At Skilljar, we talk a lot about the merits of on-demand customer training, so it was important for us to “drink our own champagne,” and use our product to help our customers. This past summer, we launched Skilljar Academy. In the process, I’ve learned a ton.

It's true that eLearning programs facilitate customer education in a scalable and sustainable way. However, creating high-quality content is still time consuming, and training teams have a lot to consider when deciding whether to charge for these experiences. This post describes a few things to keep in mind if you're not sure whether you should provide free or paid content.

Training content too often focuses on features and delivers a disjointed experience that doesn’t result in knowledge retention. Rather than looking at small tasks, we recommend focusing training content on goals that you want your students to achieve.

Each year, managers and senior leadership in training organizations at technology companies come together to learn from each other and share ideas. They do this thanks to CEdMA, the Computer Education Management Association. I had the pleasure of attending the first day of this year’s CEdMA Training Leadership Conference in Santa Clara, California, where Skilljar was a sponsor.

Since Skilljar was founded, we’ve focused our efforts on building the best system for external training and certification. We enable training teams to experiment with their training programs and encourage our customers and partners to use data to evolve their programs to maximize the impact of their efforts.

*This post was originally published on the Amity blog. View the original post here. 

Let’s say your sales team closes a huge deal. Then one year later, that client decides not to renew. What went wrong?

If you’re not sure, it may be time to reexamine your onboarding process. Customer success teams in businesses with recurring revenue spend a significant portion of their time strategizing ways to get a leg up on churn using reactive approaches, without taking the proper steps to build success from day one. When implemented correctly, onboarding sets your customers up for success and can help your organization increase product adoption, decrease time to value and improve retention.  

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend eLearning Guild's Learning Solutions Conference and Expo in Orlando. Session topics ranged from program design and project management to technology, content creation techniques, course development, and data and analytics. There was an equally large variety of professionals at the conference, from Instructional Designers, to Training Managers and Directors, to LMS admins.

Last week, over 1000 assessment industry professionals from practice areas such as Certification/Licensure, Clinical, Educational, Industrial/Organizational and Workforce Skills Credentialing descended on Scottsdale, Arizona to attend the Innovations in Testing Conference presented by the Association of Testing Professionals. The conference was packed with professionals who deal with testing and certification in a variety of industries, and I had the opportunity to meet and mingle, as well as learn about the issues facing the industry.