The Future of SaaS Customer Education: Data-Driven Strategies

Todd Kirk: This is sas therapy. Hello, uh, everyone, and welcome to another edition of SaaS Therapy, the show where we help you save your most important business relationships, your customers. I'm your host, Todd Kirk. I am joined by Casey Trujillo, my longtime compatriot and co host, and, uh, super pumped to dive in today. Usually Casey has a quip, though, so before we jump in, what's your quip? Man, you got to give me something. What's, what's up? What's on your mind today?

Casey Trujillo: I think what's on my mind. And again, I'll, I'll always tell everybody that, that you taught me. This is first principle thinking, TK and for our conversation, just to kind of set the scenario around, this is again, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna talk to our gosh, we're talking to all of our audience in this. But I, I, I feel like there's, there's things that sell and there's also things that are scalable and they don't need to be mutual exclusive. They can, they can be the, they can be together. But for the landscape of SaaS vendors today, I, I think they're in two buckets. And let me tell you what I mean by that, tk, is that most SAS vendors, they have a professional services team. They go in and they do help with the migrations, if you're a software that needs migrations. And then the, the other thing they do is a lot of instructor led training, and people usually charge for that. And so for the customer education team, the customer success team, professional services, whoever's owning that, they say, hey, look how well we're doing. We are charging for this and we're making money, but they're reaching a really small set of users. Okay, so that's, that's camp number one. And then camp number two is you have some type of digital education, so a product academy. And that's, that's scalable, right? But very few people use it. And so there's this constant debate of like, hey, we need to offer more instructor like training. We, we need to do office hours, we need to do, we need to do so much more instructor training because, look, people are buying it, but that will never, ever in the history of mankind be scalable. And I don't think people want to face this. And is actually instructor led training the thing that people want? Or do they want some, some other form of medium of learning? And do they want your product academy as it is today? Like, Todd, it was so sad. I'm at The Gainsight Pulse conference. Shout out to Gainsight. Great conference. Did an awesome job. Everything is always so great. And there was one individual I talked to, and they were talking about customer education. She goes, don't even talk to me about customer education. Don't talk to me about learning management systems. I've made three changes in the last three years. Nothing changes, and it is hell on earth to make a change. So even if you could change the way my customers learn, I still wouldn't do it because it's, it's so hard to change. I'm like, wow, that's sad. That is super sad that you've given up hope that there's actually a scalable, engageable, engaging way that your users want to learn. So, Todd, for today, I don't want to talk my gut. I don't want to talk your gut. Your feelings. My feelings, though, we'll throw that out there. I want data, TK I want you to open our eyes around. Is instructor led training still? The m best method that users want are product academies and the approach they're taking today. Is it working? Do people want to be proactively communicated to you? Like, what does the data say? And I want more than 20,000 end users responding. I don't want a hundred users. I don't want 500 users. I want 20,000 or more end users across a variety of different verticals. And these are end users. I want them. I want them to speak. I don't want the talking heads in the csms. I don't want the talking heads in customer education, these consultants, to say this and that. I want real data from the mouth of end users. TK can you give us that? Can you give the audience what they want? Will we not be entertained?

Todd Kirk: If only, if only there was some way that we could have the insight of tens of thousands of users on an annual basis telling us how they feel and what they wish and how they think about learning. Wouldn't that be awesome? Well, good news is, Kasey, we do have that. So here, Brainstorm. One of the things that we do is we ask. We ask users annually on a regular basis. Anytime new users come into Brainstorm, we ask them how they feel about learning, how they spend their time learning, what, uh, what they want in learning. And I can tell you that we've got some really interesting insights. One other piece of data that I think is really interesting is the, the way people spend the, the way they want to spend their time learning is important, but also how long are they willing to spend time Learning.

Casey Trujillo: Yes.

