Being a Corporate Learner during a Recession

In any hard economy, there will be impact on the corporate learning environment. We often talk about the current impact of the recessions we have been in since 2007, how it affects our lives, and what fears and concerns have come with it. Lately, as we begin to see many of our customers ramp back up post recession, we ask ourselves: how do we asses the damage that has already been done to learners over the past 12 to 24 months?

So from a purely analytical (and somewhat empathetic) point of view, let me share the following:

When the CEO believes the company is facing an uncertain environment, it is expected of him/her to take steps to meet the challenges of that uncertain environment. Companies of course, have two different levels to control things more or less—revenue and expense, on the (buy) revenue side, there is less control because there are more uncertainties, more competition. Do we really understand where the consumer is going? Is buying? In such a scenario, business leaders will start focusing on the must have versus the need to have across their organizations. Sadly training and development in some organizations will fall on the nice to have side or the perceived expense versus investment side of things (BIG MISTAKE …but we will get to that later).

This idea of tightening the belt from the “must have” notch to the “nice to have” notch impacts the learner directly and indirectly during and post a recession phase. How do we know this? Almost 30 years of being in business has allowed us to weather a few such periods with our clients.

Not to go too far back, we travel to the 2001-02 IT bubble burst, where we saw companies pulling back on their training infrastructure. Not the hard infrastructure (classrooms, equipment sunk costs in technology), mind you, since most of the expenses around training revolved around people—but training organizations or the people giving the training. Moreover, as companies downsized in personnel, indirect training and knowledge was lost as good employees were forced into early retirement(tribal knowledge lost) and different subject matter experts looked to more operational jobs to keep their job security.

The immediate result was obvious: less training equaled less affirmation for issues surrounding compliance, best practices, customer service etc... In the short run, since you weren’t dealing with much new hire training, the impact was probably minimal. But in the medium- to long-run, the effects were more damaging. (See Study on Downsizing).

What it boils down to is this: training impact or lack of through its absence is no different than investments in marketing to our customers. We train to get the mindshare of our employees much like we invest in marketing to discover our customers (where many companies will raise investment in the recession to go after harder-to-find customers, which is not the case in training). Ask your marketing colleague at work and he/she will tell you that lack of marketing one year will impact sales in the years to come. Building a culture of performance and better customer service is no different.

For a more discerning customer during a recession and the highly competitive market that follows, we can only bemoan the choices on cutbacks some companies made in training and applaud those that looked for competitive advantages by stepping up training to a much more motivated and job security conscious learner population during this recession.

The good news is that more and more organizations understand this ….some supporting data can be in Environmental Protection or it can be purchased under the State of the Industry Report from ASTD. You can also find great information on Bersin’s Factbook 2010 Overview.


Going forward, we will write about the direct impact on our clients training organizations and of course the learners we worry so much about.

Improving Customer Experience through Process

Last week’s focus was on technology and its role in the customer experience.

It has become very clear here at Allen that without the right integral as well as external processes, all the good intentions and good technology will not work. Any process change (or even a new approach to work), changes management evolution and needs to be undertaken holistically across the whole organization.

Touch bases with your client

Through milestones and customer check-offs during the project, you are constantly checking in with your client to be sure they are satisfied.

This alone, though, isn’t enough. Ideally, you would also have had your client review and approve the proposal and Design Strategy Document (DSD), attend weekly reviews, sign off on media and script, as well as answer the monthly sales check in and yearly reviews with the executive team. Of course, this doesn’t mean you look for problems—just check in to see if you have met expectations and if your client is enjoying the project.

Two Areas to Focus On

There are two important processes to consider when looking at improving customer experience through process: pre-sale and development.

Pre-sale

Proposal

The initial proposal stage is an area where consistency in information and delivery with a dedicated team is important. Instead of making them shorter, these should really be more detailed, longer, and uncover a more in-depth solution. Time used here saves time and money later in the project. Scope time and questions upfront should all be a part of the process. Also, don’t be afraid to have a process for when something isn’t a good fit; it shows your honesty. Learning to walk away from a deal that you cannot fulfill is an important milestone in your customer experience approach. How does your company accommodate proposal review after it has been submitted? At the extreme end, you may have to walk away from a proposal that has been accepted by the client, if, during review, new information surfaces that throws any acceptable timeline out the window…

Try and be careful not to stick customers in a template for developing a project. Especially right now, when more customers have to do more with less time and people power, consider if your template needs to adapt to their new environment or if it is still a good fit—i.e. what is your process to work out of the process? Brainstorm with the customer on how you can accommodate his/her reality based on a partnership—not just the take it or leave it mentality of some RFP processes.

