Another year has come and gone. Now, it’s time to plan for 2018. Of course, you can (and should) base your strategy on the status of your own customer training program. But if you want to stay ahead of the curve, you also need to understand industry-wide trends. That’s where we come in.
Continue reading to see our 2018 customer training predictions:
1. More emphasis on adoption
Most companies today focus on metrics, like customer engagement. While this data can be helpful for your Customer Success team, it doesn’t really provide a benchmark for the ROI of your training program.
For this reason, we predict that more companies will start to measure training adoption in 2018. If you’d like to do so as well, here are a few questions to consider:
- How many new customers are taking your onboarding program?
- How many of your current customers are taking ongoing training?
- Of those who take training, how many see the value in your product and use it on a regular basis
2. Growth of low-stakes certification
There are two types of certifications: high-stakes and low-stakes. In high-stakes certification, online proctored exams are essential. Low-stakes certification, however, does not typically involve proctoring, as it is more about driving brand awareness and creating a sense of community among users. This may be accomplished through publicly available courses. When a student completes a course, they would then receive a badge to display on LinkedIn.
Don’t be surprised if you see more of these programs in the months to come. With recent technological advances, it is now easier than ever to align your training with this type of certification.
3. Need for cross-functional skills
Customer training encompasses a range of roles, including trainers, instructional designers, certification managers, and LMS administrators. While each position naturally has different responsibilities, we expect to see more overlap between them, as individual contributors strive to demonstrate ROI to senior leadership.
For example, instructional designers may need to start measuring the business impact of their courses, rather than just focusing on content-level data.
4. Video will remain a top priority
In the past few years, video has skyrocketed in popularity. And for good reason. Most people enjoy watching videos, which tend to be more engaging than text-based formats. They’re also easy to produce – all you need is a camera and some inexpensive editing software.
Looking to get started? Check out this blog post for 5 must-read articles on video in eLearning!
5. Rise in demand for mobile learning
Did you know that 70% of on-the-go professionals will take care of business on their personal mobile devices by the year 2018?
Today’s customers clearly appreciate flexibility. They want to have the option to take training whenever, and wherever they may be. For this reason, it’s crucial to provide a mobile-responsive learning experience.
6. Continued focus on microlearning
Microlearning is not a new concept, but it’s worth mentioning here, as it will likely still be relevant in 2018. Don’t believe us? Think back to your least favorite college course – that one where the professor droned on for what felt like an eternity. By the end of the lesson, were you still paying attention?
Most people will (understandably) tune out or drop off after a certain amount of time. In fact, according to Vidyard, videos under 90 seconds see an average retention rate of 53%, compared to videos over 30 minutes, which retain only 10%. So the shorter you can make your content, the better.
What other trends do you expect to see in 2018? Let us know in the comments!
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