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he Final Step in Tech Advisory How to Let Your Clients Go Gently

Post-Implementation Support: The Final, Overlooked Step of Tech Advisory

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The final step of the tech advisory process is also one of the most overlooked. After all, it’s easy to feel like the job’s done once the solution is implemented — but don’t fall for that trap because it’s not. 

The actual, final step for tech advisors is client transition support, and when done right, it leads to happier clients and long-lasting relationships. It’s about making clients feel seen, heard, and supported, and it’s one of the biggest deciding factors in whether they come back the next time they need a tech advisor.

In this blog, you’ll learn how tech advisors make the transition as smooth and seamless as possible and how they use client feedback to drive continuous improvements.

Developing smart training programs for different user groups

Throughout the tech advisory process, you have to get stakeholder buy-in for your solution at all levels of the client’s organization, but when it comes to training, it’s not one-size-fits-all. 

To maximize the effectiveness of the training, tech advisors create different user groups and tailor the training sessions to the specific needs of each group. Examples of these user groups include:

  • Senior leadership
  • Managers and team leads
  • Client-facing staff
  • Admin and support
  • IT team
  • Marketing
  • New hires

While the solution benefits the organization as a whole, it’s important to remember that each user group experiences the solution differently and therefore requires different training.

For example, the company higher-ups, decision-makers, and leaders usually need a high-level overview of the strategic value, ROI, and cost-savings of the tech. But since they usually aren’t the ones using the tech on a day-to-day basis, they don’t need detailed step-by-step guides and workflows on how to perform specific tasks. 

So, your training for this group should focus on how your tech improves growth, client management, and profitability, and show them how to track it over time to keep them engaged.

On the other hand, for managers and team leads, your training program should have different focuses such as optimizing team workflows, assigning tasks, and monitoring team performance.

Make the training interactive and fun

You can develop unique training programs for as many different user groups as you’d like. Just remember to make it interactive and fun because nobody enjoys a 100-slide presentation narrated by a bored monotone — it’s how you put clients to sleep! 

Instead, try to get them involved as much as possible. Throw in the occasional Q&A session to get them engaged and if all else fails, don’t hesitate to take a page from your high school teachers and ask specific audience members for the answer (although the effectiveness of this depends on your relationship with them, so we recommend reading the room first!).

Don’t get too caught up by any one training format, either. There are many diverse methods at your disposal, including workshops, e-learning modules, and live demos — and the best training sessions will incorporate a mix to keep things interesting.

For best training results…

Try to keep the training sessions small with greater frequency instead of having a single, one-and-done cross-organizational training session with every employee in the company all at once.

Smaller training sessions are simply more enjoyable for the students (i.e. clients), which keeps them engaged so they learn more since it’s far more personalized. As the instructor, tech advisors get better retention and a chance to build rapport with the client(s).

There’s a reason why class size is so important in teaching, and the same principle applies to your tech advisory training sessions, too.

Establish ongoing support mechanisms

In order to offer effective, ongoing support, your clients have to be able to reach you when they need you, so make it as easy as possible. 

Set up a help desk and support hotlines. Join the company’s Slack workspace or Discord. Provide your email and other contact info if you’re comfortable with sharing it (or have the client create a new email for you that you can share with their internal teams). 

At the same time, while it’s great to help clients personally, you probably don’t want them reaching out to you over every little thing — it can quickly add up and eat away at your time. That’s why tech advisors also create knowledge bases with user manuals, help articles, detailed workflows, and FAQs to help clients find the answers they need on their own. This self-serve approach complements the ongoing live support, and it’s another way of providing value when you’re not available in person.

We also highly recommend setting up periodic follow-up sessions throughout the year so you can address emerging issues and gather feedback. Which leads us to our next point…

Feedback wanted for continuous improvement

Tech advisory is continuously changing, which means your solutions must continuously adapt if you want to keep clients happy — and client feedback is the easiest way to do that. 

Implementing feedback loops can help you gather those critical client insights while also helping your improve your services and solutions as a tech advisor. 

This can be as easy as sending clients a short survey post-implementation to get a sense of their first impressions of the solution and how they like it so far. This initial, post-implementation survey can also serve as an effective benchmark to track client satisfaction against in future surveys.

As mentioned in the previous section, you can also gather feedback during the periodic follow-up sessions by simply asking clients how things are going. Many apps also offer in-app feedback mechanisms that allow clients to report bugs or suggest improvements in real time, so encourage clients to use those, too, if they’re available in your solution.

Take the 30-day survey

A great time for a survey is 30 days after the tech has been rolled out. Not only will they have a month of using the new tech to report on, but they’ll also have a month’s worth of your ongoing client transition support for feedback as well.

If you don’t ask clients for feedback after 30 days, you take on a larger risk of users becoming disenfranchised or antagonistic towards the roll-out. After all, who likes it when someone sets something up and then leaves before you really know the software? 

The 30-day check-in is extremely helpful to deepen rapport with users, hear their feedback, and build champions for further improvements and changes.

Leverage AppVentory for better client transition support

AppVentory makes gathering feedback seamless with its built-in survey tools that allows you to survey users at any time. Quickly find out what they like, what needs improvement, and what they struggle with to refine your training and support mechanisms.

Beyond that, AppVentory helps you dig into the data with detailed usage and performance reports for better insights. Paired with client feedback, you’ll ensure their tech stack can weather the changes and continuously adapt to their needs.
Ready to professionalize your tech advisory services? Explore how AppVentory can assist in delivering seamless tech app implementations at scale. Apply for early access today.

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