How to incorporate ‘learner needs’ into training programmes for your customer-facing teams
The global learning and development market size is estimated to be around 366 billion U.S dollars and it’s safe to say that most customer-facing companies have some kind of employee training programme in place.
However, with all this investment into employee development, a lot of employers still haven’t quite cracked their strategy in order to reap the full rewards.
In fact, a McKinsey survey found that only 25% of people believed that training measurably improved workplace performance. Whilst a Gartner study found that a whopping 70% of employees report they don’t have the mastery of the skills needed to do their jobs.
These findings seem to indicate that customer-facing companies are ‘ticking the box’ for delivering employee training programmes without meeting the needs of their employees. They’re not basing their training around what their employees deem important nor around the financial needs of the business. This is a dangerous combination that can lead to:
High employee turnover rates
Poor ROI
Poor performance
Low employee engagement levels
High running costs
Low productivity
Poor customer service
What is learner-needs based training and why is it important for customer-facing teams?
Well, as you’ll have guessed from the name, training which is based around learners needs puts each individual employee at the centre of the learning programme. It focuses on the gap between where the learner is at the moment and where they need to be in order to grow and improve. Alongside this, it will also look at:
Where the employee thinks they are and what skills they think they require to move forward.
How they prefer to learn e.g. on the job (in the moment), presentations, text-based, videos, gamification, what times, how often etc.
What motivates them to learn? Are they motivated by extrinsic or intrinsic factors?
How do they want to be rewarded for their learning?
How to discover what your learners need?
It’s quite simple really, it all starts by asking your customer-facing employees the right questions and listening closely to what they say. If you’re struggling with what to ask, take some questions from our article ‘85 questions to ask frontline employees about your workplace training’.
You’ll begin your discovery phase by listening to your employee’s needs as a whole across your entire organisation. After this, you can use your findings to filter your employees down into groups so you can adequately meet their learning needs.
Let’s begin by listing out the quick and easy methods to discover the overall needs of your staff and to highlight the general skills gaps across your organisation.
#1 Employee surveys
Surveys are a quick and easy way to collect lots of in-depth data in a short amount of time. To ensure you get the most out of your survey make sure your questions are super targeted to what it is you want to find out.
This reduces the chance of you having lots of irrelevant information. For example, don’t ask ‘What would you like to learn about?’ as this is very ambiguous and can lead to a whole host of random answers. Instead, ask ‘What would you like to learn about to help you achieve more at work?’ By adding the phrase “to help you achieve more at work” you’re narrowing down the types of answers you’ll receive.
We would recommend asking the following questions:
What skills do you think you are missing in order to progress to the next level in your role?
What skills do you think you are missing in order to provide better service to our customers?
What would you like to learn about to help you achieve more at work?
In terms of learning methods which do you prefer: text-based, videos, presentations, quizzes, gamification, learning as you go.
What motivates you to learn more?
Aside from money, how else could we reward you for your learning efforts?
What’s stopping you from learning at work?
How often would you like to learn at work?
#2 Learning suggestion boxes
If your customer-facing employees are busy on their feet all day and it’s difficult to get them to fill out a survey, create a suggestion box. You can either create one or a few which you can place in different departments within your workplace e.g. one in the stockroom, one in the kitchen, one in the delivery room etc.
How to make one?
Get a large cardboard box and tape it shut.
Cut a hole in the top for employees to post their suggestions.
Write your requirements on the top of the box and tape them in place.
Your requirements may sound something like this:
“Training is an important part of your role and to ensure it’s as effective as possible we want to make sure it’s meeting your needs. Please take a piece of paper and write down 3 things you want to learn and how it will help you perform better at work.”
#3 Team discussions to find out what your learners need
One afternoon or evening, get your employees together for a brainstorming session. Make it fun by ordering pizzas and drinks and use the time to chat about what it is they want to get out of their learning.
Write down everyone’s thoughts on a whiteboard or large notepad and summarise your findings after the session.
#4 Employee observations
Sometimes learners aren’t aware of what they need in order to improve. To overcome this obstacle, get your managers to observe at least 5 people in their department and analyse what their skills gaps are. This should give you an overarching view and understanding of what your learners need.
Use an observational reporting tool such as Engage as this will make it quick and easy to carry out your observations. Managers can open a set of predetermined questions and start swiping through them on their mobile, tablet or desktop device.
Every answer builds up a scored report which you can use to easily view skills gaps across your entire organisation. For example, you’ll be able to quickly see if your employees in Cheshire are struggling with hygiene standards or if your employees in Swansea are having difficulty remembering product information.
How to organise and use your data
You’ve now got tonnes of useful information but you need to make it accessible and useful. The best way to do this is to create learner personas. How many you create depends on the size of your organisation e.g. how many employees, how many departments. If you have multiple departments across your business you may want to create 3 personas per department to account for the differing levels of skill.
For example, for your sales department, you may have a junior learner persona, a mid-level learner persona and an advanced learner persona. If you want to make these more detailed for specific individuals, that’s entirely up to you (if you’ve got the time which most L&D professionals do not).
Copy the learner persona template below:
Department: Sales
Name: Junior sales learner
What they want to learn: How to upsell, how to consistently hit their targets, how to improve their lead generation strategies.
What they need to learn: Customer service basics, how to upsell, how to handle rejections.
How they like to learn: On their mobile device, on the go, they also prefer learning in the evenings.
What motivates them to learn: Promotions, being recognised.
How they like to be rewarded: Free lunches, longer breaks.
Now it’s time to design your training programme with your learner’s needs in mind
Use those personas to create targeted training programmes that fulfil the needs of your employees. Simply take what you’ve learnt from the personas e.g. ‘They want to learn how to upsell’ and ensure you incorporate this into your programme.
We understand that the initial thought of designing a new training programme for your employees can seem overwhelming. You may start to wonder if it’s all really worth your time and whether it will actually make a difference to the bottom line of your business. The truth is that you can’t really afford to ignore the needs of your learners and if you carry on pushing out generic learning initiatives, you’re never going to achieve the results which you desire.
Download our free training plan template below and fill in the blanks.
That’s all you need to know to find what your learners really need. We hope you’ll use the information in this article to deliver effective training programmes and soon you should start seeing real tangible results.
If you’re tired of using complex training and engagement platforms which do nothing in terms of results, you hate seeing declining engagement rates, and you can’t bare the thought of another long and tedious onboarding process. Let’s chat.
Ocasta Engage is a popular tool used alongside large workplace LMS’s to dramatically ramp up engagement and transform employee training.
Get started now so your customer-facing team has the know-how to sell and provide the best customer experience every day.
You shouldn’t demo Engage if:
You want low engagement rates
You want a confusing comms and training platform which does more to repel your customer-facing teams than engage them
You want your customer-facing teams to feel overwhelmed with the amount of information they have to remember
You like a clunky, frustrating experience when it comes to engagement platforms for customer-facing teams
You enjoy having to go through central teams to post anything which slows the progress of your customer-facing teams down.
You don’t want a 98% engagement rate for your customer-facing teams
You should demo Engage if:
You want a dedicated app for your frontline teams which makes it easy for them to find what they need and serve your customers in the best way possible
You want enviable engagement rates which other platforms in your business could never compare to
You want an engaged, happy and knowledgable team of experts who are always ready to deliver the best customer service.
You enjoy working with a team of friendly experts who genuinely care about the performance of your customer-facing teams
You’re finally ready to end your engagement struggles and embrace a new streamlined way of working where everyone is always efficient and productive