Todd Kirk: So, uh, so just as, as, so just as a point there, Kasey mentioned over 20,000 users. Yes. So we've had. In the last year or so we've had well over 20,000. Reply to a simple question, which is when you think about how you learn, what is going to have the biggest impact, what's going to make the biggest impact on the way that you learn? And uh, the options that we give users look like this. Basically I want to have the ability to choose what I want to learn. I want to have you tell me what I should learn. Like send communication out to me proactively. Which is a really interesting comment. Right. A lot of us are afraid to tell users about training. We just hope. Let me comment it on their own.

Casey Trujillo: Yeah, I got to add to this TK again, we think of it in a different term. So uh, you need to let everyone know what you're talking about. We're not talking about your spammy marketing messages that talk about, uh, upsell to this license type or things like this. We're talking about tell me 60 seconds or less or I don't know how long you do, you tell me. But I want a communication that's saying, hey, did you know how to do this? Or this is why this would be a benefit to you or have you ever struggled with this? Those type of communications. Right? Yeah.

Todd Kirk: Correct. What? We specifically ask them if the format of the learning should be via, uh, proactive tips and tricks that are delivered to them. Meaning what we tend to do is we will say, well, I'm going to communicate, but what my communication is going to be is tell you about an hour long course or certification, uh, or invite you to an ilt.

Casey Trujillo: Yes.

Todd Kirk: That type of, that type of communication is very different than telling someone, hey, did you know you could do this? And to your point, yes, about a minute or less. And just drip out those little types of ideas. Okay. So again we ask them, you want the ability to choose, do you want us to send you tips and tricks proactively? We ask them, do you want it to be delivered to you based off of the applications you use? Right. So do you want, do you want to be told about content based off of the applications that you use? Do you want to attend events? So that part's really interesting. Do you want to attend instructor led training? Would you rather have instructor led training? And the last one is, do you, do you want to just give, like basically give us, do you want us to give you a catalog and then let you go search? So, um, the, the reason why that's interesting. And to be fair, the people who have been asked this question have been told a little bit about how Brainstorm operates. Right? And those are all things that we do. We create adaptive learning journey. So we let the user answer some questions and then we change the learning for them. So that's the first option. We also let the users go search and discover content they can go search and find. We also provide instructor led training events that users can register for and attend. Right. So all of these things are things that we do, but we want to know what it is that users are most interested in participating and, uh, joining it. So would you like to know how that all ranks? And if you were to guess, audience, this isn't for Kasey, because he's already seen the results of this data. If you were to guess, which of those five do you think would be the top choice of what users would say they wish they had the ability to do or what will have the biggest impact on their learning?

Casey Trujillo: TK before people respond, they're not going to respond because they're listening

Todd Kirk: to this after the fact. Send a comment, put a comment. If you're listening on YouTube or if you're listening on, on Spotify or Apple podcasts or whatever, give us a comment. I want to know. But right now, before you hear this answer, which one do you think is most important? The ability to choose. Getting proactive communications, attending ilt getting content based, uh, recommendations based off of my usage, or being able to search catalog which of those five are going to be the most valuable?

Casey Trujillo: TK before you reveal the answer, I want to explain one more time what Todd said. These users that are about ready to answer this question again, 20,000 plus they have been told what each one of these items are. So we're not there. Uh, it's not like you could say, oh, well, they didn't understand what you were really saying. No, they've been explained the different ways that this would work, how it would work. They have a good understanding. And then this question's being asked. So I also want the audience to know that, that it's not like, oh, that just sound the best. No, they actually understood it. And then the question was asked. Okay, so Tiki reveal what. Let's start from the bottom, work our way up.

