By Ivonne Smith
A former colleague of mine was investigating different hotels while planning a regional team meeting in Phoenix, AZ. When he called a hotel in Scottsdale, they discussed the rates, availability and all of the other standard hotel info involved with coordinating hotel details for a team meeting. At the end of the discussion, the gentleman from the hotel said, “Oh by the way, we provide our guests with homemade soup every evening at 6:00. We think you and your team would really like the soup.” With the simple mention of soup, my colleague booked the rooms. He mentioned that the soup is what differentiated this hotel from the others and was what quickly convinced him to book the rooms and send his team to this hotel.
As I heard this story, I started thinking, what is SkillSoft’s soup? What makes our customers choose us over our competitors? What makes them remain loyal to SkillSoft in competitive situations? What makes us stand out?
Continue reading "Have You Ever Wondered About Your “Soup?” " »
We are pleased to bring you another guest blog post today from Candy Osborne, our Marketing Programs Manager.
By Candy Osborne
I am pleased to announce that we have redesigned our online resource center, Client Community, to bring a warmer, more user-friendly experience to our customers when accessing tools to support their e-learning programs.
As part of the redesign, customers can expect to see a fresh new look, a more user-friendly interface and an updated Client Contributions feature.
While most of the changes on the site are aesthetic in nature, in some instances, content has been re-organized for convenience or given more prominence than before.
You must be a registered member of Client Community to take advantage of the resources. If you have forgotten your password, click here. If you are new to Client Community and do not have a password, please contact your account representative and he/she will set up an account for you.
Check out the new look and feel of Client Community! If you have any questions or comments about the redesign, please contact your SkillSoft account representative.
By Kieran King
We are pleased to bring you a guest blog post today from Kieran King, our Global Director of Loyalty Strategy.
I am frequently asked why SkillSoft’s clients are so loyal. For those who may not be aware, SkillSoft has been ranked #1 in customer loyalty by the world’s largest custom research company, TNS, for three consecutive years. TNS doesn’t just benchmark learning companies. Rather, TNS compares SkillSoft’s client survey responses to every software and IT company in its database ranging from $100M-$120B in revenues.
Most anticipate that the secret to SkillSoft’s high loyalty level will involve some form of a repurchasing histogram, complex spreadsheet, or sophisticated causal analysis. It’s actually quite simple:
1. the widest content cloud,
2. the best customer support,
3. the strongest sustainability.
Content Cloud. Content licensing has gone in the same direction as the IT cloud computing concept for the following reasons:
Buy versus Build - Unless you have infinite resource capacity and funds to develop learning content yourself, it makes economical sense to buy from a provider whose main business is building content. SkillSoft’s core mission has always been content. Because SkillSoft offers a large library of eLearning courseware content that covers a broad range of topics, there is consistency in the quality of the instructional design as well as the user interface. These two factors tend to drive increased learner acceptance and the propensity for learners to come back.
Less Operational Overhead - As with IT cloud infrastructures, most corporations also find it far more efficient to leverage a hosted solution because of the operational efficiencies it provides. The Software as a Service savings eliminate the hardware and software investments as well as the IT staffing required of an in-house solution.
Corporate Agility - Our world is also increasingly more complex and the pace of change continues to compound, making it very difficult to forecast what skills a workforce may need. This month’s quote from CLO Magazine Editor, Norm Kamikow, sums it up well, “To stay in fighting shape, learning organizations have to be agile, quick thinking and oriented towards both revolutionary and evolutionary workforce development. That means flexible delivery, as well as learning that is responsive to the needs and demands of a diverse, dispersed and dynamic global workforce. It means also arming and empowering the workforce to react to change with alacrity and intelligence and decisively win whatever competitive battles come along.”
In such an environment, it’s an imperative to partner with a supplier that has the widest depth and breadth of topic coverage to address the uncertainly of dynamic skill requirements. That is also why most of our clients choose to subscribe to a library of eLearning modules where the learner can take just what they need when they need it. Of course a learner doesn’t need to consume thousands of resources…they only need one resource, every time they need one, and the probability of having the right resource is increased with access to a rich repository.
