"How to" vs. "How to Apply"

We've recently seen an increase in demand for our electronic learning courses covering the "how to" as well  as the "how to apply" of various BroadSoft VoIP features and applications.

Our customers are saying "hey, we need better educational tools that help our customers understand how they can use their features in their business and when to apply them.  Plus, we need to show them how to use them." 

How do you do that?  Here a few steps you may want to take:

1. Take the engineering/configuring/provisioning/set-up out of the equation first. Focus on the APPLICATION.

2. Identify a few simple, real world examples of how this feature could be used.

3. Determine if this feature relates to other features included with the service offering.  Tying 1 or more services together will help connect the dots for your customers. 

4. Last - how do you enable/disable/configure/provision/set-up.

5. Once you have identified all of the content in #1-4 -- then start putting together your tutorials.  And don't forget to keep them SHORT and easy to access. 

#4 is the easy part.  If you really want to create valuable resources - help them understand WHAT they are enabling/disabling/configuring and HOW that impacts their productivity or business operation. Without that context - those tutorials are just a verbalized User Guide.

Start talking "how to apply" and let the "how to" come as a byproduct.

"Trainsulting"

Long time no blog.  We've been busy over at B-Lynk.  With BroadSoft's latest release rolling out and many new customers launching the BroadWorks platform for the first time - we have seen an uptick of providers looking for "training"...however after developing and delivering 8 new courses in less then 6 weeks, I'm not sure "training" is the right term for the type of services we end up delivering.  I'm actually considering launching a service called Train-sulting, because what we most often end up doing is developing highly customized training content for new product launches for sales people, or programs for customer end-users however the path we take to get there is much wider then the sidewalk used for storyboarding a simple and straightforward course covering BroadSoft-BroadWorks features and applications.

This path turns, there are lots of bumps and instead of following the customer's map, we end up being co-pilots on the journey. We point out what their customer's FAQs are going to be "if we design it this way, versus that way",   what topics and features their sales people are going to struggle with and the most effective way to deliver this "training" to their customer, sales people, client support staff, etc.  Can a Sales person really sit through a 3 hour webinar?  Probably not.  Or will Bill in Accounts Payable really sit and watch a 45 min. video on how to navigate through a web portal covering the features with his new phone service that he will occasionally need to access?  Probably not.  If the goal of providing training  is anything but "providing training" then we need to determine what problem we are solving for and design effective learning tools to solve them.