Todd Kirk: That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna start at the bottom. Okay, so coming in in fifth place is long form event style. ILT Right. Instructor LED training, Long form style. Now, here's the good news. If Those of you who were hoping that instructor led training was the top, was the pinnacle. 15 of users selected that. So you're not talking about zero, right? That's still one in seven users or so are saying yes, I think that instructor led training is the most valuable to me. So there is a place for it. You are just only going to, at best capture maybe 15% of M the audience who really, really care. And that's assuming that all the people who think that's going to be the best impact are all going to buy in and actually attend and participate in those things. So it is, I do think there is a strong place for it. We have, we have customers who see such great engagement with events, but it is on the bottom of the list as far as how users want to learn and what users hope for and expect in their learning experience. So most people are putting that at the bottom. If you were to rank it and

Casey Trujillo: uh, Todd, like, again, I'm not opposed to office hours. I'm not opposed to train the trainer. I'm just saying again, for CS customer, Ed, if you're a cco, if your goal is awareness with your new AI module or it's deeper monthly active usage, you will capture just a small percentage of people. That's just the truth. That's just what the data continues to tell us in and out. So don't make that your scalable way to, to make this work. It's just not going to happen. Just align your outcomes, your expectations with the medium of learning that you're choosing.

Todd Kirk: Yep, absolutely. And let me tell you something else that I think's really interesting. So it's a point to introduce a different data point that I think is fascinating. Again, remember, this is from tens of thousands of users, but just this year, if you look at just the responses from people from January to today, and we're in June right now, if you look at the responses to today, one of the other questions we ask is how much time do you dedicate every week to learning? And we give the users the chance to tell us on average, how much time per week do you spend on learning?

Casey Trujillo: Okay, tk I don't know this answer. I didn't see this data. So I'm going to give, I'm going to give the answer of ten, uh, minutes.

Todd Kirk: Ten minutes.

Casey Trujillo: Okay, I'm going to go ten minutes.

Todd Kirk: Now, that would be a. That's a very pessimistic view.

Casey Trujillo: Okay.

Todd Kirk: Burson by Deloitte did a study a few years ago with similar numbers of respondents and they found that the amount was about 26 minutes a week. Right. So about half an hour. So that's pretty low.

Casey Trujillo: I was going ten minutes per day. No, no, no.

Todd Kirk: Yeah, sorry, sorry. Ten, um, ten. This is per week. So you would say. So in your estimate, you're saying 50 minutes a week?

Casey Trujillo: I'm saying 50 minutes, yes.

Todd Kirk: Okay, 15 minutes a week. Okay, cool. That's actually, that's less pessimistic because again, Burson, by Deloitte, thought it was about half an hour.

Casey Trujillo: I'm an optimistic person.

Todd Kirk: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Burson thought it was about half an hour a week.

Casey Trujillo: Okay.

Todd Kirk: Now what you're suggesting, it's 50 minutes a week. So I used to always say, dude, people don't want to learn. They don't want to spend time learning. Here's the good news. So, again, tens of thousands of respondents just from January to this year. And this number, I actually did the trend since January today. The number has actually, like, started to go up a little bit.

Casey Trujillo: Fascinating.

Todd Kirk: And the average is an hour and 14 minutes.

Casey Trujillo: Oh, that's. That's fascinating.

Todd Kirk: That is fascinating.

Casey Trujillo: You think that's because of all the AI tools and different things like that that are curious?

Todd Kirk: I do. That's just. I mean, I haven't. I haven't taken that second click deeper, but I do think that people are now realizing because, uh, you go back a couple of years, the amount of time that people were willing to spend on training was much lower. But now understanding how much the, the kind of the SaaS world and the technology world is shifting, I think that number is starting to go up. And people are dedicating about an hour or so a week. But if you're only dedicating an hour, that means if you give me ilt, you just took all of my learning time away. And again, this is on a weekly basis. Okay, so you're assuming 10 minutes a day. Right. And I think that's true. Most people are thinking, I'm going. If I'm going to dedicate time to learn, it's probably in 20, maybe 30 minute chunks at most, maybe two or three times a week. So the idea here is that you. The, uh, the hard part about ILT is that it is going to take almost 100% of that person's dedicated learning time in a week. And that's being super optimistic, assuming they're willing to spend over an hour. So that's just a data point that I think is fascinating to consider.

