How DAPs Can Eliminate User Confusion … Once and For All

How can an organization eliminate user confusion during the product adoption process?

User confusion, as many organizations know, can become a huge obstacle during product onboarding and training.

Among other things, that confusion can:

• Lower motivation
• Transform into frustration and other negative emotions
• Decrease productivity and performance
• Lower user acquisition and retention rates

Ultimately, confusion can be a major roadblock to the success of any product, but it is not an unsolvable problem.

In today’s digitally-driven world, the best way to reduce confusion is through the right technology.

Today’s most modern, effective solutions are digital adoption platforms.

How to Eliminate User Confusion with Digital Adoption Platforms (DAPs)

Digital adoption platforms (DAPs) are comprehensive digital training solutions that can completely transform on-the-job training.

With these platforms, organizations can offer 360-degree software training that outperforms many other traditional training methods.

DAPs train users through a core set of features that include:

• In-app guidance. Contextualized, in-product assistance is available on-demand, at any time. This immediate availability offers significant training improvements above and beyond traditional training methods, such as human-led training.
• Step-by-step walkthroughs. A step-by-step walkthrough takes users one step at a time through a series of tasks. In this way, users can learn how to perform workflows without the need for human intervention.
• Software analytics. Trainers cannot improve a teaching approach unless they understand it. Software analytics help trainers better understand users, as well as the training programs. This data is essential for making improvements to the program.

Given the massive growth and acceleration of digital technology in today’s world, it should be clear that traditional training techniques can’t keep up.

This is where DAPs enter the picture.

Advantages of Using a DAP for Onboarding and Training

There are many advantages to using DAPs for product training, including:

• The elimination of user confusion. User confusion can result from complex software, poor user experiences, inefficient training, and more. DAPs simplify onboarding and training, helping to reduce confusion, among other negative sentiments.
• Lower user frustration and stress. Confusion can easily give way to frustration and stress. And those sentiments can fuel undesirable behaviors, such as burnout, abandonment, and decreased performance.
• Boosted productivity and performance. Clarity is an essential ingredient for successful training. The result: users who become more proficient and therefore more productive.
• A better digital experience. Lower confusion – in conjunction with the other benefits covered above – also contributes to a better digital experience. This can have a positive feedback effect on many other workplace metrics, from engagement to satisfaction.
• More effective onboarding and training. For the organization, more clarity helps improve onboarding and training, which can positively impact important onboarding metrics, from performance to user retention.

Clearly, there are many reasons to consider using DAPs.

But how exactly are DAPs implemented in the workplace to reduce confusion?

Next, we will look at a few ways that DAPs can help streamline the digital work environment.

How DAPs Simplify Product Onboarding

User onboarding is a core part of any product adoption process.

For many product developers – as well as enterprises that implement software in-house – simplifying this process can offer significant bottom-line gains for the business.

An organization can use DAPs to simplify the onboarding process through:

• Product tours. Interactive tours of a product’s core features, which can familiarize users with the product’s functionality, decrease confusion, and help users become more proficient in less time.
• Product walkthroughs. A product walkthrough, as mentioned, trains users on specific workflows. DAPs guide users through these workflows quickly, efficiently, and automatically – helping decrease their time-to-competence and time-to-productivity.
• Automated technical support. Technical support can be costly, which is one reason to use DAPs for product training. But too many support calls can also decrease user motivation and productivity, by slowing down the learning process.

When used alongside other software, DAPs can add significant value to the organization … especially because DAPs act as a comprehensive digital training solution.

How DAPs Can Improve Employee Training

In-house employee training efforts can be made more effective with DAPs, because they:

• Provide interactive, personalized learning. Personalization increases ROI wherever it is implemented – in retail, marketing, product training, and more. By personalizing and contextualizing the learning process, DAPs eliminate waste and improve knowledge retention. 
• Enhance cross-platform competence. Proficiency in a single tool is not enough. Today’s digital worker often uses multiple platforms simultaneously. To be productive, therefore, they must become proficient in a variety of tools, not just one. DAPs can operate independently of their target platforms, training users on a variety of tools.
• Integrate workflows. Ultimately, proficiency in multiple platforms helps to streamline and improve efficiency in the work environment as a whole, regardless of the tools. 
• Modernize the digital workplace. Digital adoption is an emerging – but necessary – function in today’s workplace. Since modern organizations are continually transforming, staying modern is not an option. It is a survival trait.

Efficient, effective training methods clearly offer quite a few benefits above and beyond reducing user confusion.

In fact, effective use of DAPs gets straight to the heart of the matter: productivity, performance, and a streamlined workplace experience.