Transforming a customer education program into an employee education program

One of the things Kaltura’s customer engagement team focuses on is providing training and consultation services to Kaltura customers, to help them with product adoption and end-user engagement.

One of our guiding principles is to make sure we discuss workflows and best practices based on the customer use case, aligning with the customer’s goals when it comes to using Kaltura.

While addressing customers’ training and knowledge requests is a well-defined process here at Kaltura, when employee product training requests were raised, it made us think about whether we understand why, what, and how we can address them.
In this article, I’ll cover the work process we established at Kaltura to address employee training requests on our products and technology. The main goal of this process is to increase employee engagement and relatedness to Kaltura’s solutions and customers. I’ll also share our success measurements and final thoughts.

Why we adapted our focus to include employees

Surprisingly the first request we got was raised by a technical team that is very familiar with the back-end side of things but has less understanding and familiarity with the front-end side of our products. They asked to be educated on how customers actually use Kaltura.

When I was assigned to lead this project, my manager and I needed to define the goal. We wanted to tailor an effective training program and define the best way to achieve the goal we had identified.

We started to research online, talking with employees and managers inside the company and out, and getting the L&D manager on board.

Our research suggested a few key findings:

1. Customer-facing units — elevating the company products and solutions knowledge among customer-facing teams, such as sales, customer support and customer success, could help increase their confidence to communicate product features and capabilities, and help them better understand how they can relate to the customer use case.
2. Core business units — teams such as product or sales tend to have higher levels of engagement in comparison to employees in supporting units. It seems that core business units are more closely aligned with the organization’s main revenue generation, leading to a stronger sense of impact and connection to its mission.
3. Supporting business units — improving the company products and solutions knowledge among supporting business units — like the legal and finance teams — would make them better company advocates and even contribute a fresh perspective of product innovation, recommending new product features.

We realized that a personalized and well-defined training program could support various teams across the company, resulting in enhanced adoption of our own products and higher levels of employee engagement.

Assessing existing programs before crafting new programs

Our next step was to see what current internal product training we had in Kaltura. We realized there were a couple of ways in which Kaltura addressed this need.
For new employees, the HR team sets up a demo day as part of the employee onboarding process. Every few months, the HR team gathers new employees from all across the organization to attend a demo day — a full day spent with our product managers, product marketing managers and sales enablement team discussing the different Kaltura products and solutions.

Another type of internal training is provided quarterly, where the product team shares product updates and new features. Although both provide important insights, there was a need for more consolidated product training that included a high-level overview of our technology and its advantages. On top of that, hands-on practice and real-life customer stories were also missing.

The training gaps of both new and existing employees that we identified came from the need to better understand what we do and how it works. We aimed to give them some more context and help them see the bigger picture, as we understood how easy it was to get caught up in day-to-day tasks.

Identifying gaps and solving problems

My next task was to focus on tailoring the internal training program. To get started, I looked into our customer training building blocks and adapted the steps into action items relevant to internal training.

Discovery

Every training program starts with discovery. We aim to get as much information as possible on the audience that will attend a session, their industry and area of expertise, and the needs that brought them to choose Kaltura. We also work to understand their use case with Kaltura and the different scenarios of using our solutions. This is usually a discussion with the key stakeholders and champions from the customer side.

To address the internal training needs raised in the company, we set a discovery with stakeholders and managers to learn more about the employees who would attend the session. What was their role in the company? What was their familiarity or experience level with our solutions? What might be interesting for them?

As mentioned, the first request we got came from the backend developers. But then many other teams followed, for example, finance, procurement, legal, HR, marketing, and even sales.

These teams varied in their experience, knowledge, and areas of interest. We planned to spotlight different features and present different customer stories, all according to the discovery. We also defined the right balance between theory and practice.

Last was logistics, i.e., the number of sessions, order of topics, and final time and date.

