As organizations continue to find new ways of working with uncertainties driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, customer satisfaction remains their number-one business priority, cited by 93% of companies in Brandon Hall Group’s HCM Outlook 2021 Study as important or critical. It ranks higher than revenue generation, return-to-work strategies and managing ongoing change. Clearly, companies are willing to explore any strategy that might help them enhance their relationships with their customers.
One part of the business that doesn’t often come to mind when thinking about customer satisfaction is the learning function. L&D is seen as an internal HR function to the organization. Sales, marketing and operations are much more likely to be involved with the customer relationship. If L&D is not involved, however, companies are missing a huge opportunity in the impact customer training can have on customer satisfaction.
Customer education represents a chance to strengthen and deepen the customer relationship, improve satisfaction and create repeat clients. By delivering engaging, effective experiences, customer training can enhance product use and reduce customer-support needs. That means a happier customer as well as reduced costs for the support desk.
Brandon Hall Group Gold Preferred Provider Acendre offers myriad solutions and services designed to help companies deliver these kinds of customer training experiences. First, is their eLearning platform Inquisiq, a solution uniquely positioned to deliver training in the complex customer-facing environment. Acendre sees Inquisiq as a way to train customers and customer-support staff to ensure long-term customer satisfaction and retention. Acendre understands the unique challenge customer training presents, so they also provide consulting services to help companies develop better customer training strategies. In addition, they are a one-stop shop for content. They have partnerships with content providers for off-the-shelf content, partnerships with authoring tool providers if you want to build your own, or they can create custom learning programs from the ground up. Whatever the relationship Acendre has with their clients, they work to help them understand four key things:
- Customer training is the product.
- Integration into daily workflows is critical.
- Training content is an asset that must be safeguarded.
- The learner’s experience must reflect the client’s brand.
Acendre acutely understands how customer training is part of a larger customer experience and ensures their content and Inquisiq can integrate with critical systems such as CRM, accounting, eCommerce and more. Their tools and expertise can help companies gain critical customer insights into how and why they interact with training and what outcomes result. To dig deeper into these considerations, download the Brandon Hall group/Acendre eBook on the subject here .
–David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst, Brandon Hall Group
@davidmwentworth
