4 Common Problems You May Encounter When Designing a Customer Training Programme

6th July 2022

common problems designing customer training programme

Table of Contents

Let’s face it – the path to designing a successful customer training programme comes with hurdles. How do you secure the required budget and proper resources? How do you harness the expertise needed to design an effective programme? How do you determine partner engagement? 

More and more organisations are identifying the need to deliver value at every stage of the customer lifecycle and recognising the importance of implementing formal customer training programmes. Research from Talented Learning proves that 68% of trained customers use products more often than untrained customers. 

However, companies might not always be aware of the methods and means they can use to overcome issues they may meet in the design process.  

Fortunately, these challenges can be easily overcome and help is at hand. 

Making sure you’re prepared for whatever might crop up along the way will help minimise disruption and streamline the development of your programme.  

We’ll explore some of the most common obstacles people face in the design and development process and how best to tackle them.

Customer Training Programme Common Challenges

Collating Content

Producing effective learning material is the big challenge for most, and a common issue to encounter when designing a customer training programme. Gather any existing training materials you already have, no matter how small – everything will benefit from evolving your programme, even if you’re using previous content to assess gaps where new training needs developing.  

As long as it’s in a deliverable state, the content can range from anything to tech specs, old manuals, and previously used classroom presentations. 

If you’re sourcing an external company to deliver your programme, they will be able to assist with the creation side from the available content you own.

Expertise Required to Set Up

A frequent issue many businesses encounter in the design process is lacking the knowledge needed to set up in the first place. Although they might implement a new LMS, they’ll stumble at the hurdle of tackling the endless capabilities it brings. This can severely impact the budget splashed on the system in the first place and lead to a lack of satisfaction. 

Your chosen training programme might come with all the functions you require, but if your internal staff simply don’t have the necessary knowledge or training to be able to use the system to its full potential, you won’t be able to reap all the benefits available to you. 

Before you settle on your chosen LMS, take your time to properly assess the functionality, accessibility and properties that your learners may or may not be able to connect with. 

Carefully consider who is going to take on the role of launching and administering the programme.  

You’ll likely need ongoing support with your LMS even once it’s up and running, so make sure you know who will support you and your learners every step of the way.

Related reading: Everything you need to know about our managed learning services

Securing the Budget and Resource

Designing an effective customer training programme can be pricey, not to mention the ongoing costs of keeping on top of updates and developments. Keeping product information and course content new and fresh is vital for a programme’s longevity, meaning there has to be ample funds in place when you’re going through production. 

A simple way to break down the expenditure is to create a budget during the planning process. This can include: 

  • The cost of the LMS.
  • The cost of administering and managing the training programme.
  • The cost of producing training content. 

When crafting your budget, you might also want to consider other factors such as whether you have the right team in place to manage, deliver and design the programme in-house, or whether you will need to source additional support.

Related reading: Want to create a training programme but have limited budget – Here’s how

Determining Customer Engagement

Without proper customer engagement, your training programme will likely fall flat. A lot of organisations struggle with this issue – maybe the trainee can’t connect with or understand the learning objectives, or fail to see the relevance of the training in their role. It could even be the chosen mode of delivery that’s causing an issue. 

The best way to tackle engagement is through feedback. Target the problem at the source by making the customer invested in their learning – communicate and collaborate with them on what exactly they need, what they’re missing, and what you can do to help. Use surveys, appraisals, and one-to-ones to create custom content that involves the trainee from start to finish.

Related reading: 5 problems that can occur after you launch a training programme for external audiences

Steps for Effective Programme Design

Now we’ve identified the challenges and how to overcome them, we can explore the right steps to success in designing a customer training programme.

1. Identify Needs

First things first – identify the training needs of your customers. This will not only streamline your process, but it will help you create a more effective and engaging programme as you’ll have to pinpoint and analyse the exact requirements. 

Ask yourself what hurdles your target customers are currently meeting that your training will alleviate – what are their exact needs, and how do you intend to meet them? A good way to conduct this process is to survey and interview your target customers and respond to their feedback. Determine any areas of confusion and distinguish the key desired outcomes they would like to achieve from your programme.

2. Develop Objectives

Once you’ve got your customer’s needs established, you can move on to setting the responding objectives. If you’ve effectively identified the demands of your customers, you can easily make your objectives relevant to them. 

What steps are necessary to fulfil the needs of your ideal customer? Try to set small, specific objectives – being able to pin down more exact goals will make it easier to evaluate what you’ve achieved or not achieved along the way.  

Remember to relate your customer’s requirements back to the overall objectives of your organisation. Training programmes should be mutually beneficial for all parties to remain invested.