Casey Trujillo: That's awesome. What's next, T.K. what's the. What's the next number.

Todd Kirk: Okay, so this is another piece that's really interesting. So at a, at three times. Right. So I if instructor led training was at the bottom, that the fourth response had three times as many respondents. Okay, that's crazy to think about. Right?

Casey Trujillo: Yeah.

Todd Kirk: So, uh, three times as many respondents here said in fourth place was being willing to receive tips and tricks communication proactively sent to them in their inbox. Now, here's the other part that's really interesting. If you were to look at how these answers are responded ilt right is maybe a few thousand people. Now the next ones are all close to 10,000 people apiece. Right. So you're looking at way higher respondents, uh, on each of these other options than looking at wanting to attend events. So that I think is really telling too. So the middle ones here that are not in top in the number one position, like actually the fourth, third and second place users are respondents, answers, options, whatever that is. Right. Those middle ones, they're all grouped really closely together. Uh, so that's also really good to know. If you look at this ranking. Yes. I think one of the things that we're afraid to do is actually reach out to users and tell them stuff that's going to be value to them.

Casey Trujillo: Yeah.

Todd Kirk: Again, because what we tend to do is instead of just deliver the thing that's valuable to them, we spend all of our time trying to convince them to go and look at something else valuable. So I love the idea of saying, well, what if I removed all that? What if I just gave them a tip? What if I just gave him an idea? What if I just told him about something cool that generally speaking, like the way we interact with humans. Right. Kasey, if you, like, see a really good movie and you tell me about it, I'm going to be really pumped about it. And so that whole idea of recommending something valuable to me that's going to be relevant proactively, really, really good. Especially if it's quick and short and, uh, spaced out over time. Right.

Casey Trujillo: Just the proactive communication is usually outside of your application and I want to really hit on that point. And again, I have yet for anyone to tell me that I'm wrong in this and maybe they're just scared of me. But when I'm about ready to present, uh, a PowerPoint for a leadership meeting and all of a sudden this thing pops up in PowerPoint that says, hey, and I get, I'm not picking on Microsoft. Hey, there's a new feature we just released out in Microsoft, Copilot take a look and blah, blah, blah. And the ads just like, just keep popping up and I'm like, click, click, click, click. I got to review my notes before I have this call. I'm sorry. When I go into your application, I'm usually there to go do something. So a communication that I get via, uh, you know, maybe, you know, inside of Teams or Slack or whatever you might be using, or an email communication that says update your CRM status for your customers without doing anything. Learn how in 20 seconds. Oh, I'm clicking on that thing like that's a pain point I have. And if you're telling me you're going to show me that and it's going to be really quick, I'm all in. But if you're telling me I gotta go attend a webinar or there's six, six, six separate links and check out this and check out that. No, thanks. But if you can just give me a tip and tell me it's gonna be really short and to the point. It's something I suffer with every day. I am in on that. So I love that we have data to support. Hey, communication should be part of your strategy. Proactive communication should be.

Todd Kirk: Yes, it's true. And there's a few ways that you can do that. And I've seen this really effective in a few different ways. So one is email is a really way to actually communicate. It's not dead. You will have less engagement. But like, here's a great example. We, uh, we have a lot of customers who send out proactive tips through chatbots in teams or in Slack. Right. So you don't necessarily have to send out those tips and those ideas proactively through an email. But if you look at the data as far as the, the engagement rates with that content, funny enough, email still comes ahead as far as like the likelihood that somebody will read it or the likelihood that they'll click on it. Now, I will also say there probably is a place for. In app notifications. There are some places for it. I know, Kasey, you hate it. Most of the time you close it. That is true. That's the most common action that users will have. Timing matters a lot. And the advantage of an email is it doesn't feel disruptive to me because I can put it as an unread item and leave it in my inbox and find it when I need it and go back to it. In fact, one of the things that was really fascinating is we have, we have some customers who will send out like a welcome. Email.

