I will not sugarcoat this; most lmses suck. Sorry folks but that is the awful truth. According to Brandon Hall, 27% of attendees at a recent webinar indicated they hated their LMS. Ouch!
So why this appalling lack of interest or value for learning management systems (lms)?
1. Poor reporting: we know about this… If records are not being kept properly, the resulting confusion and angst can cause the most dedicated users to loose faith. After all, spending substantial time completing a course only to find that you have not been given credit can test the patience of Job.
In our experience, both sides – content creators and lms providers should work together to anticipate potential issues and provide ready and easy to follow resolution efforts. For example in a recent situation, we found that users were not closing the SCORM course pop up windows correctly and hence were sometimes not getting credit for viewing certain lessons. Since this was both a technology (SCORM) and a usability issue, we dedicated support staff to physically work with any user who called, emailed or accessed our live support system. After a few minutes ALL users got a hang of what they needed to do to successfully complete their training. Did it cost us significant overheads? Yes but so what. At the end of the day, it was more important that our customers know that they have a solid partner who has their back 24/7. It was also important that we continue to maintain our 82+% satisfaction rate. In an industry where less than 50% gave their LMS provider an overall value added score, we continue to strive to change the prevailing and some will say accepted business as a usual mentality.
2. Another reason folks don’t like their LMS, is outdated looks and technology. We know the familiar story. It looked ok 10 years ago but since then nothing has changed. Nothing could be more frustrating than being stuck with an outmoded LMS system. Knowing that your users have access to cutting edge technology on a daily basis, you can understand their disappointment in having to still rely on some legacy system or really crappy out of date platform. What do you? the good news is that switching costs are falling; you don’t have to terrified of taking the plunge. I alway say you can find a provider willing to help you migrate your legacy system to a cloud based, saas lms platform. Ask us how at help@eleapsoftware.com. If in 3 years they (your LMS provider) have not offered new features or improvements, ask yourself if they are as innovative as their marketing brochures claim, or if its time to make the switch.
3. The third reason why people simple could care less about their lms is because they receive shoddy or non existent support and customer assistance when they most need it. Given the fact that as with any technology platform, they are going to be support challenges and user questions, not having a readily accessible support causes serious problems for users and admins alike. At eLeaP, we simply operate on a different wavelength. At our core, we are happiest when we our customers succeed. We provide free support 24/7 because its the right thing to do. Yes it costs us money but we make up for it by retaining 97% of our customers. In this day and age, we know that we have to work hard to earn their business each and every single month – and we gladly do so.
We wrote this article in part for our customers but also for any organization which might be going through what we call LMS nightmare. Give us a call 877-624-7226 or via our site www.eleapsoftware.com and let us provide you with a true white glove LMS service.
Read more about the Brandon Hall article at http://brandon-hall.com/blogs/learning/?p=16023
