Learning4Managers Supporting Performance Improvement

These are two simple truths we often ignore:

• If your customers don’t know your products and services, or understand how to use them, they’ll leave.
• If your employees don’t know how to communicate with customers and peers effectively, or if they are not well prepared, their productivity will be poor.

Either way, your bottom line suffers because of what people lack: Knowledge. Your most cost-effective solution: Education.

Customer Education

Your customers need to know about you, your products and your services.

• Marketing and branding: customers need to know who you are, what you do.
• Products: they may need demonstrations or better instructions on how to use your products.
• Services: customers may need presentations, or a walk-through .

Here are some things you can do to enhance Customer’s knowledge:

• Educational Games and Activities: feature a product or a service online by using an interactive game.
• Friendly Challenges: invite your customers to a friendly competition and to test their skill and knowledge with an online pop-quiz.

Product guides and tours: build CD-Rom or Web –based tutorials, product guides and virtual tours to help customers appreciate your products and services.

Staff Education

What your staff need to know to make your business a success:

• Communication skills: whether it is talking to a customer or to a peer, in today’s economy only people with above average skills will be successful.
• Leadership skills: in today’s economy, there is only room for people who demonstrate solid leadership skills. You can help your staff improve theirs.

Your staff can benefit from these strategies:

Self-paced training: build a CD-Rom or Web-based training library that staff can access at their convenience or on-demand.

Just-in-time training: When launching a new product or service, you can broadcast a presentation over the Web and showcase your new features.

Orientation: reduce cost by converting orientation and other training into cost-effective online modules.

Visit our Tools and Resources page to see examples of the types of tools described in this article.

Contact us if you want a free assessment to consider your situation and evaluate possible learning solutions to your educational needs.

Tags: customer education, staff development

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 1:55 am and is filed under customer education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

About the Author: Jorge Acuna holds a Master's degree in Education and is an expert in adult learning and talent development strategies. Over the past 12 years he has worked extensively with a variety of organizations designing and developing educational strategies for staff, managers, and customers, and researching the ever changing adult learning landscape.