Casey Trujillo: About. Uh, the.

Todd Kirk: About learning and it's interesting to look at how much the open rates and click rates have people who go back and read it and open it and click it multiple times because sometimes people will use that. I don't know about you, I still kind of do this myself with my own inbox as I'll use unread mail or I'll use resources as like a uh, to do list of things I need to remember to do. So it kind of gives the user a sense of control and I think that's helpful. So if you are going to do in app messages, if you are going to do tips and tricks that are going to appear in app, you have to understand that you are likely going to find people in a time when they're not motivated. I find that there's two ways that are most effective. One is to present the information before the user is in action. So if I open a direct file as an example, that's very different than if I just launched the application without going to a deep link. Right. So that's very important. The other thing is if you are going to put it in there a lot of times making it visible, but putting it in the application instead of as a pop up that's getting in the way can also have an impact on the perception of being, you know, less likely to be in the way. So those are just a couple of thoughts. If you really are like, I got to do this, there are some better ways to do it and think about those best practices.

Casey Trujillo: So love that. And again, we just always say our best practice again, data to support it. Single message. Don't. Don't have three different ideas or three different things. You're trying to drive just one simple thing. And again, when I purchase a software and I immediately get a communication that says, hey, let's start your learning journey. I'm more motivated to do because I just bought the software, right? Or we just announced that, hey, we're crossing over to this application. Take a look to learn, I'm more likely to learn. So get me to go to one spot and then open up. Uh, what you want me to learn off of the one link, not multiple links. It's just analysis paralysis. And again, the data proves it out. This is not gut fill, people, this is data. Tk what's next?

Todd Kirk: Okay, so let's just say the lukewarm middle of the road option that everybody goes for, this one I think is kind of expected. And it's the catalog, right. It's the sense that I can go and discover, I can search, I can find stuff that I care about. So what's interesting is everybody wants the perception that they are in control of their learning. And a lot of times users know that they're going to have a question or they know that there's a topic that they want to explore deeply. And so giving them the option to discover and to search on their own is really important. But I think that's why that kind of falls in the middle here, if I were to guess. Because truth be told, most users are not actually proactively searching. They just want to feel like they have the option to do it because it makes them feel more comfortable. A lot of the time we, we force users down a track and we don't actually make it easy for them to go back and discover and find the things that they care about. And so giving them that. It's like, um, the old joke of, from like, I always think of Tommy boy whenever he's trying to, he's trying to sell that guy and he's like, but it doesn't say guarantee on the box. Right. So, like, I think that, uh, to me, I look at discover and catalog options is just like giving the user a sense of like, hey, I'll be able to find this again, like if I find the thing that I care about or if there's a topic that I really want to explore. I'm not forced down a specific path. I am given some freedom to, to play around. So that makes sense. I, uh, just kind of feel like that's a check the box thing for users and that's probably why it ends

Casey Trujillo: up in the middle.

Todd Kirk: That's my guess, anyway.

Casey Trujillo: Awesome. Okay. I have no comments on that. That makes sense. Yeah, of course. I think that would be about middle of the row, but I am a little bit curious on what the top, uh, two are. Okay, there's top two, right?

Todd Kirk: Yes, we're down to the top two. So the runner up as far as what someone will say as the thing that will have the highest impact on their learning is content that's delivered to them based on their application usage. Now this is really fascinating to me. In other words, there's a lot of users out there who want you to know enough about them to where you can tell them what matters to them. Right. Users want to be delivered relevant content and I think too often they feel like learning doesn't connect to them.

Casey Trujillo: Right.

