Introduction
Your phone chimes with an email from your digital course student at 11pm on Friday night. They are going through Module 2 and are stuck. There is a typo in the worksheet and it doesn’t match up with what you are saying in the video. The student says that they want to make it through your online course, but this is creating a roadblock.
Immediately you regret picking up your phone to browse funny cat videos as you unwind from the week, and the second feeling is one of dread and worry. You’ve already shut down your computer for the day, but you don’t want a student to get frustrated with you. You are wondering what that issue between the worksheet and video is, because as much as you wrack your brain you can’t quite figure out what could have happened. As you start to go through the scenarios in your head, you notice that your heart starts to speed up a little as you wonder if this student will go to the community and complain and get everyone riled up or if they will ask for a refund.
We’ve all had those moments of panic where a student needs support, but we are not available. Whether it is because we are tending to a medical appointment or have shut down for the day.
As small business owners, as creators of online courses, what is the right answer here? I can tell you right now, it isn’t to jump up at 11pm on a Friday night to figure out what is going on. That is the fastest way to entrepreneur burnout.
As with many things in life, the key is in prevention. Today we are going to talk about 3 actions you can take to amp up your student support without heading into burnout at 90mph.
Online Course Equals Always Available, Right?
When I first started teaching online courses, I remember the frantic emails I would get at 11:30pm on a Sunday evening demanding that I help a student ahead of the 11:59pm deadline for an assignment. In my early years I would jump back on the computer and work to help them fix the issue.
I’ve been known to proctor exams on Zoom until midnight. I have definitely answered emails 7 days a week for 15 weeks straight in the past.
But not anymore. And you know why? It doesn’t help our students to have balance and it is the quickest way to burnout as a digital course instructor.
Just because the internet is available 24/7, doesn’t mean that as a digital course creator you should be. There are a lot of differences between the internet and us as a creator. First and foremost, we are not machines. We routine sleep and feeding to function at our best. Even machines have to be shut down periodically and maintenanced.
So if the answer to student support, student satisfaction, stellar customer service ratings, a great student experience, and some downtime for us as creators is not having a 24/7 support line for our students, what is?
As I mentioned, the key is in prevention. Today I’m sharing with you the 3 ideas that will have the biggest impact on your student experience and those customer support satisfaction ratings and they don’t require you to be online 24/7 and definitely not at 11pm on a Friday when you jus want to watch funny cat videos.
Prevention Tip 1: Onboarding
One important, and critical step, to creating a student customer service experience that has your students raving in a good way is to build out an onboarding process that helps them feel secure in what you will be providing.
Oftentimes when customer service goes awry it is because our expectations are out of alignment with reality. If we have been told that there will be student support 7 days a week, but then you go 3 days without getting a response back, this creates anxiety. Our students have taken a leap of faith that our course will help them. They are trusting us to guide them along this pathway. We need to let them know what to expect.
If you plan to take the weekends off, for example, let your students know that in an onboarding video series. Share that any communications received after 12pm on Friday will be responded to the following Monday. If you want to give yourself a 48 hour response time on emails from students, let them know that. You can even set up an auto-responder that reminds them of this policy. I’ll talk more about boundaries in today’s Sixty-Second Solution at the end of the episode. I know this is something that we all struggle with and I’ll give you the key to not only setting but sticking to your boundaries with students.
Now, back to onboarding. Another thing you can do that directly addresses the oopsies you will have in your course where there is a typo, a video doesn’t play quite right, or the download has a password set on it by accident is to include a video in your onboarding series that lets people know you are a human. And more specifically that you are a human who is imperfect. You can let them know that you have tried your absolute best to create a flaw free learning environment for them, but every once in a while there is a gremlin that sneaks in and mucks with things. You can apologize and tell them that you always appreciate when they share the challenge they are having, whether it is a tiny typo they noticed or a big error…like you forgot to hit publish on that video you swapped out last week. You can always tie this back to whatever content you are teaching by sharing that just like whatever they are creating, whether it is a cake decorating technique, a step by step process to helping your child learn to read, or underwater basket weaving will come with some missteps along the way, they are all part of the learning process.
