6 surprising ways eLearning could be the secret weapon of your next product launch

You’ve got customers champing at the bit to get their hands on your killer new product. Brilliant!

But getting to market is only one piece of the puzzle. Traction at launch is critical for any product’s success and in today’s competitive landscape, maximizing adoption velocity from day one is more important than ever.

Once your product arrives in the hands of customers, how can you ensure it’s used as intended – effectively, efficiently and safely? A slow start due to teething issues or safety problems can mean failure to reach critical-mass adoption. Revenue lags, your reputation takes a hit and a golden opportunity presents itself… to your circling competitors.

Including a compelling online training package in your product launch strategy can give the best chance of success by helping you:

1. Empower your customers

With an always-available online training resource, you empower your customers to complete the training at their convenience, minimizing time spent away from their work – and your product.

This is especially important in the healthcare and medtech space. Don’t drag these users away from the hospital, clinic or their patients to complete their training!

By getting customers up and running quickly and continually refreshing their knowledge, you improve confidence and reduce reliance on product support, freeing up your team to focus on the actual launch rather than fielding phone calls, putting out fires or holding hands. On a recent project, our client surveyed their customers after they completed the online training. From 900 responses, 99.7% felt that the eLearning was effective at helping them gain a clearer understanding of the subject matter.

A single, centralized “source of truth” online training repository ensures a level playing field for everyone. Nobody misses out due to location, cost or other constraints. Everyone has access to the same training and knows where to find it. Leave no man or woman behind!

2. Empower your team

Training isn’t just for customers. At all stages of the launch, your people are charged with the responsibility of getting word out to the masses and supporting end-users during the crucial adoption stage. eLearning helps ensure a unified approach, arming your employees with the knowledge and language to communicate your product’s message consistently.

For sales staff this means greater confidence in extolling the virtues of your product. For your post-launch support team, deep product knowledge will facilitate faster issue resolution and get customers up to speed more quickly.

With a comprehensive suite of eLearning at their fingertips, everyone in your company can become an expert product evangelist and point customers in the right direction with confidence.

3. Slash training overheads

By supplementing or replacing face-to-face classroom training with eLearning you can vastly reduce traditional training overheads and free up resources to focus on supporting the launch.

This is especially pertinent when your customer base is geographically dispersed. The logistical nightmare of getting everybody to the same training room, on the same day, at the same time – gone. Travel expenses, accommodation, venue hire – gone. Scheduling, printing, catering, instructor’s fees – all gone!

eLearning also eliminates the need for time-consuming manual recordkeeping by automatically and electronically tracking completion, compliance and certification.

4. Add immediate and tangible value to your launch package

Convenient, hard-hitting training bundled as part of your launch offering can be a powerful competitive differentiator to help you stand out from the crowd.

By clearly outlining your training value proposition, you give prospective customers confidence that they’ll be supported not only upon purchase, but throughout your product’s entire lifecycle.

5. Reap long-term economies of scale

Once built, eLearning can be deployed to a virtually unlimited number of learners. Initial development costs are balanced against the effective “per-head” cost for each trained user, which continues to decrease as adoption ramps up and more learners complete the training.

While online training can be a cost-effective way to meet day-one needs at launch, the real financial benefits are realized over the medium to long term. Develop the training once and run it as many times as you like, for as many employees as you need – at no extra cost.

For example, one of our clients has seen an average 20% month-on-month decrease in the cost to deliver one hour of eLearning in the nine months since launching their online training offering. Not bad.

6. Enable and encourage continuous improvement

You’ve developed a great eLearning package to facilitate a smooth launch, you’re sending a consistent message and you’re reaping the benefits. But is it meeting the needs of all users? Did learners find it user-friendly, informative and enjoyable? Did it truly resonate?

Embedding qualitative feedback channels into eLearning enables you to gather rich feedback from customers and employees in real time, yielding a wealth of information to drive continuous improvements to training content, design and delivery.

Furthermore, eLearning provides visibility into quantifiable success metrics by tracking completion, overall scores and individual correct/incorrect responses to test questions. No more guesswork – the hard numbers will aid identification of areas of difficulty and help you adapt your training to address the specific and evolving needs of your entire customer base.

Content updates are instantly pushed out to the entire learner pool, enabling your eLearning solution to evolve and remain relevant as your product matures in the market.

Summary

Delivering compelling eLearning alongside your launch offering gives you the best chance of survival and success in the market.

By engaging your staff and customers with learning experiences that are modern, well-paced and resonate with individual learning styles you’re able to drive a consistent training message and send product out into the big wide world with confidence.