It was kind of ironical when Yahoo! Small Business wanted us to teach “Basics of Internet” to its tele-sales agents. Imagine teaching about the ‘Internet’ to one of the pioneers of ‘Internet’ revolution!
Learner Analysis Using Contextual Inquiry
The tele-sales agents’ role is to sell the various services of Yahoo! Small Business to SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises), corporate and individuals. The services include web hosting, e-commerce, domains, business emails, and search engine marketing.
Yahoo! Small Business decided to hire a learning consultancy company to train their agents. The tele-sales agents had problems selling the Internet-based services. When they approached us, we had just 2 weeks to design, develop and deliver the training program. As with all our customer training programs, we followed the learner-centered approach. The only difference being this was supposed to be rapid-development approach as we had to deliver the program in 10 working days.
The team began with a contextual inquiry to understand the learning needs, motivation, requirements of the learners, the stakeholders as well as the business. We undertook two methods of doing this:
- Telephonic interviews with tele-sales agents and Yahoo! Small Business stakeholders
- Played the role of mystery customers and made calls to tele-sales agents
Key Design Challenges
- The agents found it challenging to convert a lead into sale.
- They know about the product but do not understand the technical aspects.
- They are unable to simplify explanation for a customer with no knowledge of Internet.
- They are unable to answer technical queries posed by a tech savvy customer.
Designing the Training
Our ID team analyzed the findings to arrive at the following learning objectives for the tele-sales agents.
- Speak the customer’s language.
- Solve technical queries when asked by a tech savvy customer.
- Simplify explanations for a customer who is new to the Internet.
- Explain the basic concepts of Internet and web design.
- Describe the benefits of Internet to Small and Medium businesses.
The ID team went about designing a training program to meet the above learning objectives. The program has simple explanations of the Internet, minimum text on screen, interesting videos to stimulate discussions, effective activities to encourage learners to apply their learning in their work scenario, and a post-assessment to check learners’ understanding of concepts. To evaluate the effectiveness of the program, our trainers interacted with the learners the day before the training program and bounced some of the concepts with the learners. This interaction also helped the trainers gather a first-hand understanding of the learners and their expectations from the program.
Learner Feedback
The training was a big hit with the young, enthusiastic bunch of tele-sales agents. Some learner feedback:
“It was difficult before training. But after this session, we found it easy to understand technical terminologies.”
“Overall the training was excellent. I really enjoyed a lot and got excellent knowledge. It has increased my confidence. The trainers were very good. ”
“The training was really full of fun and we got a lot of knowledge! ”
Client Feedback
“At first many thanks to the ‘Kern team’ for arranging Knowledge Master session for Yahoo! Small Business tele sales agents at a short notice. The program was well received by the tele sales agents and Ageis BPO. As it was a Knowledge Master module, we were very pleased that the content was to the point and covered all segments of the course. The trainers were domain experts and also made the sessions exciting and interactive. The medium of training was very effective as it involved talks by SME, video presentations, and group activities.” - Rohit Kulkarni, National Channel Manager, Yahoo! Small Business
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