By creating a dedicated onboarding video series that helps students to have realistic expectations of you and the course, you are paving the way to a happy student and you are avoiding burnout as a customer support rep for your course.
Prevention Tip 2: Clear Communications and Community
Creating a stellar student experience from a customer service standpoint isn’t just about being available via email or letting students know what to expect from you as they first get started in your course. You want to be sure that you are creating a well-rounded approach that focuses on prevention so that you rarely, or never, have to do damage control.
Creating clear email communications that let students know what to expect each week, to summarize what has happened the previous week, and insights into something they might have missed that is important will help students feel like you are walking alongside them.
I do this every single week with my college classes. I send out an announcement that highlights what we covered, what we will be covering, and what is expected of them in the week. I also preview the following week in case anyone is reading ahead. At the end of the semester I always get emails from students noting that this was the most helpful thing a professor has done for them. Yes, they can get the due dates off of the syllabus, and yes they can read the chapter intro and listen to the lecture to figure out what they will be learning, but when we recognize that our digital course students are busy, we can see how those summaries become invaluable as a guidepost to keep moving forward instead of getting stuck in the weeds.
What would this look like? It might be something like a video message embedded in an email or just an email that says something like, if you are following along in the course plan, this week we are digging into Module 4. We’ve already learned how to x, y, and z and now we get to take those skills and apply them to a, b and c. The awesome thing that you’ll notice is that even though this is new, you’ve already seen bits and pieces of it in Modules 2 and 3. You are already part of the way there! This week, go ahead and listen to Module 4 videos, that will take you about 30 minutes total and complete pages s, t, and r in the course workbook. That will set you up for next week where we look at o, p, and r.
Truly, sending this kind of email and posting it in the community space you create not only generates momentum, but also a sense of strategy and boosts your authority. Students see that you have a plan and they are following along to get the result you shared with them at the beginning of the course.
By creating clear communications your student experience leaves them confident and overall happier, even when they do encounter the tech hiccups, the missing bonus, or the last minute call change from this Tuesday to next Tuesday.
Prevention Tip 3: Opportunities to Ask Questions
And that brings me to our third and final prevention tip for today. Creating a solid student support experience so that you don’t burnout with late night emails, early morning rants left in your DMs, or the viral community post that roasts a typo is key to longevity as a digital course creator.
Now, it might sound like I’m saying that you don’t want your community space to be active or for your students to speak up and out about issues, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We just want to create an environment where students are generally viewing things from a glass is half full mentality. We can’t always influence that, but with effort, we can sway that in our direction.
In reality, the third tip to creating a student support process that thrives is to have opportunities to ask questions and get feedback. One of the biggest things that leads to students feeling left behind, getting stuck, or even angry that they aren’t making progress is when they purchase a course and then feel alone. We all have questions. We all need a little help. We can create great customer service for our students by setting up intentional chances to ask questions, share feedback, and get feedback on their work. This doesn’t have to take up all of your time though. I’m talking about a weekly or twice monthly Q&A session that lasts 60 minutes. Or perhaps a weekly post where students can post their question and you respond either via text response or a video response.
We can also set the standard that others around us have expertise that we can tap into. They don’t have to wait for, or rely on just you as the course creator to chime in. In fact, in one group that I’ve been in, you are not allowed to tag the course creators because it discourages anyone else from answering and providing insights.
When you are setting up these opportunities to ask questions, you do need to have boundaries in place, which we will talk about in our Sixty-Second Solution. Without boundaries you end up with a post in your group that asks a question at 11pm on Friday night and then a Saturday morning comment asking why the course creator hasn’t responded. Or you end up with a student who is constantly flooding your email inbox with question after question that could be answered by searching the community space or showing up to those live Q&A’s to get a succinct, yet detailed answer all at once.
