The effectiveness of e-learning

Whilst it is presumable that staff who are better trained and get greater job satisfaction are likely to deliver a better service to customers and hence improve customer satisfaction, it would be nice to have some solid evidence to back-up this intuitive feeling. Some statistical evidence does exist and some has emerged recently from the Towards Maturity e-learning study commissioned by the Skills for Business Network. There are four reports in this series and in “Insights for Employers and Training Providers” you will find Figure 10 which shows a link between the impact e-learning has on staff and organisational perceptions of customer satisfaction. On its own this is perhaps rather shaky evidence but when connected with studies completed in the United States and reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 1997 and 1998, the argument becomes very persuasive.

The figure in the Insights Report compares the average agreement respondents to the survey made dependent upon the extent to which e-learning had made a change to staff. The survey asked respondents to rate their agreement with a statement out of 10. The statement is: “There has been an increase in customer satisfaction since staff have had more access to e-learning.” The results in the Insights Report showed that the average agreement with this question changes from 3.06 for organisations in the bottom quarter for staff impact to 6.1 for those in the top quarter for staff impact (from disagreement to partial agreement). This is somewhat neutral, since a score of 5 equates to the respondent not really being sure. However, this neutral response does hide the fact that 40% of respondents in the top quarter for staff impact agreed with this statement and this drops to 3% for the bottom quarter. Indeed, for those organisations where e-learning had least impact on staff, 62% disagreed, effectively saying that delivering e-learning to customers had had no impact on improving customer satisfaction. On its own, e-learning is clearly not enough but where e-learning does change staff behaviour, motivation, their ability to put into practice what they learn and their interest in personal development, then a far greater proportion of respondents agree that there has been a difference in customer satisfaction.

We may compare this finding with research conducted in the United States between 1990 and 1996 (1). This study was conducted in a number of bank branches in the US. Data on employee perception of how well they were supported and customer perception of the service provided by their branch were compared. Employees regarded training as the single most useful element of support that their organisation could supply. Clearly pay and conditions were at the top of the list but employees do not feel that their immediate line manager has discretion to significantly change these. They do feel that their line manager has significant discretion in the amount of training and personal support they receive. This is clearly much more locally available with e-learning than it would have been in 1990, when the research was conducted. The study completed a statistical correlation between various items on two scales, customer surveys and employee surveys. There was a strong positive correlation between a number of items.

We now have two reasonably substantive studies which provide a statistical link between the training and support staff receive and the satisfaction of customers. In the case of the US report this is a direct measure of customer satisfaction; in the case of Towards Maturity it is the perception of managers concerning customer satisfaction. The US study is within one organisation and the Towards Maturity study across 200+ organisations. Intuitively it is right that better-trained and better-supported staff are capable of offering a better service, provided they are willing to do so. These two studies provide compelling evidence that making e-learning more available to staff and supporting them in using it so that it changes their behaviour does enable them to deliver a better service and hence improve customer satisfaction.

References

1. Journal of Applied Psychology 1997, volume 82. Perceived Organisational Support, Discretionary Treatment and Job Satisfaction. Eisenberger and Schneider, et al (1998) volume 83 Service Climate and Customer Perceptions.