Customer Support. By a wide margin, SkillSoft invests in client support more than any other eLearning provider. The services we deliver ensure every program is poised to successfully achieve business results. SkillSoft has over 500 client service professionals dedicated to customer success before, during and after implementation. One of the most highly regarded elements of SkillSoft’s service team is the Learning Consultant. The Learning Consultant provides guidance related to program design, technical planning, marketing, administrative management, and measurement strategy. Competitors to SkillSoft will often claim to offer a range of support services that sound familiar, but no other supplier offers the number of personnel, depth of expertise, and industry experience that SkillSoft does. Our clients continually tell us what a difference our services make, and it shows in our 96% customer service satisfaction rating.
Strong sustainability. While the effects of the economic recession may be subsiding somewhat, the importance of partnering with a sustainable learning supplier will continue. SkillSoft’s experience, leading position in learning innovation, and financial stability are more important factors than ever before. SkillSoft’s dependable and steady leadership team, coupled with tenured field staff, provide clients with an unparalleled level of reassurance. When SkillSoft was acquired by a highly rated private investment consortium in May, SkillSoft’s sustainability was more deeply reinforced. As a private company, we can accelerate our aggressive R&D in areas that have always been paramount to clients as well as explore peripheral markets that can bring enhanced value.
In closing, SkillSoft feels very fortunate to have earned our clients’ confidence time and time again. We remain committed to focus on the aspects that have made the most difference - content, service, and business viability. To hear directly from our clients, click here to view a set of customer video interviews.
I was assembling a piece of “big box” furniture for my guest
room last week, and the experience presented a metaphor for job-related
learning. (It helps to break out of our
traditional assumptions about professional development and observe what happens
in everyday life, where we’re actually learning all the time.)
In this case, I thought about how my learning process started, well before I opened the box and spread the pieces of my purchase over the guest room floor. 1) My learning started with realization of a need: my guests had no place to unpack their clothing and other stuff. 2) I turned to the Internet to learn what was available to solve my problem. 3) I engaged in “elearning” as I explored various products available from online vendors. In most cases, this was pure knowledge transfer – how did the product look, what were the specifications, how much did it cost?
The real point of my story is that I never 4) read the “how to” instructions until my purchase arrived at my door and I prepared to actually do something with all the “learning” that I’d consumed previously. The manufacturer had wisely included that learning resource for use “on the job” – along with the phone number of a mentor at Customer Service to help me work through the task.
In a very practical way, this experience of selecting, purchasing and assembling my guest room cabinet reminds me that our concept of a blended learning program must extend beyond classroom or online events and include the tools and resources that support the trial-and-error application of new skills on the job – wherever the work is actually done.
I’ll continue to share ways that learning can extend to the classroom-without-walls in our next encounter…
(By the way, I did get the piece assembled on the first try with no injury to self or property!)
By: Darlene Frederick
The word “dovetail” creates an image of furniture in my mind. In the land of furniture, dovetail features mean quality. Drawers that have dovetail joints are far more durable than staples or glue. In a metaphorical term, dovetailing creates value in conversation as well as in furniture. In my maiden posting to this blog, I will take the liberty to dovetail on Julie Ogilvie’s recent blog entry about a conversation. Conversations can dovetail and create quality as much as furniture joints can create quality.
Julie wrote about Café and conversations and work feeling like an extended family. She points to the customers that are an extension to our work family. I am fortunate to work with a group of amazing professional Learning Consultants (LC). The Learning Consultant team extends the SkillSoft family into our customer base, as Julie shared. The LCs work with our customers on a daily basis collaborating on business objectives, program planning, marketing and communications and value measurement. Clients benefit from years of combined experience and consistent best practices through partnership with our Learning Consultants. As I have conversations each day with my team, they truly personify the extended family that Julie refers to.
