Product Training KPIs | Part I: The Basics

If you’re setting up your product enablement team, one of the decisions you’ll make is on how to measure success of the team. There are many options for evaluating training outcomes, and selecting them will be unique to your business, organization maturity and revenue model. To help you get started I’ve outlined common KPIs which make great measures that apply to both monetized and non-monetized product training organizations.

There are a number of KPIs you can select, ranging in subjectivity from user reported (objective) to quantified data (subjective). See the graph below for an overview, and keep reading for a description of each.

Training Satisfaction (TSAT ): Surveys administered to participants at the conclusion of a formal learning engagement aim to gather learner feedback on efficacy, instructor performance, etc. In general, the issue with TSAT is its subjectivity, though we like this tool to better inform facilitator feedback.

NPS: This is typically an organization measure, but if you can segment to contrast trained vs. untrained customer NPS the results can provide insights to training’s impact on customer satisfaction. The limitation of user/learner reported satisfaction remains.

Attention: objectivity ranges depending on the delivery format; for ILT it's subective, while attention monitoring in VILT is more measurable it's still not fully quantified based on how attention is generally measured (active window).

Feature requests: Highly adopted users are more likely to find ways their experience would be augments. For a TaaS organization, content requests can be measured.

Quiz or test scores: Especially important if your training program is for certification, scores either in or after the session will indicate efficacy and alignment with testing criteria. This metric is not completely subjective though because testing isn't always an accurate measure of knowledge.

Upsells/Opportunities: This is non-traditional, but I feel very passionately that effective learning leads to expanded product usage, and this should lead to upsell opportunities.

Renewals: A customer who has fully realized the value and integrated your product into their day to day life and has a team of ramped up power users is less likely to leave when the contract is up.

Support Cases: Another interesting measure, as well educated users should have less questions for support intervention.

Adoption Metrics: This includes data points like logins, features utilized, consumption (messages, actions, etc), daily, weekly or monthly active users, amount of time spent in the application, etc. This can be trickier to get as it is going to require the help of another team at your organizations - but benchmarking adoption metrics for users who have attended training vs. those who have not can measure efficacy in a non-biased way as in theory users who attend training will have higher adoption.

Journey engagement and participation or learning path completion: how active are learners in the experience you intend - this is how you will know efficacy and what to adjust. Look at email opens, LMS logins, link clicks, page visits, etc.

In the next edition of our KPI series, we'll review some that are specific to monetized training. Also watch out for Part III which will have tips on selecting the right KPIs for your organization.

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