Todd Kirk: It's like you're going to give me some generic stuff because you don't know how I use the application. I don't know what my job title is. You don't. My use case is you don't seem to care about how I use your tool or how often I use your tool. So as a result, I just get this kind of generic blah. Most of it is going to feel like it's either stuff I already know or if it's stuff that's not relevant to me. And so I end up just ignoring it. And so that, I think, is why you see that one up so high. Because if you as a vendor could understand me as a user well enough to be able to tell me what is going to be meaningful to me, that's going to be a really big impact. So I really think that's really telling. Users want you to tell them what matters to them. And that is really, really helpful because it shows that you've taken the time to invest in knowing what I care about. We sometimes talk about the idea of like, can you make it hyper relevant, right? Not just like, do you use the application? But Kasey, who is in sales, using this application to accomplish this job to be done. I know what that is. And therefore I'm going to serve that up to you as quickly as possible rather than taking all of this time to bury that in and mix it in with a bunch of stuff. You just don't care.

Casey Trujillo: Okay, Todd, so you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to walk me off the ledge. Give me a little bit of SAS therapy. I have just said by data that. And again, I'm not. Again, I don't. You know, they always say, you know, the most important part when you're speaking is it's better to be, uh, that you're not misunderstood than you, than it is to be understood. So I wanna make sure no one's misunderstanding me. In our product, we have a digital adoption where the things pop up and they do that and they guide you through and do things like that.

Todd Kirk: Todd.

Casey Trujillo: I say that the data shows that small percentage of people ever click on that. But then you just said number two was the user wants to know how I use Pro the product and now it's recommending things to me. That seems like the perfect justification for a ton of people using this, this digital adoption that just appears inside of my product and starts to recommend things. The things I say we, we click out of and the data supports. So how do those two things work together then? How, how does that work?

Todd Kirk: Yeah, so that is a really good question for me. The way that I find that working is twofold. One is only popping up those types of messages to a user based off of some indicator, some trigger that helps you know that they're going to be caring about that at that specific moment. Now, what I find is like, as an example, let's say, Kasey, you were trying to make a PowerPoint. You're trying to work and build a presentation inside of PowerPoint. You, you mentioned Microsoft can kind of get on your nerves because they're popping up stuff all the time when you don't want it. Well, the interesting thing is, what if you, if you pop that up in PowerPoint at that moment, maybe that's gonna cause you to close it. But if you got again, maybe I send you an email at that same time. It's like, hey, I've noticed you've been working on a lot of PowerPoint presentations recently. Could I help you save some time in producing these a lot, a lot faster? That's a little bit of a different story because now I'm not interrupting you, but I am recognizing that you care about a specific. That's a totally different ballgame. Now, there are moments where you should present learning to the user in emotion, that where it makes sense. But if you're going to do that, you should also make those recommendations based off of what that user cares about. So if I know, Kasey, you're in sales, then I shouldn't just give you a, um, like if I, if you go to the learning page, I shouldn't just give you the get started with this tool or here's your catalog of 50 items. Instead, I have Kasey. Here is the learning that I've recommended to you as a sales rep who is trying to build presentations. Here's the recommended course that I think is most valuable to you. So a lot of times what users want is they want you to tell them the thing that is going to get them the most bang for their buck as quickly as possible. And how you do that takes a lot of different forms. Sometimes it's proactively telling them and popping it up again at the. In the right medium, in the right place. But in other places, it's just when I am here to learn, give me just the stuff that I care about. Don't send me to the generic page. Give me what I need as Casey Trujillo.

