Learning from Customer Education Evaluation Metrics

By Swati Sengupta

I was reading an article on common evaluation metrics used in customer education and was struck by both how similar and different these are from the metrics we use in employee training.

Can we borrow from these very insightful customer education metrics and apply them to internal training programs? The answer, for the most part, is YES!

Here are eight examples:

#	Customer Education Metric	What It Means	Can We Use It as Employee Training Metric?
1	Site visits to content by channel	How effective are awareness activities at driving new users to learning resources?	YES! This is a great metric to measure the success of communication and change management activities for the training.
2	Conversion rate by course	How many people that visited the course info page actually registered for it?	Not all internal training platforms measure this metric, but if available, YES! This is a useful metric to understand if learning objectives, course duration, user experience, etc. match the learner’s needs and expectations.
3	Customer engagement	How is the learner applying what they learned from the course?	YES! Of course, this is similar to Level 3 (behavior) and- sometimes- Level 2 metrics in Kirkpatrick’s 4 level training evaluation model.
4	Product adoption rate	Are learners engaging with new training resources we might have designed on the same topic?	YES! A fantastic metric, keeping training teams accountable to consistently develop content that meets the learner’s needs and expectations so that they keep coming back for more training.
5	Stickiness	How often does the learner revisit the same training topic?	Standard training platforms may not have this capability, but if available, YES! A great metric to measure the usefulness and impact of training.
6	Retention	Are users building enduring habits based on the training?	YES! As we all know, this is difficult to measure, but very much significant for employee training, as shown by Level 3 metrics in Kirkpatrick’s evaluation model.
7	Support ticket volume	Trends, events, quality of requests for support	YES! This metric is often used in employee training programs, especially those for technical training. Both quantitative data (volume of tickets raised) and qualitative data (complexity of support requested) help us measure the usefulness and impact of the associated training.
8	Net Promoter Score (NPS)	Will learners recommend the training to others?	YES! Over the last few years, NPS has become an established metric of employee training programs.