what percentage of your target audience has enrolled. The book provides a useful content optimization matrix (see ch. 13).

Use your experience to  translate feedback into actionable insights. And always remember to acknowledge the feedback and close the loop.

The book also provides a helpful customer education maturity model (see ch. 15) and guidelines for tailoring your ROI story to different audiences (managers, executives, and the company as a whole).

What training approach are you taking that is seeing good results? Look forward to hearing from you.