Casey Trujillo: That's amazing. I think the other thing for me is, going back to the point of what you're talking about, Todd, is I, I could click in. And again, most, you know, uh, digital adoption platforms, when I'm clicking in a certain area, it's, it's guessing what I might want to be doing next. Right. Versus Hey, I noticed you're, you, you're, you're opening up a lot of documents inside of, you know, the cloud, whatever system you're using. Hey, do you want to, do you want to understand how to share content internally, externally, or do you want to know how to create the right security permissions so it doesn't matter, internal or external, that you're the one in control of that? What do you want to do? Ah, uh, now you're giving me options around that and now I'm interested. But I figure what usually happens to me is when I'm clicking I'm getting a generic message they know I'm in an area. So they're going to pop up a couple different things that they're hoping might resonate with me, but they're, they're trying to make it just, you don't just have a lot of options there. Right. So I think that's the other thing is, is, is learning where you're at, but then giving you possibilities to choose your own adventure of what you might want to do with where I'm at. Right. And so I think that's why it has to come at a later time when I can actually digest, you know, what, what's the information you're really trying to feed me. But again, I've uh, yet to see a lot of customer education systems that tie with their product usage to do this recommendation. Right. And it's usually it's hey, wherever you're clicking, I'm going to hope it pops some screens up and hope you're going to look at that. So.

Todd Kirk: Mhm.

Casey Trujillo: That's another way that, that those two data points can both be true.

Todd Kirk: Yeah.

Casey Trujillo: Anything else you want to add to that?

Todd Kirk: Yeah, it goes back to this point that I mentioned earlier that I think is really important to understand. So again, if a user on average is spending 74 minutes a week, 75, we'll say we'll round up just because it's easier. That means it's about 15 minutes a day. So you guess 10 minutes a day. It's about 15 minutes a day that a user is willing to spend learning. And so if they are spending the first 15 minutes just looking for stuff and they never get any value out of it and they leave frustrated, they leave disappointed, they lose, they leave demotivated. So one of the things that's really important is I've got 15 minutes at max of Your attention in a day. That's the goal that I need to fix. If I, if I at max. And again, this is for all learning, right? So if you're a software vendor, the likelihood that you are the person who gets a hundred percent of that 75 minutes in a week is very low, right? So let's assume I get 15 minutes a week because maybe one day a week that user is willing to dedicate time to me. If that's true, then I've got 15 minutes to get that person's attention. So the first thing that's important is I need to a show them that I know who they are and then I care about them and I want them to get the thing that they find most valuable. But then two, once I do have their attention and this goes down to the very top thing that people say, right? And you can already guess it if you listen to the first five, cause we went through the last four. So you know what the top one is? The top one is that I want the ability to choose what I'm going to consume now, what they mean by that. And we tell people how this works before we answer them. When you go through learning inside of Brainstorm, we don't just give you a static course and we don't give you hour long courses. We generally try to create courses that take you about 15 minutes to get through. And during that time period we ask you questions along the way to find out what you want to learn about, what do you already know about, what's the experience level that you have, what are the things you're trying to accomplish with the software. And then we make the uh, software change and adapt based off of those responses. So you as a user already, you've shown me that you know what I care about by presenting to me the application that I know I'm licensed for and maybe even changed it to focus on my role. But then as soon as I get into that experience, you also create a conversation with me so that if there's something I don't care about, I can skip it. If there's something that I don't do, I can skip it. If there's something that's really important, I can start with that first instead of starting with it at the very end of my 15 minutes. And so what's interesting is the top two options are, uh, basically I want to choose my journey, but I want you to tell me what to do, which is really funny. How do you balance that? You have to have really good recommendations and you have to have learning that adapts to the needs of the user as they go through that experience. So they feel like it's up to them. And if you do those two things, those are the top two things that users say will have the biggest impact on them. And that's just in the last year across tens, uh, tens of thousands of users who have all responded with that insight about how they want to learn. And again, uh, you got 15 minutes of their time. Why are you not going to get ilt up on that list? Because most events are not 15 minutes long. Most people don't want to attend a 15 minute event. So that's the hard part. You, most of them want to attend something that's at least 30 minutes because they don't think 15 minutes will have enough, but they don't have time for that. So you just end up in this spot where unless a person's super motivated, they're going to put that at the bottom of the list. So that, that's to uh, just review. Now that we've gone in, let's go back through in reverse order. Right, Kasey. First, let the user choose the direction that they want to take. Right? That's the first one. Let them choose, let them have, feel like they have freedom over their journey. Second, give them smart recommendations. Give them smart recommendations based on what they do with tools that they have, who they are, how they use the tools. Third, give them the ability to search, right? So not just choosing how they want to go through the learning, but give them the ability to search for and find content. Fourth, and again, this is a close fourth, give them proactively tips and tricks and ideas that happen outside of the learning motion but are not being done in a way that's going to distract them or make them mad when they're trying to learn. And then sadly, in a distant fifth is instructor led training, which again is always will have a place. It is one of the most effective things that you can do, except for the fact that it doesn't reach many people and most people don't want to invest the time in it. So if you'll think about those five things, maybe it has an impact and how you think about your customer education strategy. Just figured that's data that we look at all the time and valuable to share that with our audience so that you can think through how you want