When it comes to family, I know I can count on my sister to tell me if my hair is a mess or if I have spinach in my teeth. As a manager of this team, I can always count on the straight-shooting input from these consultants. The sibling-like relationships we have across the team make it easy to pick up the phone and get the real story about what is happening across various industries. They know what is important to customers. As I ponder blog postings, I know I can count on the expertise of the LC team to share their ideas around those things that matter to me, to SkillSoft and to the extended family of customers.
Dovetailing on Julie’s post is a fine start. Dovetailing on what is happening across our customer base and in the world of our Learning Consultants creates a strong method that we will all find value in. In future posts, I will expand on some of those strong joints and partnerships, allowing for learning. Truly, isn’t that what this is all about?
By: Lori Neblung
I would not be the first person to observe that companies are often like families. Especially in organizations where employees stick around for a while, over time you begin to feel like you know the people in your workplace as well as you do your family members. You know their strengths, weaknesses and eccentricities. You know who has a wicked sense of humor and who has that annoying habit of bouncing their leg and shaking the conference room table (that would be me). And you share a history of success and failure that binds you together in a shared purpose.
One of the things that I find fascinating about SkillSoft is that this family feeling extends to our customers. This may sound like schmaltzy marketing talk, but I think you would hear the same thing if you talked to one of our long-time customers, and there are many of those. You would undoubtedly hear a mix of our strengths, weaknesses and our eccentricities, but in most cases, it would be wrapped in an overall tone of affection.
I’m thinking of these things because next week we’re holding Café, which is an event that really embodies SkillSoft and the bond we share with our customers. Café stands for Client Advisory Forum Event, but the word Café feels more accurate, with its overtone of a coffee klatch. Café has existed for about as long as SkillSoft has existed, and it has always played an extremely important role in driving the company’s direction and the products we bring to market. Every year we have a mix of first-timers and customers who are returning for their third or fourth or fifth time.
Café is like a big focus group in some respects. We divide customers into groups and discuss various topics. I happen to be a big believer in focus groups because I think there is no substitute for hearing from customers in their own words. So often companies become ensconced in their own jargon and it may be completely different from the language their customers speak. There is only one cure for that, and it’s getting out there and hearing what they have to say, directly from their very mouths.
When I started with SkillSoft six years ago, my first day was at a Café. I remember the day evolving the way large group events often do, with some awkward silence in the morning, and by the afternoon, opinions were flying and conversations were bubbling up on unplanned topics. Moderators were being challenged to keep discussions within time limits and people stuck around at the close of the event to talk to their colleagues about things that were important to them.
Over the years the format has evolved a bit, and the topics have also changed. Back then the clients were responsible for taking notes in the breakout sessions and reporting back to the larger group. The thought was that this gave them more buy-in. While this may have been true, some felt that it was kind of like inviting someone over to dinner and making them do the dishes. So now a SkillSoft person keeps the notes and delivers the PowerPoint, but the intent is still to reflect what the customers have said, in their own words.
The topics are much more far ranging as well. That first Café I attended revolved largely around which course topics SkillSoft should be developing. In next week’s meeting we’ll talk about the evolving role of courseware, but we’ll also discuss mobile learning, social learning and the future of games and simulations. And I’m sure there will be some topics no one anticipated.
What I remember most fondly about Cafés of the past are the evening events where we got to know each other on a more personal level. In 2004 the Yankees and Red Sox were locked in a heated post-season battle, and we were scheduled to board a dinner cruise in the San Francisco harbor. TVs were brought in to appease die-hard fans on both sides, and that may go down as the loudest dinner in Café history (the Red Sox broke their 86-year championship drought that year, but I’m not saying the two events are directly related).
Another memorable night was the songwriter’s dinner in Nashville, TN. I’m not a huge country music fan, but hearing about the inner workings of the music industry was fascinating. And after a couple of the songs touched on topics close to our hearts, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
So perhaps this is a fitting way to kick off SkillSoft’s entry into the world of blogging. Our hope is to extend the conversation to more people, and to keep it going throughout the year. I’m optimistic we can do this, but it will never replace the experience of gathering in a room and listening to what people have to say, in their own words.
By: Julie Ogilvie
