Low adoption, onboarding that goes in one ear and out the other, swarms of panic-requests to IT… sound familiar?
If you’re tasked with making sure employees at your company adopt and use software effectively, you know that getting them to do so is no easy feat. For organizations undergoing digital transformations, software sits at the intersection of the technological advancement and cultural change required to make these efforts successful. But just because employees have a suite of applications at the ready doesn’t mean they’re using them effectively.
In our latest e-book, we walk through some of the most common challenges you’ll face in the shift to the digital workplace–and how to overcome them. Here are three solutions to keep in mind:
1. Empower your IT team to be proactive vs. reactive
What do employees do when they hit a snag in their workflow or don’t know how to do something in a new application? They reach out for support, adding more and more tickets to your IT team’s queue. This reactive nature doesn’t scale, and organizations need to empower IT to be proactive, first and foremost by automating support inside applications so employees can be self-sufficient.
By moving support documentation and tutorials into the applications themselves, you’ll be able to create a resource center that employees can use to educate themselves when a question or problem arises. To take it a step further, include links to on-demand guides that walk users through key processes and workflows that they need to understand in order to do their jobs successfully. This way, IT can focus their energy on more high-value and strategic projects, and employees can self-serve when they run into any software hiccups.
2. Educate employees based on their specific needs
More often than not, different employees will use the same piece of software in vastly different ways. So, onboarding and training should never be one-size-fits-all. Bringing these experiences in-app will allow you to personalize based on users’ current capabilities and experience in the software, for example by serving advanced and novice users walkthroughs that are most beneficial to their needs.
This is where data is key: You can use behavioral data to deliver content based on what activities users have previously completed in the application. Similarly, personalize onboarding and training based on any other data you have about an employee, for example their role or location.
3. Collect feedback so you know what needs improving
There’s no denying that business software isn’t always seamless or intuitive–do you really blame employees for getting frustrated? You won’t be able to prevent (or fix) every problem users are having, but you can work to ensure you’re meeting employees’ needs as much as possible. And it all starts with giving them a voice.
Since you don’t know what you don’t know, make a point to provide an outlet for employees to easily share feedback about their user experience. This way, you’re bridging the gap between those who manage software applications and those who actually use it. Collecting feedback in-app and therefore creating an always-on channel means employees can share when their issues are top of mind. It’s also useful to balance this passive feedback with targeted in-app surveys, for example if you want to know how a specific subgroup of users are experiencing the application or a particular feature.
