What video games taught me about Customer Education
Games have a lot to say about learning curves and experiences. Here's how we can turn into the most valuable players.
When people ask me what I like to do in my spare time, I say I like to play video games. And, when people ask me what I do for a living — as if both weren’t the same — I say I work with Customer Education.
For some of those who ask, it’s terrifying. I mean, how can people be educated about softwares? Isn’t that something that people learn on their own?
Breathe in, breathe out.
Customer Education is all about content. According to Skilljar, a Learning Management System (LMS) that you can read about later, Customer Education is:
(…) is content designed to onboard, engage, and retain your new and existing customers delivered programmatically via in-person and on-demand channels.
It's all about content. Content is always up to interpretation, and people interact with it. People’s actions depend on how they perceive content.
Information, however, is what you believe is true, based on what you see, feel, your perspectives, life background, etc. Information is noise. Is everywhere.
To make people focus on the content we want them to, we must add value.
See them as players
Can Customer Education add value to a product? Obviously. We just need to stop calling users and start seeing them as players.
Educating people on a game is like being a friend next to the players and giving them hints of what they can do. It’s guiding them on many possibilities: after all, a person chooses how to play with information.
A synergic Education team can differ on someone’s experience playing a game for hours and someone abandoning it from the tutorial because the goal is unclear.
Ok, but how to do that? How can we turn ourselves into valuable players?
Context matters
Actually, it's all that matters. Consoles like Xboxes, Playstations, and Nintendo Switches aren't there for nothing. Of course, ka-ching.
But they also give the blue pill / red pill to people to choose how they're going to have an experience.
That much about storytelling. Content matters only when it’s applied to the proper context. Maybe, information is just noise when people only look at it.
As Patricia Gómez Jurado said, people want an experience that has as little friction as possible.
All they want is to play
Because of the players' contexts, they may not have full attention to the game. Information can be noise, remember?
That said, we need to ensure they're reading the instructions, so they won't need to think much about what they need to think too much to understand what needs to be done.
People want to have fun. As a player, would you really want to spend time reading doing dozens of tutorials and trying to understand how things work, or would you rather just… play?
Content is not there to be delighted. It should go unnoticed.
Speaking of which…
It's a multiplayer thing
In some games, collaboration is key. With content is no different. A Customer Education specialist:
“(…) need to collaborate with other crafts and put the player at the heart of what they do.”
(Patricia Gómez Jurado, associate director of content design at King)
As Customer Education content creators, our job is to ensure they read and interact with content without thinking about it. Copywriters, UX writers, UX designers… collaboration is key to helping players to understand what needs to be done simultaneously.
In the end, it’s about the player experience and how to communicate to players — in a way that is clear and concise.
Collecting results
Earning the coins, the glory, the trophy, saving the princess.
The result of your work as a Customer Education specialist is almost invisible. It's not fun and games. As UX Writing, these are some of the jobs that must go unnoticeable if it's done well.
After all, a player would notice a great soundtrack, but not always its composer. Customer Education works the same. If it's too noticeable, it's not going to be for the best reasons.
References:
[1] What is Customer Education? (Skilljar)
[2] Introduction to UX Writing for mobile (gameindustry.biz, 2021)
