A new study to help compare and improve how you use learning technologies to drive better relationships with customers

Thank you to everyone who shared ideas on how technology is helping improve the results of sales and customer service training. Organisations such as M&Co, Home Group Ltd, Axa UK, Volvo Car, Dixons Retail and BT have all participated and the final report (due in the Autumn) will share hints and tips from participating organisations to support your success.

The full study will dig deeper into these findings.

Background

Towards Maturity, supported by our founding ambassador Brightwave, has been conducting a study designed to dig deeper into how learning technologies can support customer strategies.

The benchmark has been gathering the views and experiences of L&D professionals and people responsible for customer strategies, to explore how technology can help deliver results in this critical business area.  The results, which will be released as a report in May 2012, will uncover what organisations are doing to achieve real improvements in the customer experience.

A well-implemented customer strategy is critical for commercial success and brand health. 10 million of us have stopped doing business with a company in the last 6 months due to a poor customer experience.* Against this backdrop, it's not surprising that competitive organisations have a robust  plan to drive better relationships with customers. * Ken Blanchard Companies Industry Report 2012

The use and impact of technology in supporting customer strategy implementation is increasing year on year. In Boosting Business Agility (the 2011-12 Towards Maturity benchmark with 600+ organisations) we reported that it was one of the fastest growing skills areas to be e-enabled with over 36% of businesses now using technology to support customer service training and 29% are addressing sales training using technology.

With this growth in interest, this latest study investigates:

• What is driving investment ?
• What tools and techniques are being used?
• What results are being delivered?
• What can we learn from each other's experiences?

Early Findings

The top 5 drivers behind investing in learning technology for customer strategy training are as follows:

• Improve customer satisfaction
• Improve responsiveness of training to business change
• Reduce cost of training
• Create competitive advantage
• Improve reputation as customer focused organisation 

Whilst the most popular medium for learning in is area is still the classroom in use by 3/4 of participants, organisations are now introducing technologies into the mix. the most popular 3 technology tools in use are:

• Self paced e-learning courses (& online quizzes)
• Dedicated online portals
• Videos and podcasts

Early results highlight that organisations embedding learning technologies in their brand and customer strategy programmes are:

• 8x more likely to say that their solutions are currently helping to provide a competitive advantage
• 5x more likely to report an improved reputation as a customer-focused organisation
• 3x more likely to report increased customer loyalty and customer satisfaction
• 2x more likely to report increased cross-selling/up-selling
• 5x more likely to use social media

As a result, 2 out of 4 businesses say their employees are now more engaged with the company and brand values.

The full report will investigate the audiences being supported, how the mix of learning media changes for different audiences (including contact centre, field staff and customers themselves) and will take a closer look at the business impact. Do watch this space!

 Examples of technology enabled customer strategy programmes

The report is due out at the end of May but in the meantime, here are some examples of how organisations are harnessing technology for their customer strategies that you might find useful:

• See Brightwave's award winning case study with Sky
• Friends with marketing: How global businesses are deploying e-learning to support their brands and customer loyalty
• Video debate: how can we extend learning to customers and supply chain
• Towards Maturity case studies from a range of organisations, including Toyota, Dixons Retail, and Cable & Wireless, take a look at practical implementation issues.

Also do complete our minipoll.

Did you like this article? Rate it!