Development

Many companies go to a rapid prototype immediately before an actual design phase with the design to come later—they show media flashy things not relevant to interest customers, though it gets customers excited. Because they haven’t done any design yet, they then superimpose content on a design that might not be right for that customer.

While this offers an immediate good experience, this also sets up customers for disappointment when the design they thought they were receiving looks awful or doesn’t work with the content they provide.

With kick-offs, try to scope for detail. Be sure to learn enough about the customers to actually present them solutions to what they need—take into consideration the constraints to the learning population. It is one good reason to insist on a design phase.

We have found that in these tough times, on-site, not virtual kick-offs, have become even more important as project and team constraints on the customer side are harsher.

Skipping a real design phase will not bode well for the overall customer experience.

As part of the development process, you should have weekly status meetings, a dashboard to keep you on time and on budget, as well as check-offs for each milestone in the project. Be prepared to tune your metrics to meet clients’ needs. Through the initial process, you have gotten to know your customers and this will help you determine if they need more reviews, more or less scripted pages, smaller review chunks, etc.

Learn to understand how the strict process can flex or bend—how it goes from science to an art form. A lot of the flexibility comes from looking at the whole approach through the lens that every client is unique. But to create that balance between creativity and process, set quality and expectations at the beginning so a balance is formed. The majority of the our customers treasure the time spent on communication and clear expectations and begin to evaluate all their vendors based on our process driven approach.

Ultimately, with good processes and technologies, you minimize the time your clients put in and support the time they MUST put in. Subject Matter Expert (SME) time is cut and customer project managers feel you are making their job easier as you become more of a partner not just a vendor.

So What Does This All Mean?

Any evolution of the customer experience needs to be accommodated:

• Culture
• Technology
• Work processes

Culture, technology, process: these are the three areas you should continue to question and challenge how to better, to innovate. Like the legs of a tripod or sections of an equilateral triangle, each part is just as important as its counterpart for it to be complete. And all three create a support system that adds value to the customer experience.

You have to align these three factors to whatever the future holds. Training may be spread through different parts of the company or you may have multiple people contributing that have different agendas and you need to make sure everyone is satisfied.

Many companies have to deal with more unstructured content, more collaborative web 2.0, social media, or training spread across the company in a more informal manner. For further reading on networking and using it in the workforce: http://terrencewing.blogspot.com/2009/12/networking-black-belt-skill.html

Lastly, never forget to show you care about the people, not just the companies, and have your processes, culture, and technology reflect that attitude.

For further reading on customer value and new technology:

http://seo4hightech.com/2008/11/03/create-customer-value/

And finally, working on the customer experience is what makes working at Allen a blast.

Technology and Its Role in Customer Experience

Last week’s focus was on your business culture and how knowing your client, following some basic rules, asking questions, and learning from your past would help you take the necessary steps in creating an open culture that better serves your clients.

Building on that experience, we need to look at the other major factors that influence the customer experience….Let’s take a look at technology and its relationship to customer experience.

Invest in More than Technology
If you read last week’s blog on creating a more open culture, you are probably asking yourself what technology has to do with customer experience—having the latest versions or the quickest machines is great and may even make you more money in the short run—but let’s look at our investments in technology though the prism of the customer experience.

How often do we ask ourselves as we look at investments how we are better aligning our company with our customer’s needs, while improving the workflow of our business?

Seeing is Believing with Rapid Content Development
One of the first “Aha’s” we had at Allen was around the traditional method of developing scripts in a word document—you think it looks good—send out the script to client—they think it looks good—but you reach the online media version of the course and something just does not work… the client experience is marred by unmet expectations and you are forced to compromise on your agreed upon design ideas.

What technology could you invest in that would affect this bump in the customer experience road?

Once way is to invest in technology that allows customers to immediately see their content online to catch issues or problems. Once you start scripting online first, you enhance the customer experience, push difficult issues with content to the forefront, and allow the customer to see the content on the screen. This becomes a strong win win as expectations are met: customers have an easier time working with their subject matter experts and your designers create better workflow with the graphic and media side of the business.

The reality of what a good application of technology can do for us is amazing. Customers see things in the expected modality early on. For your business, it speeds the velocity of reaction with localization and small changes. Often, scripting can be costly to customers. Take away the minutia of experience by addressing it immediately. For instance, if during a meeting, an issue comes up, your designer can change it right there and fix what is necessary. This is rapid content development, but it is not a rapid prototype.

