Skilljar & Archer: Creating Customer Education Content for Different Audiences

Skilljar customers can sign up for our next Customer Education Coffee Chat here!

Skilljar’s monthly Customer Education Coffee Chats showcase the different ways customers are using our platform. Skilljar customers learn a lot from seeing other people’s programs and hearing what their goals and objectives are — and then use that information to reflect on and improve their own programs.

September’s Customer Education Coffee Chat featured a conversation with Karen Parise, Training Director for Archer IMS. Archer provides outsourced operations services and proprietary technology to help investment managers deliver strategies aligned with investor needs.

Archer built its customer education platform, Archer Academy, from zero content eight months ago when they engaged Skilljar, to a robust library of 23 courses with 109 lessons averaging 15 minutes in length, including over one hundred minutes of video. Karen shared how she programs Archer Academy using the Groups/Visibility settings in Skilljar to serve up different content based on user groupings. Karen also discussed how she encourages users to continue their education with course suggestions and increases engagement with certification badges.

Controlling Who Sees What: Groups/Visibility Settings

With thousands of users across the investment management industry accessing their platform, Archer needed a way to control the content that is seen by certain groups. With Skilljar, Karen was able to create many different landing experiences to accommodate various Archer users.

Below are some examples of different views based on identified user groups: a general user view, a customized view for special events or other highlighted content, and a view for internal team members.

General Customer View

This is the view seen by most users of Archer’s solutions. Note four learning options including an on-demand course catalogue (housing a Platform Overview course), Product Releases, Virtual Instructor-Led options, and a “certification challenge” for more experienced users.  

Private Group View

Here is a view with an additional option for a private group session for a specific user company. (Note the last tile on the right.)

Internal View

And lastly, here is the view for their internal team, which uses the platform to access important internal information such as employees’ role as brand ambassadors, best practices for using the firm’s intranet, tips and tricks for Office365, and mandated training such as information security. (Note the tile for Archer Team Business Tools on the left):

One of the things that our users really appreciate is the diversity of content formats in our site. As others using Skilljar have shared, offering a well-placed mix of video, text, animation, and activities keeps learners interested.  — Karen Parise

Using Skilljar to segment their learners into various groups allows Archer to provide relevant content and information to their audience, for a thoughtful and unique learning experience.

“Next Course Suggestion” – Driving Engagement With Suggested Content

If customer educators had their way, learning would never end!

To help customers get the most out of their learning experience, Skilljar recommends providing suggestions for related courses when someone finishes a course. At the end of each course, you can provide what we refer to as the “last lesson experience”. This optional lesson provides a recap of what the customer has learned, as well as recommended suggestions on what they can learn next. Using your experience, as well as support queries and course analytics, you are able to provide your learners with an easy way to access the next thing they might be interested in learning.  

In the case of Archer, if someone completes a course on Reporting, the “Next Course Suggestion” could help them dig deeper into Performance Measurement.

Having course suggestions makes navigating the site a whole lot easier because customers may not know what content is right for them. It’s a way to help users continue the learning experience without them having to figure it out on their own. — Karen Parise

A Certification Challenge

Another engagement strategy that Karen uses is to create a “certification challenge” in which several courses are required for certification. Once all required courses are completed, users can redeem their certification badge. This delights users and validates their efforts.

Tips And Tricks For Our Community, From Our Community

Customer Education Coffee Chats present a great opportunity for our Learning Experience Designer, Cutler Bleecker, as well as our customers, to share some tips and tricks they are using to get the most from the Skilljar platform. We are always looking for fun, new ideas and ways to improve our own productivity and workflow.

Accommodating Last-minute Content Requests From Other Teams

One way to stay flexible and nimble to meet the needs of other teams outside of customer education is to use video content, which can be easily edited to add a message that may be pertinent to one group, but not everyone. Using the Groups/Visibility feature discussed above, you can share different versions of the video depending on which group is accessing it.

Covering All of Your Content Bases

One way to perform your due diligence before launching new content is to get a few subject matter experts together to talk about the topic to make sure nothing is left out. Then, use a spreadsheet to break down the content roadmap by month, or by role; i.e., who is actually going to be interacting with the content. For each workflow, make sure you understand —  What content is being built out for which persona?  What issue is it addressing? What is the cadence of that content we’re releasing?

Share this with the broader team before your content goes live to avoid any surprises. Combine all of the workflows into a master calendar that lets everyone know what content is coming down the line that they can use. Another tip to ensure the right content is being developed is to create a course development form, which lists out goals, objectives, target audience, etc., in a high-level outline. Put it in an easy format to manipulate (such as a shared team document) so that others can weigh in and make comments. Better to iterate on the outline now, than the actual course later.

Targeting Those Less Tech Savvy

When dealing with customers that might not be as technically proficient as the rest of us learning software pros, one tip is to create a welcome kit detailing how to navigate your site. Include simple things like where to go for different types of content, how to provide input/feedback, how to change the volume, what links may be useful for finding more information, and so forth. (Note, the very first course in Skilljar Academy addresses all of the basics of using the platform, and it’s recommended our customers create something like this for their users as well.)

Gathering Feedback

Many Skilljar customers use external tools, such as SurveyMonkey, to gather feedback. These surveys can be embedded right into your courses as a lesson. It’s important to make sure you build time into your schedule to actually review this feedback. It can be invaluable to your course development, yet something that’s easy to fall through the cracks with our busy schedules.

Would you like to learn more about how Skilljar customers get the most out of our platform? One of the biggest reasons our customers attend Skilljar Connect is to hear from experts and learn from their peers. So register today and join us at the Fairmont Sonoma on November 15 – 17, 2021!

Read one Customer Education Program Manager’s account of her experience at Skilljar Connect.

‍