For all types of businesses out there—large and small, startups and companies that have existed for generations, customer-facing and technology-based—one fact always remains unchanged: staff training and development is a cornerstone of the company’s success. Traditionally, companies relied heavily on textbooks and instructor-led trainings to deliver the learning content, while more recently eLearning has emerged as a valuable tool for staff education. eLearning is becoming increasingly popular due to the flexibility and savings in both time and dollars it can offer while providing outstanding training outcomes. Recent statistics show that a good eLearning program can offer knowledge retention rates as high as 25-60%. These are only some of the reasons why more and more companies turn to eLearning to educate their staff. Another interesting trend that’s been noted in the eLearning industry is that companies have begun to offer eLearning to their customers in addition to staff. While staff training focuses on skills and job competencies, customer training can teach users to interact with and take full advantage of the company’s products. Let’s discuss the four types of eLearning solutions for business a typical company uses to educate its staff and its customers.
Product Knowledge Training
Originally, product knowledge training was mainly aimed at sales people who were required to know the product inside out in order to be able to sell it to the customer. The product knowledge training for sales people focuses on the product’s features and benefits, and how these benefits can solve the customers’ needs. While there are many different reasons why a company should offer product knowledge courses to its staff, the main goal of such courses is always to provide relevant information about the company’s products.
More recently, companies have started offering eLearning to their customers in addition to staff, reasoning that proper training will enable a customer to take full advantage of the product, gain maximum satisfaction from using the product, which in turn can ensure referrals and repeat business. This works especially well for complex and technological products that require a certain amount of learning and adjusting to. Most customers agree that the availability of eLearning that supports the end-user can positively influence their buying decisions and promote a favorable attitude towards the product.
Whether your company is looking for a product training for staff, customers, or both, it’s always a good idea to invest in eLearning development because it can save you money and provide the results you need.
Software Training
Almost any company out there is using some kind of software in its operations cycle. We rely on software programs to plan work, communicate, keep track of inventories, maintain accounting records, and perform many other tasks. By partnering with an eLearning company to produce courses to teach your staff to use the software properly, you can improve the team’s performance, eliminate errors and mistakes, and minimize downtime. Virtually anyone in your office can benefit from software training—from a receptionist using Microsoft Outlook to an architect working in AutoCAD.
What’s really great about online software training eLearning solutions is that you only need to invest in designing it once, and you can then reuse it as many times as you need for as many staff members as you need. This can take care of the training needs for your current staff as well as the future staff members because you will have the training ready and available for anyone who joins the company in the future. Modern advances in eLearning authoring tools allow mimicking various software products while guiding the learner through the tasks, capturing the progress, and providing feedback. This provides significant benefits over traditional training methods such as manuals with screenshots and classroom trainings.
eLearning Solutions for Compliance Training
Most business owners from time to time have to deal with ensuring that the staff meets the federal, state or local compliance requirements. Compliance training helps staff to understand the legal boundaries within which your organization operates. It provides the legal framework which assists in enhancing the relationship between employees and employers of an organization. Compliance training eLearning solutions should be a key priority for your company as it helps meet the legal obligations and standards. Failing to provide adequate compliance training often results in hefty fines and negative public perception in addition to low employee morale and high turnover. As a business owner, it’s in your best interest to provide good compliance training to your staff. Luckily, with eLearning, you are able to design such training once and reuse it multiple times for any number of staff. When the legislation changes, all you need to do is update the areas of the training that are affected by the change, and you can then keep serving the training program to the employees.
Skills and Behavior Training eLearning Solutions
The success of your business largely depends on your staff’s ability to perform tasks, provide customer service, and manage your company’s operations. It’s very common for employees to have varying levels of skills and knowledge. Typically, the more senior employees who have been of the job for a long time are more knowledgeable than the newer employees. As a business owner, you might be looking for ways to preserve the institutional knowledge your senior employees carry and share this knowledge with the newer staff. eLearning course for specialized and soft skills and behavior can solve this challenge for you. This works especially well for the kind of tasks that don’t change significantly over time because it allows you to reuse the existing courses over longer periods of time without having to spend time and money producing new training materials.
No matter what kind of business you are in, you will face a need to train staff, customers, or both. Providing eLearning courses will allow you to save time, money, and effort while delivering outstanding knowledge retention rates and ensuring positive training outcomes. The four types of eLearning you may need are product knowledge training, software training, compliance training, skills/behavior training. Keep in mind these distinct types of solutions when requesting a quote for eLearning development cost. When selecting an eLearning company that will design your training products, make sure that its team knows and understands how to deliver the training appropriate to your expectations that can truly benefit your business.
Staff training and development is a cornerstone of the company’s success.
– Product Knowledge Training
– Software Training
– eLearning Solutions for Compliance Training
– Skills and Behavior Training eLearning Solutions
Companies offer eLearning to their customers because proper training will enable a customer to take full advantage of the product, gain maximum satisfaction from using the product, which, in turn, can ensure referrals and repeat business.
By partnering with an eLearning company to produce courses to teach your staff to use the software properly, you can improve the team’s performance, eliminate errors and mistakes, and minimize downtime.
With eLearning, a company will be able to design their compliance training once and reuse it multiple times for any number of staff. When the legislation changes, all they need to do is update the areas of the training that are affected by the change, they can then keep serving the training program to the employees.
eLearning allows a company to reuse the existing courses over longer periods of time without having to spend time and money producing new training materials. With this, the company can preserve the knowledge and skills acquired by senior staff and share it with the newer staff.