Rapid prototype is when media is designed before content development. That is not what we are talking about here. We have found that rapid prototyping creates many of the problems earlier visualization has come to solve. The basic premise we at Allen believe in, is that good design and content are king… rushing to media before a good design phase will often change the priorities in the design itself and focus more on pyrotechnics then on the needs of the learner and the instructional challenge presented by the content.

Instead, spend time figuring out the content first and speed up the media phase. Combine writing and media phase together, at least initial online scripting, to give customers a true taste before they approve the script—then check to see that this script works well for the online experience your client is seeking. This is rapid content development; it lessens the gap between ideal and real.

A Place for Everything
Another investment in technology is to find a central repository for all the documents you are working with that everyone would have access to. By being able to place all the moving parts of a project online, it alleviates lost faxes, emails, different versions of the same document, etc. Basically, it standardizes the workflow. Creating the technology that allows for this type of online central space takes away the uncertainty and allows for greater visibility and consistency.

By providing technology that helps the customer experience, you also allow for a faster and smoother work flow on both sides. The experience then is about more than just working efficiently with you, but about working more effectively within their project.

Give Your Customers a Choice
The beauty of technology is that you can explore the many ways in which to complete a project: more expensive, less expensive, longer, shorter, faster, media rich, highly interactive, etc. By providing these choices to check off along the way, you give clients the power to trade. You explore options with them and enable them to barter the best choices for their company.

By providing a range of choices, you treat every customer equally. Whether they are a $3000 to a $300,000 client, they need, they must, and they should get the same level of attention.

Without being able to scale and deliver, you aren’t providing the best customer experience. And without the right technology and processes in place, you can’t scale and deliver.

Final Week: Processes and how they add to the customer experience.

If a good customer experience matters, what does it take to ensure a good one?

Within the last few months, I’ve read many articles focused on what your company can do or is doing to survive this economy. I’ve read about the importance of customer experience and how tied it is to project success. What I haven’t read about is how to encourage your company to improve that customer experience. Saying it and doing it are two very different things.

Being in this business almost thirty years and focusing the last eight specifically on customer experience, I thought I could add what I’ve learned to the ongoing discussion on how to improve your customer experience.

Before I begin, let me define customer experience as I see it: Customer experience is an equal balance of enjoyment, professionalism, and respect.

Enjoyment—no reason why working together shouldn’t be fun. Enjoyment and functionality are also two different things. If you allow your business to support the culture of enjoyment, you allow for socialization with clients and their passion about training to bubble over. Functionality should be apparent in the design and the content.
Professionalism—both sides feel project is on time, budget, and there were no major disruptions.
Respect—either side exhibits trust or respect for the other. May or may not be tied to project directly.

However you wish to define customer experience, three factors still influence customer experience and how it ties to project success: culture, technology, and process.

This week, we will tackle culture. First, let me state that I am referring to your business culture and the business culture of your client—not your personal culture.

Know Your Client
By knowing your customers’ culture, and by having an open enough culture in your own business to be able to align yourself with your customers’, you will be able to be more empathetic, understanding, and adaptable to their needs.

While you work with a business, you must not forget that you work with specific people. These people have roles, unique needs, and time constraints. By being able to customize and adapt your processes enough to work with these issues, you are aligning yourself to their business culture.

Cardinal Rules of Customer Experience
Cardinal rules that guide the customer experience. As a company, your objective should be to make sure that every component of your company as it engages in the client from the initial communication on the website, through the way you present yourselves, through the way you reach out and connect, through the way you scope and engage, through the way you close and set up, through the way you project manage design and develop, even through the way you collect the money and how you approach your accounts receivable. All components must have the same quality.

Don’t Assume, Ask
Do not let a perceived dissatisfaction go untreated. Ask what is behind it as it could be anything. That is why you look at the person and what his/her unique needs are. Have they changed? Be attentive and strive for enjoyment as this will command respect. That is part of the company culture you should believe in.

Part of being able to give good customer experience is not being afraid to isolate what would lead to a bad one. A great product at the end will make that project successful but will not make that relationship successful. You have to strive to go beyond just delivering a good product, but also a great relationship.

Clients don’t come to you just to produce content; they come for your expertise. Good design is not a commodity because it relates to people’s creativity. A template does not equal good design; it is a tool. And like a can of spray paint, it is only on the hands of a good designer that it welds amazing art.

Learn from the Past
All companies have had bad customer experiences. No one has a perfect record, even if it wasn’t your fault that the customer left. But what can you do with that experience, what can you learn? Look to your longevity in the market and consistent growth. Look to your investments based on your contribution to the customer experience. Look to where you alleviate some issues that would cause a negative customer experience. Look for consistency in how you treat clients regardless of the size of the project.

Remember, a good experience leads to good projects. Ultimately, we are talking about how you grow a relationship between you and your client.

