As a key aspect of corporate eLearning, customer training focuses on educating external entities like customers, resellers, dealers, and partners. In addition to improving customer experience, customer training programs make the products more valuable to consumers. Your business can implement customer training to leverage a slew of objectives – simplify customer onboarding, improve customer engagement, promote customer loyalty, and reduce customer support costs.
But you need to launch multiple and different customer training programs to educate diverse customers. In addition to allowing customers to choose from several training programs, you need to ensure that they can get training at their own pace and convenience. You can easily design and run multiple customer training programs by investing in a new-age learning management system (LMS). The LMS platforms will enable a large number of customers to access training simultaneously across geographic locations.
You must remember that the learning management systems (LMS systems) differ from each other in many aspects – features, accessibility, user-friendliness, and security. Some LMS systems are designed specifically to facilitate customer training, while others can be customized according to your customer training strategies. That is why; it becomes essential to compare the customer training LMSs using a number of parameters or criteria.
11 Important Parameters to Select the Right Customer Training LMS
User Interface
Modern customers love software applications that are simple, fast, and intuitive. The design goal of new-age LMSs focuses on enabling the learners to access the user interface without any training or preparation. But many conventional LMSs still feature user interfaces that are complicated. The learners have to access the LMSs just like conventional course catalogs. While comparing customer training LMS systems, you must opt for a software solution that users can be accessed effortlessly like popular websites. The easy navigability will help you to boost both the learning experience and customer engagement.
Accessibility
Most customers these days access websites and web applications on mobile devices instead of desktop or laptop. You can impress and engage customers only when the LMS supports mobile learning and microlearning. The mobile learning feature will enable customers to access the eLearning content anytime and anywhere using their mobile devices. At the same time, microlearning will help learners to acquire knowledge by divining a course into multiple small learning units. However, it is also important to check if the LMS allows customers to learn without incurring data charges by downloading the eLearning content.
Content Authoring Tools
You must remember that customer training or external training is an ongoing process. You have to launch new training programs regularly to impress and engage the customers. Also, you need to create just-in-time content to convey product updates and new product releases. That is why; you must choose a customer training LMS that comes with built-in content authoring tools. Also, you need to check if the content authoring tools enable you to create training materials by combining a variety of learning content – ebooks, images, videos, audio, podcasts, infographics, quizzes, and assessments.
Content Discovery
Unlike internal training programs, external training programs cannot be assigned to specific customers. Instead of assigning courses to customers, your customer training strategy must focus on enabling customers to find relevant content, courses, and training programs without putting in extra time and effort. You must choose an LMS that is designed with robust content discovery features. The customers can use the content discovery options to find relevant courses related to product knowledge, product usage, or product care. The new-age LMS systems boost content discovery by complementing advanced search features with tagging and filtering options.
Content Recommendation
Most customers these days expect LMSs to recommend relevant content and training programs. While searching for online courses, they refer to the recommendations made by the LMS along with the search results. The advanced LMS systems leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to recommend relevant content or courses to a customer based on his previous activities and preferences. The personalized suggestions and recommendations persuade the customer to access new training programs regularly through the LMS.
Gamification
Gamification is currently one of the hottest trends in corporate eLearning. The new-age LMS systems help you to gamify customer training programs by applying game principles and adding game features. Your business can persuade customers to access and complete training programs by offering points, badges, and trophies. The incentives will persuade customers to access more training programs. The LMS platforms must enable every customer to monitor his progress and track his achievement using a personal dashboard. In addition to persuading customers to learn, the gamification features will make them recommend the courses or training programs to their friends and coworkers.
Tracking and Reporting
You need to update and finetune the customer training programs regularly to generate a higher ROI. That is why; you must choose an LMS that allows you to track the performance of individual customer training programs by generating reports based on real-time information. The reports will help you to evaluate the performance of a customer training program using important parameters like content being accessed by customers, the amount of time spent by customers on every course, and the gaps in skill and learning.
Integration
You can improve and personalize the learning experience of customers by integrating the LMS with existing ERP and CRM solutions. In addition to streamlining the learning experience, the integration will help you to understand what courses a customer accesses. The information will help you to inform the customer about similar courses and training programs by sending automated notifications or messages. Also, you can leverage the integration to assess the impact of individual training programs on improving product adoption, customer loyalty, and customer experience.
Branding
While delivering customer training, the LMS will act as a customer-facing interface. You cannot impress the customers without customizing the look and feel of the LMS according to your business’s branding strategy. While comparing customer training LMS systems, you must look for vendors who support custom branding. The customization option will make it easier for you to brand the LMS according to your precise branding guidelines. The custom branding will help you to make the LMS replicate your business’ official website.
Security
Like other enterprise web applications, LMS platforms must keep the customer and corporate data secure. You can protect sensitive data and prevent data breaches by opting for an LMS that stores and transfers data in an encrypted format. Also, it must provide each customer with unique login credentials that they can use to access the training content. The LMS can further prevent targeted security attacks by supporting a single sign-on (SSO). However, you need to ensure that the customer does not have an option to copy or transfer the content from the LMS to external devices or applications. Here are the essential LMS security features that you should be aware of.
Technical Support
Both on-premise and cloud-based LMSs need instant technical support to function and perform continuously. The technical support provided by LMS vendors helps your business to use the LMS efficiently without deploying dedicated staff. But the quality and speed of technical support vary across the top LMS vendors. While shortlisting customer training LMSs, you must check if the vendor provides 24/7 technical support. Also, you must choose a vendor that provides technical support through multiple communication channels – emails, voice calls, text messages, and instant messages.
The highly flexible and scalable LMS platform designed by Mintbook helps your business to implement both internal and external training programs. In addition to supporting multiple languages, the LMS comes with multiple features to simply the customer training process. You can further scale and customize the customer training LMS according to your changing trends in customer education.
