Internal Referral
DATA ANALYSIS • UX AUDIT • SOLUTIONS
Company Background:
Classroom Training is a paid service offered by HubSpot that provides live trainings to users in a digital, instructor-led, interactive environment. Training events are held in different time zones and languages to promote accessibility across HubSpot's global customer base.
Problem Statement
HubSpot's Classroom Training events have very low enrollment compared to other services, and are not achieving revenue goals. We need to find what may be contributing to this issue, and ideally implement changes that will produce the largest impact in the shortest amount of time.
ANALYSIS
To enable the UX Audit, I first performed a trend analysis of historic support records to identify themes within the reported issues. I identified 3 recurring issues, which I later compared against my audit findings to create specific goals for the redesign.
Source Analysis
USER CONVERSION METRICS
Low Enrollment from Employee Referrals
Less than 8.9% of training attendees heard about Classroom Training from HubSpot employees, which seemed disproportionate to the high potential. This either meant that employees were not referring customers, or that employee referrals were not successfully converting.
Format: Classroom Training attendees were asked to fill out an optional survey that asked their referral source. This process had already in place for over a year, so we had a large amount of existing data to reference.
What's the impact?
$125,000+
That's about how much revenue could be added if each of the ~250 members of Customer Success sold just one additional seat for Classroom Training. If every rep could sell even more, it would mean a massive increase in revenue.
Employee Referral Status
DETERMINE CAUSE OF LOW EMPLOYEE REFERRAL CONVERSION
Employees Aren't Referring to CT
Employees are not referring customers as frequently as expected, with 35% stating that they "Never" or "Rarely" refer customers to Classroom Training, compared to only 1% for the HubSpot Academy..
Format: Survey of 100 members of global Customer Success teams asked to rank the frequency that they assist customers with each provided tactic.
Employees Don't Know When to Refer
Nearly half of employees surveyed reported that they do not feel confident identifying customers that could be referred to Classroom Training.
Format: Survey of 143 members of global Customer Success answered a single question conducted via Slack poll (method chosen to maximize response rate).
“It would be totally awesome and beneficial to have a list of some good fits / bad fits for paid services to handle."
Employees Struggle to See Value in CT
Employees voiced concerns regarding lack of understanding of when to recommend training as well as how to proposition its value above free services.
Format: 5 members of global Customer Success were interviewed
UX AUDIT
Since employees expressed concern with being able to position paid CT services above free services, we made it a priority to perform an audit of all free training options offered by HubSpot, so that we could assess the level of competition and potential value differences that could be positioned by employees.
Academy vs CT
ASSESSING CT COMPETITION
- Free, on-demand video training
- Well known internally & externally
- Paid, live training (digital or in-person)
- Not well known
A Premium Version of Academy
CT trainings are paid experiences modeled after the three most popular eLearning certifications from the highly successful HubSpot Academy. CT offers additional value by including a live trainer, collaboration, and hands-on activities.
Lost in Academy's Shadow
Classroom Training was not at all accessible within the HubSpot platform. By contrast, the Academy was accessible both directly in the main nav and in "Training & Services".
In addition, 5 different pages for the Academy showed outranked CT in search results (likely also a contributor to low web conversion source in CT trainings).
Other Training Options
ASSESSING CT COMPETITION
3
EXPECTED
# of training options
Apart from the Academy, the 3 trainings offered by the Classroom Training team should be the only training services offered by HubSpot, so we didn't expect to find much additional competition.
31
ACTUAL
# of training options
Format: 40 members of global Customer Success were interviewed in a 1:1 setting.
We were very wrong.
There are A LOT of training options.
We found 31 training options being inconsistently offered among 4 different departments and across 5 different global offices. The more we looked, the more we found, and we're confident that there were some still undiscovered even after 3 months of research.
They have very similar content.
The topics offered in free vs paid trainings overlaps dramatically, and comparing presentation decks side-by-side shows how strikingly similar the content is. It appears that multiple teams at HubSpot have been sending time/energy creating unique versions of the same content – a definite waste of resources.
Paid CT Training
Free Training
They cost less, but give more.
Classroom Training typically provides an in-between traininer:attendee ratio of between 1:10 - 1:30. Among the free options, we found training formats with lower personal attention (webinars), but also trainings with HIGHER personal attention, including 1:1 training. The chart here shows a small sample of offerings, all with the same target audience.
So... why are employee referrals so low?
Problem/Design
CORRELATION SUMMARY
Too much competition
- CT is lost among 31+ other training options
- Academy in particular overshadows CT in awareness and accessibility
Free options cannibalize paid
- Many training options offer similar content as CT, and target the same user persona
- Some free options actually outweigh the value of CT in terms of personal attention
Employees aren't confident
- It is difficult to sell paid services when so many free services offer similar content and value.
- Employees do not understand the value of CT compared to the numerous other options
SOLUTIONS
Since employees expressed concern with being able to position paid CT services above free services, we made it a priority to perform an audit of all free training options offered by HubSpot, so that we could assess the level of competition and potential value differences that could be positioned by employees.
Turn Competition into Brand Recognition
By re-branding "Classroom Training" as "Academy LIVE", we can build off a brand already well known by employees, customers, and even members of the general public. It also instantaneously explains the difference between the two, and the upgrade in value provided by CT.
Eliminate Overlap & Expand Offerings
We grouped trainings by trainer:learner ratios and identified where different departments were overlap in their offerings, and how they could be condensed into a small number of complementary offerings. We also presented gap areas where we currently do not have solutions in place, and recommending specific new offerings that could meet user needs not currently accounted for.
Empower Employees with Education
We created and delivered a presentation as part of the first wave of efforts to teach internal Customer Success teams about Classroom Training services, with special emphasis on how to identify a good-fit customer and why referring customers can be mutually beneficial to both teams.
(They requested the superhero theme, and I was happy to oblige!)