Casey Trujillo: to structure your own massive tj If I could give a homework assignment to our audience. Cause every SAS therapy, uh, session ends with some homework assignment. You give your homework, I'll give Them my homework, what would you recommend?

Todd Kirk: Ooh, well, my homework first and foremost would be assuming this data point that a user has at max 75 minutes a week to go through all their learning. And at best, maybe I get one 15 minute block a week. What would be if I only had 15 minutes to teach my user audience, my most important audiences? Maybe narrow it down to your top three audiences. What would that 15 minute structure look like? And build three 15 minute structured courses that align to the needs of just those three audiences and see what happens. I mean, if you want to use us, obviously we would help you figure out how to find that content, present it to the content, allow the user to choose and adapt it to the needs that they have. But if you could just start with those three audiences that you have and you only had 15 minutes, what would you share with them in that 15 minutes? Because it'll completely change the way you approach the learning that you're going to create for users. And maybe you'd actually see much higher engagement, much higher completion rates, and much better satisfaction with the learning that user is going through. So that would be mine.

Casey Trujillo: So good. Mine would be take this exact question and you can take those five responses that we had, or if there's a couple others you think we missed, put them in there. Go survey 10 of your customers and just say, hey, we're thinking about the way that we're, we want to support you better have better engagement with customer education. We want to know from your users, which way would they respond? And would you mind sending this out as a survey to maybe, you know, 50 or depending upon size your organization? Right. Get some feedback from your customers and see how the data plays out. Uh, it'd be fascinating. And you might say, well, we don't do the adaptive learning component. We can't do. Don't worry about it. You're just saying, hey, I just want to know how you want to learn, get the answers and then you have a better understanding to give back to leadership to say, hey, here's the things that we want to do and here's why we want to do some things a little bit different and then press on the vendors that you work with to give you the capabilities that the users are asking for. Right. Like, but my point is I just don't think we talk enough to our, to our customers to engage them and get that information. That's why again, we hit hard on data is because this just isn't our opinion. This is data coming from end users and they're, they're they're giving us this data, so use it. Todd, that was awesome. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Todd Kirk: All right, y', all, good luck. We want to hear from you. Remember, Kasey and I do these, uh, episodes every Wednesday. We would love you to engage with us, find us on LinkedIn, ask your questions, uh, post the comments. We'd love to have more conversation with us about you. If you think we're crazy, you know, I mean, maybe you can produce. Maybe you can produce data across, uh, tens of thousands of end users telling you what you think, what they think, and how they want to learn. And maybe we're wrong, but this is what we've learned from talking to thousands and thousands of users over the last year. And, uh, you know, these date the data points hold pretty true. And we look at this on an annual basis, and I haven't seen this order flip. Funny enough, it hasn't changed. Uh, and now asking these same questions to users for years.

Casey Trujillo: Awesome. TK thank you. That was a beautiful. Of course.

Todd Kirk: Thanks, everybody. Have a great week. Sas therapy is brought to you by brainstorm, the SaaS platform for SaaS adoption. Learn more at brainstorming.com.