My client had won a contract to build a software product to interface with a big data platform. I had a 6 month window to ensure that all 3000 companies who had pre-purchased the software were able to use the functionality they needed from go live so that they wouldn’t swamp the help desk with questions and would renew their annual contract when the time came.

Process

My initial analysis looked at the following:

Who	Will be using the system. Developed broad personas for the user types of the system – business vs analytical users.
What	Will those users be doing in the system. Developed business related task lists for each type of user.
When	Will they be doing those tasks, mapped to the customer journey the design team had designed.
Which	Metrics mattered to my client and their customers: NPS, Support ticket counts, retention rates (annual).

I decided to use the 5Di User Centred Learning approach developed by Nick Shackleton-Jones:

Solution

No training is better than great training

Nick Shackleton-Jones

My approach was to provide great resources rather than courses. I pushed information at the point of need and enabled people to pull information if they wanted to.

Onscreen tours & hover over explanations

First login offered a tour of the interface and links to other tours and articles for commonly used features. Subsequent customer journey events like mid-year review and new software feature launches triggered tours of features relevant to the logged in persona.

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Easy access to a living wiki and support team

Wiki hosted on Salesforce Community Cloud an integrated hub that the customers and support staff were were already familiar with. It enabled updates to learning resources from developers, analysts and support staff with a clear and simple review process.

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Instructor led webinars

A program of interactive optional online drop in sessions on topics of interest that users could attend post go live to hone their skills and ask questions.

Benefits

• Customers spent minimal time in training
• High customer retention rates predicted by engagement statistics
• Up to date resources due to iterative approach integrated with the support team