Development

Next is the development phase. Usually, we either tailor our existing training materials or create new ones according to the guidelines derived from the discovery phase.

One thing to keep in mind while tailoring materials is the delicate balance between theory and being hands-on. Sometimes we need to put more emphasis on knowledge, providing the background, and sometimes we need to put more on experience, providing actual hands-on practice.

As for tailoring materials for the internal sessions, I needed to locate the relevant use cases and customer stories so the employees could relate. I emphasized interesting aspects of the technology and relatable features. For example, with the developers, I focused on the search engine features. With the marketing team, I focused on branding capabilities.

To easily estimate the starting level of knowledge, I created a knowledge check, and according to the results, I planned to pivot my agenda. A pro tip: always leave some room for on-the-fly adjustments.

To successfully manage the hands-on practice, I needed to set a training environment to play around with, create easy access and decide on a couple of action items for the audience to perform. Then, I located all the resources for future reference that would be helpful going forward once we finished our training program.

Delivery

The delivery phase comes next, where we actually train the audience. In this phase, we include the theory, customer stories, and some hands-on practice to ensure that participants are actually grasping the concepts and ideas of what we learned in theory.

Usually, I like to come prepared but remaining flexible and open to what might be raised during the training is recommended. This is important to ensure effective training.

Another recommendation is opening with a clear introduction to properly set expectations and get people on board and engaged with the purpose and goals. Consider whether the training is delivered on-site, remotely or in a hybrid manner. Especially with hybrid sessions, we must remind ourselves to give enough attention to those joining remotely, but also keep things interesting for those in the same room with us.

Most of the adaptations were made during this phase according to the Q&As. Questions I got from employees were less about functionality and more about strategy and customer context. A lot of curiosity was raised around what customers like about our technology and what is planned ahead.

Checkpoints

Between delivery and lesson learned, there is another step: checkpoints. These are important for us to reflect on the program while it is still being delivered and improved.

Make sure to add checkpoints between sessions and during the sessions themselves. We want to make sure we leave room for the attendees to ask questions, add comments, or anything else they would like to share with the group. Asking specific questions on items and whether they see themselves using them or how they will use them, can be a great conversation starter for a meaningful discussion.

Internal product training might be intimidating for some individuals, so reinforcing ideas or questions raised by someone in the group who showed interest can be a good way to establish a pleasant atmosphere with the entire team.

Lessons learned

The 4th building block is the lessons learned. Once we finished the program, we needed to ask whether we met the predefined goals.

Check your success measurements. Have you met the expectations?

There are different ways to gather feedback, for example, satisfaction surveys, checkpoints, and summary calls with the managers. Consolidating input from all the different ways you collect it is recommended to get solid conclusions and review follow-ups or ideas for future projects. A great outcome of internal product training might result in new internal projects and initiatives. The team’s participants in the training want to take what they’ve learned to the next step. In this case, I ask myself how to assist or support their initiatives.

My OKRs and KPIs

The last was to review my own personal OKRs or KPIs.

Each organization sets employee goals differently. Here I will address my own goals in this project and the success measurements, of which I had three:

• CSAT satisfaction — exactly as we do with customers, we aim for a high satisfaction score, above 8. Also, and equally important, we aim for a response rate of at least 30%.
• Increase in demand — Considering workload, yearly training plan and upcoming projects pipeline, we decided on a goal of five teams a year.
• Support actionable follow-ups — support the initiative of “using our own products”, providing assistance in implementing and onboarding the teams to use our solution in a way that fits and enhances their use case.

Final thoughts

It is easy to get caught up in day-to-day tasks, especially when your role requires precise and specific duties. Keeping employees feeling related to the company’s overall goals and products is hard. As a company grows, it gets harder to ensure every employee stays connected to the main strategy and goals. That said, many companies have realized that it’s important to start building this connection from the bottom, starting with the basics. We aim to educate employees as well as our customers, increase their interest and engagement with the products, and get to know our customers’ stories.