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One main goal for every organization is happy and satisfied customers. This is often a result of your product being an actual problem-solver for your customers combined with the team of frontline employees that understand the product in and out.
When your employees have the required knowledge about the product, they can offer actionable support and take proactive steps. From features to the best methods and practices when using the product, every customer-facing employee in your workforce should have this knowledge at their fingertips.
Enter product knowledge training.
Product knowledge training helps your frontline employees to understand and effectively communicate everything about your product to your customers. These may include features, uses, benefits, and support among many.
The best method to deploy this training is by using an LMS, for instance Totara Learning Management System that makes it more accessible and interesting. But before you can deploy, it is best to plan the goals and flow of your training.
Here’s how you should go on about it:
Discover everything about your product
The first step to planning your product knowledge training is understanding everything about the product and figuring out what all should be included in your program. It is only after identifying these features will you be able to set your objectives of the training right.
Your training should cover features, benefits, solutions, and more. The objectives that your training should focus on may include:
- Working, use, price of the product
- Problem solving capabilities
- Key features
- USP
- Support services
Understand how does the product benefit your customers
Once your employees have understood the key features of the product, it’s now time to help them realise how the product will benefit the customers. Your training should include answers to the questions like how does the product offer a positive experience, how does it help tackle challenges, or even how does it help solve problems.
In this section, your training should cover the following objectives:
- Product appeal
- Customer benefits
- Ways to tackle objections or concerns of customers
- Product benefit demonstration
- Support customisation requests
- Answer to the basic ‘why should I buy this?’ in regards to the other competitors in the market.
Train the required soft skills
One of the most important skills that your training should cover are the soft skills such as effective communication. If your employees do not communicate effectively, selling your product will be tricky.
Apart from communication, your team also needs to learn about problem-solving, critical thinking, leadership, and teamwork in order to be able to put forth their product knowledge in front of the customers effectively.
Now that you have everything planned, here’s how you can actually implement and deploy this training:
Make training accessible
A learning management system has proven to be the best platform to make sure that all employees are able to access all modules anywhere they want, anytime they want. Accessibility is important in order to make sure that employees don’t get stuck anywhere, especially during these uncertain times when everything is online.
With an LMS, employees will be able to access their modules using different devices, making it easier for them to learn.
You can also deliver content in different forms such as videos, infographics, roleplay, quizzes, and more in order to make it more engaging for employees.
Refresher and on-going training
This is especially important for organizations with more than one product. Employees will not be covering the same product day in and out. You don’t want them to be caught on the wrong foot just because they took a training days before they had to actually implement it.
That’s where refreshed training can do wonders. It helps employees stay in their A game and take proactive measures if and when the need arises.
Training is on-going. It shouldn’t be just a one-time job.
Conclusion
It is important for your training to cover each and every aspect of your product like features, customer benefits, and the support needs among many. Make sure that you are training your employees soft skills as well because it is these soft skills that will truly help your employees communicate what they learn.
