Embrace the Disruption in Learning for Customer Success

Disruption is happening. The way people learn and consume information, especially online is changing. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to most people.

For example, I work on my own car and own the 400 page repair manual. The first thing I do when something breaks is look for repair videos on YouTube, which I usually find without fail.

In Josh Bersin’s article The Disruption of Digital Learning, 10 things we have learned, he discusses the explosion of microlearning in the corporate environment displacing and fundamentally changing how employees at large organizations learn. Josh defines microlearning as “things we can quickly read, view, or consume and they only take 10 minutes or less. These may be a video, a blog, or a set of instructional questions that help us think differently than we did before.” Josh characterizes microlearning as solving for “I need help now,” whereas traditional learning approaches address “I want to learn something new.”

When I work on my car, I’m not trying to learn the fundamentals of the internal combustion engine. Instead, I need help with something specific now. YouTube is designed so that I may find answers for my immediate questions with just a few clicks. Companies have now realized that the way we learn as individuals is no different than how we learn as employees.

We can apply these same microlearning concepts to Customer Success; how we engage with our customers and how to best deliver the message we want customers to hear about our products. If you’re still sharing a 400-page manual for your product or service, you need keep reading.

1) Use a fast creation tool

My favorite is MyGuide by EdCast, the fastest and most secure in-app training and walkthrough authoring solution I’ve found. The number one reason that most companies aren’t using microlearning today is because it’s too complicated to create quality content fast.

In 2014, while at EMC, I took on the project of developing product training videos for an end-user focused product. I used a combination of Camtasia and Brainshark for the bulk of the work which delivered acceptable results. Camtasia is the industry standard for any screen capture projects but it has a non-trivial learning curve even to provide mediocre output. Professional, high quality product training results requires a lot of practice and a fair amount of artistry. Traditionally, if you want professional results, best to hire a professional.

I’m willing to say that my results were fair. It was a labor of love, and I invested many, many hours learning and perfecting the tool, with frame by frame precision and carefully crafting every word of the voice over. For some of the more technical videos, I did the voice work myself, which wasn’t ideal. There is a very good reason that this is a blog and not podcast. So, for what would become the more popular videos, I enlisted the help of a professional voice artist. Those guys aren’t cheap.

Now that I am using MyGuide, I’m able to build full product and feature guides in an hour flat. These guides can be played in the application itself or easily exported to video or PDF. Computer generated text-to-speech puts my not-so smooth radio voice to shame.

Here’s where a fast content creation tool blows away the conventional process of creating videos based on screen captures: The ability to quickly change and update the material. I’ve found that those videos that I created in 2014 are still online today, and are most certainly missing lots of new product enhancement. An update for a simple UI change means re-creating an entire section of the video. Good luck tracking down the same guy that did the voice over so that he can record a new bit.

And therein lies the reason microlearning is slow to be adopted in customer success - keeping the content fresh and accurate is extremely difficult, time consuming, and expensive. With MyGuide, updating is simply a matter resaving the steps showing the new UI and tweaking a few words in the script. At EdCast, we’re able to update our product guides with every release within just a few minutes. Fast authoring tools enable you to keep your content fresh as your product evolves.

2) Focus on the parts of your product that drive your KPIs

There were two different kinds of assets that I created at EMC. One was fundamental, architectural and technical that I allowed to have less scrutiny over the production quality. These included some screen captures as well as PowerPoint animations published in BrainShark. These are table-stakes assets that are demanded by all customers simply to understand your product. Anything more than the minimal level of effort to deliver the content is essentially wasted.

Where I put the majority of my effort was into a dozen 60-second or less. feature-focused videos that highlighted some part of the product that drove my KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). That is, the features I want the customer to use because they drive engagement, virality, or are just plain sticky. For example, highlighting a mobile feature because we know it drives usage, or a sharing feature because, well, social virality. Customer success is all about influencing behaviors and using microlearning techniques is an effective way to drive the behaviors your company wants.

Because of the high production quality, these videos were promoted by the marketing team and pushed out to every end-user as “tips and tricks” as part of a newsletter. With each newsletter sent out, we watched our targeted KPI spike.

3) Don’t bore your audience

Traditional product training revolves around manuals or formal courses (macro-learning) which by their very nature are structured and sequential. Microlearning by contrast is bite-sized bits of information that the user can view in any sequence they like. By allowing the user to choose their own journey, microlearning is far more engaging because they can consume the parts that are important to them now.

There will always be a place for macro-learning assets, but the casual user will almost always opt for a series of short videos before signing up for a formal course. Keeping content short is key to keeping your users engaged. One study performed by EdX showed that users will consume a full 6 minute video but will abandon a 12 minute video after only 3 minutes. Keeping content short can double your engagement. I like to target three minute videos or shorter as a best practice.

You can further improve users experience by helping them discover the next microlearning asset. Looking again at YouTube, with an average video length of less than 5 minutes, but an average viewing session of around 40 minutes, it is clear that while users have a relatively short attention span, there is an appetite to continue to consume more information that captures their interest. By leveraging tools that recommend additional content you can often serve your users valuable materials that benefit your business, such as that content you created that helps drive your KPIs, as noted previously.

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”   —John F. Kennedy

Embrace microlearning to educate and influence your customers. Microlearning is here to stay and it plays a significant role in Customer Success. As millennials continue to represent more and more of your customer base, it will become increasingly important to focus on the “need to know now” rather than the “want to learn something new.”