The goal is to make sure that students in our digital courses have a chance to ask questions. When they feel isolated, they do not feel supported and certainly are not experiencing a great customer experience.
Action Item
And that brings us to my favorite part of the episode, the part where I ask you to take action. It is key to create a customer service experience for our students that rivals the best of the best. Why?
Because this is what we should expect of ourselves, and what our students should expect of us. They deserve to get what they paid for and what we, as course creators, have promised. But it doesn’t have to mean that we are available 24/7, that we hire a customer support team across the world to handle those middle of the night queries. It doesn’t mean that we have to burn out in support of students.
Instead, we can simply put into place a few preventive measures to ensure that students have a good experience and they receive the support they need, but with boundaries. And like I said, we are about to talk about boundaries in a minute.
But first, what action will you take for your course? If you are building your first digital course, start thinking about how you will create an onboarding experience that sets expectations as well as assures your students that you will be available to help them.
If it has been awhile since you spiced up your online course student emails, now is a great time. Set up a reminder on your phone to send out a weekly email to highlight something in the course, provide some suggestions for getting content done, or sharing the plan for the week if you have a cohort moving through the course.
And finally, maybe you have an active course running, it might even be evergreened so that you are bringing in students on every day that ends in “y”. You can look at your schedule and find opportunities to integrate Q&A times for your students. Whether it is a Zoom call, a Voxer chat stream, and community post that invites questions that you’ll answer within several days time or something else entirely. Find ways to give students the chance to get their questions answered. That is an excellent way to amp up your customer service experience for your students.
Now is the time to choose something to take action on and make it happen. Which will you choose?
Sixty-Second Solution
Now, if you are struggling to make the decision on where to take action because boundaries are a challenge for you, let’s talk about that. Boundaries as a business owner are not just nice to have they are a must have if you want to create a business that has longevity. Without boundaries you burnout because you are on your phone or computer 24/7 addressing student issues, answering content questions, and troubleshooting tech issues. We all need sleep and time to recover. We are smarter, snappier, and more customer service oriented when we’ve had a solid night of rest, healthy food, and a chance to move our bodies.
So how do we set boundaries? Talk honestly with your students. Let them know that you appreciate they are working through course material throughout the week, and maybe even heavily on the weekends. Just like them, you need down time to better serve them and so your schedule is that you will be in the community once a day Monday – Friday at 1pm, and then you sign off for the weekend to recover, spend time with family and friends, and take care of yourself. This means that when you show up on Monday, you are ready to go and answer those questions with renewed creativity and energy.
You will have some push back when you announce your boundaries, but I want you to ask yourself if that one student, that $500, that $2000 worth losing sleep, missing your child’s birthday party or first step, or failing to have time to exercise even though your family has a high risk of coronary disease? Chances are, the answer is no. Not every student may be a good fit for our course and our business. That is ok. That is truly the trick to maintaining our boundaries. Ask yourself, is it worth what I’m going to miss out on? Yes, you might find that you offer a refund to a student because they aren’t happy and you don’t want to compromise your life to fit their needs. But, you will also find that you begin to attract more students who are aligned with your values and goals.
So set those boundaries!
Where to Go Next?
With student experiences on your mind, what are you going to do to not only safeguard your own boundaries, but weave that into your student customer service experience?
If this got your wheels spinning about the entire student experience, be sure to check out Episode 174: How to Get Students to Finish Your Digital Course as well as Episode 160: Creating Meaningful Course Objectives: The Essential Foundations for Course Creators.
When we take time to carefully craft the student experience, from onboarding to communications and a pathway through the material, you are building a solid approach to customer service.
Let me know your favorite way to deliver on student customer service in your business or course with a DM on Facebook or Instagram at DigitalCourseCreatorGuide.
Until next time, happy creating!