3. Seek Out Appropriate Resources

Assess whether you have the appropriate resources in-house to deliver your training and get the results you want. Do you have access to the right expertise? Would it be beneficial to seek out some extra support? 

Many companies are increasingly opting for external training programme support to take advantage of the experience, skills and knowledge it can bring. While there are hiring costs to consider, external training providers can work out to be more cost-effective. There is greater flexibility with the timescale of outsourcing, and organisations will benefit from a wide range of services without the obligation of another set of salaries to fill and employees to manage.

4. Implement Build the Programme

Time to build your programme. Timing is key here – you want to provide your training to customers in the way that is most going to benefit them. Will they need training far in advance to use your products or services? Will your programme need to be provided on-demand? 

It’s also important to consider your method of implementation. Will your training be pushed to customers in person? Would it be better to embed your training inside your service portal or software, or on a separate website? 

Consider what is most beneficial to your exact desired customer. You might want to run some test models prior to full implementation to assess the most effective option.

5. Launch the Programme

Once you’ve established your design, created the training content, tested your delivery platform and set up your final version, you can confidently launch your programme. This is extensive work and shouldn’t be underestimated, but once it’s done, you can now target your programme promotion. 

You’ve done the heavy lifting – now it’s time to shift your focus onto building a narrative for your partners about why exactly your programme is important. Get your key partners on board and support them all the way through the onboarding process.

6. Review Programme

A successful programme doesn’t stand still once it’s released. Taking the time to continuously improve your programme will elevate your training to the next level, as at this stage you’ll have the ability to review the process and respond to feedback. 

Examining how customers are reacting to your programme will allow you to assess how it’s functioning and recognise possible areas for improvement. You could use learning analytics, review and compare support requests, or simply directly ask customers what their thoughts and opinions are and whether they’re satisfied with the level of training.

Everyone will experience challenges in their design process at some point, but with the proper support, a successful customer training programme is always achievable. If you or your organisation are looking to launch your next training project, get in touch today to hear about how Wahoo Learning can help.

Share

Get the latest news

For all the latest news and industry insights simply sign up today - it’s spam free!

Related Posts

You may also enjoy

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Why Online Training Fails: 10 Common Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)

Maybe you have launched a training program and it’s not reaching its goals, or you are looking at launching a training program, you are aware of some significant challenges and you don’t want it to fail. Whichever group you fall into, this blog is written to help you understand what can make your training program fail and the steps you can take to make sure it doesn’t happen to you.
Businessman in Control of White Rock: A Promising Startup Concep

What is Customer Training?

In this blog, we will explore the concept of customer training in B2B businesses, its benefits, and how to create an effective training program. We will also discuss the challenges businesses face when implementing customer training programs and how to overcome them, providing you with insights and strategies to create impactful customer training programs that drive business success.
Customer Relationship Management, Businessman use tablet with global structure customer network technology, Data exchanges development. customer service, social media. digital marketing online.

A Guide to Successful Channel Partner Management

Implementing effective channel partner management strategies is essential in order to be successful and navigate the significant challenges presented by managing channel partners, such as the misalignment of goals, inconsistent messaging and inadequate communication. Whether you’re just starting a channel partner program or looking to optimise your existing program, this blog will provide valuable insights into how to manage channel partners successfully, some of the common challenges faced when managing channel partners and practical strategies to overcome them.
Surreal landscape with a split road and signpost arrows showing two different courses, left and right direction to choose. Road splits in distinct direction ways. Difficult decision, choice concept.

Outsourcing vs In-House – Which is Best for Delivering Your Training Program?

In the early stages of training programme development, planning how you intend to support, maintain and manage it is the key to its success. For this, there are generally two options: outsourcing to a specialist or keeping it under one roof in-house. However, deciding how to move forward isn’t clear cut. Many factors can impact the decision. We are not about to tell you to outsource to us. It’s about us helping you explore your options and make the right choice for your requirements.
Achievement and Business Goal Success Concept - Creative business people with icon graphic interface showing employee reward giving for business success achievement.

How to Ensure Channel Partner Success

To build a successful partner channel program, it’s important to carefully manage and nurture the vendor/partner relationship throughout its journey. Several key components must be considered to ensure a successful channel partner program, which includes understanding your channel partners, providing a top-quality onboarding process, ongoing communication, and measuring success.  
Knowledge transfer. Business knowledge management. Building wood blocks on table.

4 Popular Training Delivery Methods (and where to use them)

While more companies recognise the benefits of providing a training program to their teams, it is important to acknowledge and evaluate the different methods available. We’ve written this blog to explore what methods of training delivery are available, the benefits of each one and where they are best used.