How do you train clients on their new CMS?

Alexandra Barcelona

Nov 04, 2013

Even if they've worked on a CMS before, chances are you've added new features into your client's site and they'll need training on how to best utilize their new platform. But what is the best way to train clients? Is it videos? In-person? Documentation? Our expert panel at Tech Mornings: Content Management discusses what they've found to be the best ways to train their clients on new technology.

Video Transcript:

Audience Member: “Hi, I am a UX designer and I do build a lot of web applications that has a lot of customized widgets, if you will, but we mostly handle entire CMS. Is there…what are some of the ways to train clients or train non-IT people into using that system, basically? Because sometimes we do create a manual for them but most people don’t like to read manuals. Do you guys do training sessions? What do you do?”

Christian Burne, Oshyn: “I’ll speak quickly about this but Kristine is probably going to have a better perspective than me. What we do is training. We do manuals and then we do training sessions and obviously on-site, in-person, is better. Having a phone number that the users can call so they can get someone on the line that knows the system and can walk them through better. We do a lot of GoTo Meetings - recorded GoTo Meetings - so people can see them later on. And those are really… that’s nothing really innovative but it’s just a standard way of doing it.”

Jose Caballer, The Skool: “But they might be for some certain organizations. I mean, we do videos, basically, of the screen and walking through it and then we archive it for the client so they can access it at any time, especially if they forgot or they weren’t paying attention. Does that help? Does that answer your question? A bit? Excellent.”

Kristine Stebbins, Filter: “In one of the things that we found is that there are lots of generic training sessions on the various platforms but every instance is always slightly different so we create customized training modules. I’m sure similar to what you are speaking to, Jose, around their specific instance, within their process, and how their environment works because everyone is kind of unique. So documentation falls flat. Nobody reads it. But creating those modules, doing in-person plus video that is customized to that specific situation seem to be the best way to go. In what we found, pretty much the only way to go thus far.”

Jose Caballer, The Skool: “And sometimes that still is not sufficient. You work at Philosophy, right? One of the things I’m pushing for, in general, is to build a small test build and have it on a separate server so the client can play with it while you are actually spending two months doing the actual site.”