Blogs
5 Things To Consider When Creating Your First eLearning Lesson
When done right, eLearning is a massive asset to your contact centre.
The National Center for Education Statistics suggests that 58% of employees prefer to learn at their own pace, whilst multiple studies show that eLearning improves performance by 15%-25%, with potential cost savings of 45% or more on instructor-led classes.
However, research has repeatedly suggested that as much as 90% of information taught is lost within 30 days, and 70% of that loss happens within one day. This is true for eLearning courses as well as in-person training. As a result, you need to make sure any eLearning lesson is professional, engaging and relevant to maximise knowledge retention and effectiveness.
In this blog, we’ll share 5 top tips to help take your eLearning content to the next level, so you can truly engage your agents with eLearning, increase knowledge retention across your contact centre and make your training more effective.
The difference between good eLearning content and great eLearning content is transformative. Knowledge retention becomes your contact centre’s competitive advantage, and you offer a significantly better customer experience as a result of this.
5 Steps to Create Great Contact Centre eLearning Content
1. Make it Easy to Find
There is nothing more frustrating for learners than dealing with poorly designed eLearning software when you’re genuinely trying to get stuff done. Making your LMS searchable and easily navigable will do wonders for your agents’ inclination to use it.
A major game changer here is the humble ‘library’ function. People don’t always take in all the information they need right away. Work with this fact, not against it and ensure agents can always access your current library of eLearning content when they need to refer back to it.
In EvaluAgent, you can also use notifications to inform agents of new training courses and when they need to be completed by. Agents can start their lesson from that notification. It’s easy to find and easy to complete on time.
This helps your agents provide relevant information to customers immediately. At the same time, the act of looking up that information increases knowledge retention in the long term. Over time, your agents will be able to provide the right information to customers faster, increasing customer satisfaction as a result.
2. Make it Accessible in Different Formats
No one learns in exactly the same way. It follows that the content in your LMS shouldn’t be one-dimensional either.
Increasingly, you’ll see articles online with both text and video so that users can consume the content in the way that works best for them. Use this approach when creating content for your LMS.
Don’t shy away from written articles (some people are big readers!) but don’t rely on them exclusively. Videos, infographics or even podcasts could be a more effective, appealing and concise way of creating an engaging lesson that agents remember.
3. Make it Interactive
Including different types of content in your LMS is an excellent way to accommodate different learning styles but there are other ways to boost knowledge retention too. Most Learning Management Software should provide the option to include interactive content.
Some types of training – particularly training on how to complete different types of internal processes – is usually best learned by doing. Rather than reading a lengthy tutorial on how to file a customer complaint or change customer details whilst on a call, why not guide your agents through the process step by step with a narrated video, followed by a quiz?
Knowledge is easier to retain if you gain it as the result of an active process.
4. Make it Gamified
Tap into your agents’ competitive side and lighten the tone a bit by using gamification.
Could you, for example, make that content on company whistleblowing procedures a bit more exciting than the classic static manual that so many of us mindlessly click through? With the content out there right now, the answer is a definite yes.
There are so many options here. Whether it’s a retro 8-bit style video game on financial crime prevention (really) or something a little simpler, gamified content sticks in the brain better – so let your imagination run wild.
You could also introduce some friendly competition and set up an inter-team leaderboard for eLearning completion. Leaderboards tap into your agents’ competitive side, with 72% of employees reporting that gamification encourages them to work harder. In the same study, 90% of employees said they were more productive when using gamification. Overall, gamification increases employee engagement by a significant 48%.
Add some prizes into the mix for extra motivation – rewarding those that go the extra mile shows that you appreciate those that go above and beyond and increases employee engagement.
5. Make it Relevant
If your agent resents having to take an eLearning course in the first place, chances are that the information won’t stick.
Often, this resentment comes from having to take eLearning that doesn’t feel targeted to them, rather than being allowed to get on with their job. If you can target your contact centre eLearning to an individual’s skill gaps, evaluations results or improvement goals, on the other hand, you make it infinitely more likely that they will engage with the material
For example, if an agent has failed evaluations based on listening skills and they are then enrolled on a training programme that helps address it, they will engage with the content and retain more information than having to fulfil a random training requirement.
To do this, you need an Integrated Learning Management Platform (LMS) that can automatically trigger eLearning suggestions based on evaluation results, line item performance and agreed to actions from one-to-one performance management meetings.
Transform Your Contact Centre eLearning With EvaluAgent
EvaluAgent is an all-in-one QA and Performance Improvement platform featuring an in-built Learning Management System (LMS). Purpose-built for Customer Service and Sales teams, EvaluAgent LMS empowers teams to create engaging eLearning material and deliver it to the right agent at the right time.
This means no more eye rolls at the content your agents can’t see the point of, and significantly fewer naggy emails are sent to make sure people complete their training. As a result, you’ll see front-line engagement sky-rocket and knowledge retention improve. It’s a winner on all fronts.
By Chris Mounce
Chris is EvaluAgent’s Digital Training and Enablement Specialist and an award-winning performance coach. He takes the lead on developing innovative training solutions relating to our product to deliver maximum value.