For this to work well, you need to have the right technology and processes in place. But start with the right attitude and culture first.

Next week: Technology and its role in customer experience.

What I Learned in Puppy Kindergarten

My partner Brian and I recently brought home a new puppy. It was an unexpected acquisition. When this cute puppy showed up at the rescue group where we volunteer, it was just too hard to say no. While I’ve had a few adult dogs, this is my first puppy, and I now find myself spending my Saturday mornings in puppy kindergarten with my new dog Stevie in tow.

As an instructional designer, it’s hard to go into any new learning situation and not pay attention to the instructional strategies that are being used. In that vein, here are four things that I’ve learned in puppy kindergarten and how they apply to web-based training.

The instructional blend is important.
Puppy kindergarten is different from classes for adult dogs. Puppies have a very short attention span. Focusing for five minutes is a challenge; forget keeping them engaged in practicing their sits and downs for 45 minutes. Because of this, our class is organized around the following segments:

• The instructor talks for five to ten minutes about the exercise we’ll be doing or things we need to do in the future.
• We practice the exercise or work with our dogs on something we’ve learned before for several minutes.
• After successfully completing the exercise, we let all the dogs go and play for ten minutes.
• Repeat as time allows for the next hour.

It reminds me a bit of the instructional blend that we develop in our courses. Even for an adult, an endless stream of presentation pages will quickly become a bore. It’s important to mix in knowledge checks, realistic scenarios, and other activities to reinforce key points and keep learners engaged.

For me, my favorite part of puppy class is the playing. Somday I’d like to figure out a way to strategically incorporate Cute Overload videos into our courses. It would certainly keep me engaged.

It’s not about what you do in class; it’s about what you do at home (or on the job).
A puppy spends an hour in class every week and 167 hours not in class. No matter how fantastic the instructor, he or she will never be able to teach the puppy and owner everything they need to know in that one hour. Instead, the instructor demonstrates training techniques in class and then sends us home with handouts and homework. Our instructor emphasizes the importance of why we need to continue this work at home. If this isn’t enough to motivate us, there’s always class the following week when we’ll have to demonstrate our progress.

It’s similar to an online course. Most of the courses I work on are only a few hours long, and I’ve worked on courses as short as 15 minutes. To affect change in learners, these courses need to motivate learners by reinforcing why the change is important and how it’s relevant to them. It also helps if there’s ongoing support and follow-up in the form of job aids, mentoring, reviews, online resources, etc.

You can develop a course in a vacuum, but it ultimately won’t help you house train your dog or encourage employees to follow a new procedure. If you really want training to be effective, it’s important to consider what motivates your audience and how you’ll follow up on results.

Carrots are more effective than sticks.
Puppies are more prone to shutting down in the face of stress than adult dogs. For that reason, it’s important to use positive rewards to motivate a puppy and reinforce positive behaviors. Instead of punishing a puppy when it does something wrong, it’s much more effective to withhold attention and ignore the bad behavior until it stops or, better yet, redirect the bad behavior to a behavior you want and then offer a reward.

With puppies, rewards include food, toys, and affection. The gold standard seems to be freeze-dried liver. With humans, it’s not so simple. It’s important to think about your audience and what motivates them. Perhaps you can simply speak to how using what they learn in the course will help them do their jobs better. Perhaps the training needs to be tied to financial incentives. It all depends on your audience, but it’s important to consider.

The 508 version matters.
I’ve left out one key characteristic of my new puppy: he’s blind. For a lot of the activities we do in class, Stevie and I need modifications. We’re not the only ones. Most of the puppies in class don't have disabilities like Stevie’s, but they do have individual differences and characteristics that affect how they learn. Some are younger than others and have shorter attention spans. Some are physically smaller and may not be able to do the same things as larger dog. Some are more prone to stress and need a calmer approach. This means that each of us needs a little personal attention from the instructor to figure out the best way to teach our dog.

Human learners also have individual differences, and it’s important to consider those differences in developing training. When I was in graduate school, we learned about Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and the different ways people learn. In all of our projects, it was required that we address all eight of Gardner’s types of learners.

While it may not be possible to do that in all of the courses I develop at Allen, it’s important to at least provide several different modes of accessing information. In an audio dependent course, it’s important to include a transcript. For visual learners, it’s important to provide clear diagrams and illustrations. Some learners may not be able to really internalize what they learn in a course until they have a chance to practice it on the job. For them, it’s important to provide resources they can come back to. Providing these additional resources and considering the individual differences ultimately helps us make a better course for all learners.

And because I think it’s a carrot, I’m ending with a picture of my pup: