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You just started using a new application at work that’s supposed to make your job easier. Excitedly, you open it up and are immediately greeted with a barrage of buttons, menus, and unfamiliar terminology.
Feeling overwhelmed, you consider closing the app and giving up on it altogether. You can’t do that, of course, because you need your job. But then, something amazing happens. A friendly pop-up appears, guiding you through the app’s features and explaining everything, and how to use the software effectively.
Suddenly, what seemed impossible becomes manageable, and you find yourself navigating it with a better understanding. This is the power of contextual help. Employee adoption is the key to success in today’s digital workplace, where new software and applications are required for virtually every task.
Businesses need to ensure that employees understand how to use their products and feel supported and empowered throughout the onboarding process. And that’s where contextual help examples come in.
Contextual help boosts employee success in their jobs and your company’s software.
Whether you call it contextual help, in-app help, or something else entirely, you can learn more about what it is and how it helps your organization in our previous post. This post focuses on the examples we covered in that post and how they help employees adopt company software.
It also explores contextual help and its role in accelerating employee adoption. I’ll show you examples of how to use contextual help to increase employee adoption and improve job performance.
We’ll dive into various examples of contextual help strategies, including onboarding, walkthroughs, videos, tooltips, feedback, and system alerts. There are many ways contextual help can be used in a digital adoption platform, and we’ll explore the most useful and common ones.
Whether you’re a product manager looking to improve user experience or a training leader interested in helping train employees in the flow of work more easily, this post is for you. Let’s discover the power of assisting employees in the flow of work, right in the application, with contextual help examples that help them succeed in their jobs.
The Importance of Employee Adoption of Company Software
Employee adoption of company software is a critical factor in an organization’s success. In today’s fast-paced digital age, where new software and applications are constantly being developed, businesses need to ensure that employees know how to use them and use them correctly.
The success of an organization and its IT innovations relies on well-trained employees. Sometimes, that could mean a good software simulation, but it also often means providing employees with help while they perform a task.
Paired with good training, contextual help can maximise your employee’s effectiveness in company software.
Employees who aren’t provided with proper training won’t feel connected to the company and may feel the company doesn’t care about them. Any successful company that cares about employees and wants to reduce employee turnover invests in adequate employee training.
While training and practice are a good start, support for employees and the processes they need to follow in software is even better. Digital Adoption Platforms (DAPs) are a great tool for providing employees with contextual help in company applications.
From onboarding new users with a walkthrough of the software to providing employees with information for a specific task, contextual help is a powerful tool for cementing what they learned from formal training.
Understanding the Concept of Contextual Help
Contextual help is quite broad in the types of applications it can apply to. Many of the top DAPs for delivering contextual help aren’t actually designed to deliver contextual help. Whether you’re using Pendo, WalkMe, or another platform, help functions are typically an afterthought.
They’re not geared toward helping employees learn software, but toward software purchased and used by other businesses or consumers. Many Pendo examples show how the software helped reduce churn and increase feature usage.
However, in general terms, contextual help refers to providing users with relevant information and guidance at the right time and in the right context while using an application. That could be onboarding new users/employees, or simply displaying information on a particular screen in a modal.
Contextual help gives employees the support they need when they need it in company software.
It aims to enhance the user experience by providing assistance when users need it most, reducing frustration, and increasing adoption. It also reduces employee frustration, increases adoption, and helps them use the software as intended and comply with company policy when necessary.
This post will focus on the employee aspect and on using DAPs to help internal employees use company software. From completely custom medical software built from the ground up to custom Salesforce implementations, DAPs can be helpful on multiple levels in providing contextual help.
Key Benefits of Implementing Contextual Help Strategies
Implementing contextual help brings several benefits to both the business and employees. Even if an employee isn’t on a screen with relevant help, many tools provide search capabilities to find the right help, directing them to the right place within the tool.
New employees using the software can be onboarded with a walkthrough the first time they log in. To take it a step further, employees can be onboarded to the specific parts of the software required for their roles. Yes, you can segment the audience to provide employees with exactly what they need based on their roles.
This improves employee onboarding by guiding them through the initial setup and learning process. By providing step-by-step instructions and explanations, contextual help ensures that employees can quickly get up to speed using a new application.
Another benefit is that contextual help enhances engagement with the walkthrough and provides more timely support when employees need it. It’s nice to have walkthroughs for common issues and resources available at your fingertips. That means employees are more likely to love the new tool and feel supported while using it.
No matter how simple company software is, employees still need help. Contextual help is a great way to provide that help.
No company software is perfect, no matter how easy it’s supposed to be. Contextual help reduces the stress of learning new technology.
Another benefit is that contextual help can range from a few lines of text to an in-depth walkthrough. It can also surface links to additional resources or a video, so employees never have to leave the application. The shorter the distance between a problem and help, the easier it is for employees to find help, which leads to fewer help desk calls.
Tooltips are another effective way of delivering contextual help. These small pop-up windows provide quick and relevant information about specific elements or features within an application. Tooltips enable employees to make informed decisions using an app by offering concise explanations or tips.
This one is big, too, since company apps can’t be improved without it: employee feedback. Collecting feedback is crucial for continuous improvement. Contextual help allows businesses to gather employee input directly within the application, making it easier to address concerns or make necessary updates based on real-time feedback.
Digital Adoption Platforms (DAPs) make it easy to provide contextual help as well as employee feedback right in an app.
These platforms provide a wealth of data and analytics, and they typically include built-in surveys, making it easy to collect feedback.
Lastly, system alerts are vital for informing employees about critical updates or changes. That could mean implementing a new feature that isn’t being adopted, or simply providing timely notifications. The business can quickly provide employees with helpful information and keep them informed of any changes that may affect their experience with the application.
Choosing The Right Digital Adoption Platform
When implementing contextual help strategies, choosing the right Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) is crucial. Pendo and WalkMe are the two leading DAPs on the market. Each one has its strengths, and there are dozens more to consider.
Choosing the right DAP is a long process and depends entirely on your needs. Here are some things to consider:
- Compatibility: Ensure the DAP integrates with your company’s software.
- Scalability: Determine if it can handle current and future needs as the business grows.
- Ease of use: Look for a user-friendly DAP that provides all the contextual help features you need (not all do).
- Data security: Ensure the DAP has robust security measures to protect sensitive company data.
- Integration capabilities: Check whether the DAP integrates with the company’s other tools and platforms, such as CRM and ERP systems.
- Analytical capabilities: Assess the DAP’s analytical features and capabilities to ensure it meets your specific data analysis requirements.
- Support and training: Assess the level of support and training provided by the DAP provider to ensure smooth implementation and ongoing use.
- Cost: Evaluate the DAP’s total cost, including licensing, implementation, and maintenance fees, to ensure it fits within your budget.
By considering these factors and doing a deep dive with each DAP, you’ll find the right tool for your needs. Once implemented, we’d love to help your organization build a contextual help strategy for the tool.
To develop the right strategy, you must first review contextual help examples that show how it can be used to support employees with company software.
Real-Life Examples of Contextual Help in Action
While many of our processes are general and can be used with any tool, we’ve used Pendo the most. Many of our contextual help examples come from Pendo and its demo website. Many of the systems we’ve built processes and contextual help strategies for are proprietary and contain Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
Let’s explore real-life examples of contextual help in action using Pendo as our reference point.
Onboarding
Steps in Pendo guides can be linked to buttons to show different parts of a screen, or to features employees can click through. That provides a guided onboarding process for new employees.
This is great for guiding employees through the initial setup and learning process, ensuring a smooth transition to using the application. Onboarding can also be segmented by employee role to ensure they receive relevant content.
Walkthroughs
This is similar to onboarding in that you can walk employees through a process. The difference is that this one can be launched at any time or accessed through a searchable help menu.
Once the walkthrough is launched, employees receive instructions in a modal and click the application to navigate the process in real time.
This is a great way to help employees through a complex (or simple) process and help them learn how to do it simultaneously. An excellent example of this is assisting employees in creating a new customer record in your CRM.
Videos
Sometimes, if a task needs a bit more context or you already have a resource available to help, a video in a modal is the perfect solution. With most DAPs, you can embed a video in a modal that can be launched automatically from a badge or the help menu.
This is an example on our website (not a DAP example) of a video that loads in a modal. It appears across all content and can provide employees with more in-depth information within the software.
This is a great way to provide employees with visual demonstrations and explanations of complex features or processes. Or maybe there’s information leadership wants to share. Whatever it is, it’s easy to show in the app’s context rather than sending employees to an external web page.
Tooltips
Tooltips are great because they can provide information in the context of where employees are in the application. We’ve used this to display lab values that are important for employees on a specific screen.
Notice how the modal appears when you click the question mark badge? It can be triggered by hovering or clicking (or both) to show employees more information. This type of tooltip can also include a video.
It’s a great way to provide quick, relevant information about specific elements or features within an app, helping employees make informed decisions and avoid mistakes.
Feedback
There’s no better way to improve your company’s software than to get valuable feedback. Digital adoption platforms make that easy. While this isn’t contextual help, it’s useful enough for every company.
This example from Pendo makes it easy to collect feedback directly within an application. That makes it easier to gather feedback to address concerns and improve the user experience.
System Alerts
This one isn’t strictly contextual help, but it’s still helpful. It’s helping employees know when a system is experiencing issues, is slow, or will be down. They can even be used to lock users out of specific parts of an application.
This is a great way to inform employees about defects being fixed as well. The alert can notify employees about issues and suggest alternatives to their current approach.
Wrap Up
Contextual help plays a crucial role in supercharging employee adoption of company software. Businesses can enhance onboarding, engagement, and overall satisfaction by providing relevant information and guidance at the right time and place.
When implemented effectively using a digital adoption platform (DAP), contextual help examples such as onboarding, walkthroughs, videos, tooltips, feedback, system alerts, and more can transform how employees use your company’s software. That means happier employees and more accurate use of tools.
If you want to improve the employee experience and drive adoption for your company’s digital products, consider incorporating contextual help strategies into your software.
We’d love to discuss your company’s initiative to implement contextual help into your company’s software. Schedule a free consultation, and we can discuss your goals and how we can help you implement processes that maximize the success of your contextual help initiative.