To make the most of your digital transformation journey and increase the likelihood of enthusiastic customer adoption, banks need to get their staff engaged, trained, and 100% behind the initiative, prior to go-live. Employees must be advocates for your technology, to the level of becoming digital ambassadors.
But turning your team into true digital ambassadors requires a holistic learning system that is:
Fast: A best in class training system enables staff to learn the basics of any new technology in quick, manageable bites. It should also be scalable, allowing employees to build upon their base knowledge over time.
Fun: The system should be enjoyable to use, with built in incentives that encourage repeat engagement. A game-based learning approach makes learning fun and engaging, through built-in rewards and role-playing scenarios.
Flexible: It should also be easily configurable to address a variety of needs and usage scenarios, and simple enough to update as needed. Ideally, you should be able to create and deploy updated training modules and demos in-house, in a matter of days, versus weeks or months.
There are really two components to a comprehensive learning system. These include a Learning Experience Platform and a Digital Adoption Platform. Banks need to employ both in order to create digital ambassadors that are both excited and engaged to use the technology, and supported through a repository of easy-to-access content.
An effective learning experience platform uses a combination of game-based learning, technology walkthroughs, role-play scenarios, and coaching and mentoring to train staff on the new tech. It should teach foundational knowledge, like daily limits, security protocols, and product features and functions through game-based learning. Technology walkthroughs allow staff to test drive the tech in a risk-free environment, while role-play scenarios teach staff to spot opportunities to promote the new tech to customers. Lastly, hands-on coaching and mentoring should be used to validate that staff have acquired the necessary skills to provide exceptional customer experiences.
As a critical companion to the learning experience platform, the digital adoption platform allows the institution to quickly author, manage, and update technology walkthroughs and simulators. These are used to:
Assist branch and contact center reps when they receive support requests from customers.
Power marketing campaigns with interactive tech walkthroughs that let customers test drive the tech and overcome the adoption aversion.
Provide an online repository of demos that let customers help themselves. This allows customers to receive support quickly and conveniently, while helping to reduce contact center call volumes.
Traditional learning management systems ("LMS") lack the modern tooling to drive the digital fluency that powers transformation. They are not designed to engage and motivate staff to immerse themselves in the details of the technology platform which they must use to do their jobs, or teach to their customers.
“The traditional LMS is very sterile,” says Tom Novak, Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Visions Federal Credit Union, located in Endicott, New York. “It’s very boring. I mean, you only go through the process because you know your supervisor's requiring you to take the training – you don't want anything to do with it. These systems don’t provide any incentive for employees to revisit them as an ongoing and valued resource."
Research backs up this anecdotal evidence. According to one study, 87% of millennials surveyed stated their workplace learning experience was boring and not relevant to them. At the same time, 40% of employees perform a Google search to find the answer they need instead of asking a coworker or accessing their employer’s learning technology. These results clearly demonstrate a disconnect between organizational goals to keep their employees trained and engaged with the latest technology, and their employees’ engagement with the process. In fact, one 2018 survey found that while 93% of learning and development leaders preferred an LMS to increase employee engagement, only 27% had success with their current system. [1]
To address the needs of today’s banks, and their staff and customers, institutions need an online learning system that can be deployed quickly and updated easily whenever a new product, service, or functionality enhancement is implemented. It should be cloud-based, so it can be accessed by remote and onsite users across the enterprise.
In addition, it should be simple enough to use that the bank does not require expensive, time-consuming resources like external consultants to update or maintain the software and learning modules. All ongoing updates should be able to be performed DIY, in-house.
Finally, banks also need nimble support tools for frontline staff and customers, to increase their confidence levels in trying and using new digital technology.
