Training and Infinite Return on Investment

Training and Infinite ROI

Seth Godin on employee training:

Consider an employee who is going to work 2000 hours for you this year. It’s not unusual for an organization to spend only 10 or 20 hours training this person–which means about 1% of their annual workload.

How much training would it take for this person to be 10% better at her job? If you invest 100 hours (!) it’ll pay for itself in just six months. There aren’t many investments an organization can make that double in value in a year.

But let’s take it one step further:

Imagine a customer service rep. Fully costed out, it might cost $5 for this person to service a single customer by phone. An untrained rep doesn’t understand the product, or how to engage, or hasn’t been brought up to speed on your systems. As a result, the value delivered in the call is precisely zero (in fact it’s negative, because you’ve disappointed your customer).

On the other hand, the trained rep easily delivers $30 of brand value to the customer, at a cost, as stated, of $5. So, instead of zero value, there’s a profit to the brand of $25. A comparative ROI of infinity.

As a FileMaker developer, have you seriously considered the effect of in-depth training on the success of your project?  Training manuals, videos, and help pages are necessary for the implementation and continued success of even a well designed and efficient solution.

Consider these facts:

  • Many, if not most, features of a solution do not get used often by the users, so memory fades on what to do
  • People who use the database as a backup will forget most of what they learn
  • New employees will need systematic training to get them up to speed

Build Training In

Don’t fall for the trap of building a solution without building in contextual help.  Make it easy for users to find the help they need, whether it be video based, pop up based, or written pages in related table.  Support time will be reduced and your clients will be happier. And the return on investment will approach infinity.

Source: Seth’s Blog: Training and the infinite return on investment

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