Glossary

Digital Adoption Platform

A digital adoption platform (DAP) is a software solution designed to facilitate more effective customer education, streamlining product adoption while also improving the overall user experience. Generally layered atop another application, website or platform, a digital adoption solution provides users with a guided walkthrough of the product’s key features and functionality.  

In addition to helping new users understand how a software product works, digital adoption tools can also be used for ongoing education, allowing customers to learn about new and upcoming features or refresh their memory about existing functionality. 

Digital adoption platforms can also be used to facilitate more effective internal training processes, allowing employees to onboard onto new software with far greater ease. This was actually what they were originally developed to do — streamline digital adoption to facilitate faster digital transformation for businesses. That they work equally well for customer onboarding is simply a bonus. 

How Do Digital Adoption Platforms Work?

Digital adoption platforms use a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver personalized, contextual guidance to a learner. Easily customizable for different applications and use cases, these solutions offer a great many benefits to any organization that can use them effectively:

• Streamlined onboarding through automation.
• Reduced helpdesk workload.
• Deeper insights into training through the collection of usage data.
• Proactive support for user or customer roadblocks. 
• Reduced resistance to new technology alongside increased user satisfaction. 
• Improved employee and customer experience.

Why Use a Digital Adoption Platform?

The simplest justification for using a DAP would be its use of artificial intelligence. We’ve seen on more than one occasion that when utilized correctly, AI considerably improves customer education, as well as multiple other kinds of training. It follows, therefore, that the same would apply to DAP solutions. 

Beyond this, DAP software also enables a more hands-on approach to user and customer education. It provides real-time in-app guidance rather than requiring that a user read through a manual or search a knowledge base. Instead of feeling slowed down or held back by their training, users who learn through DAP may end up feeling empowered and satisfied that they could simply ‘learn by doing.’ 

That level of engagement can not only accelerate your business’s digital transformation efforts but it can also help you overcome the challenges of product adoption as they pertain to business growth.

Lastly, the comprehensive analytics capabilities of digital adoption platforms can help your business both make smarter data-driven decisions and also ensure more effective internal governance. 

What to Look For in a Digital Adoption Platform

The most important thing to consider when selecting a digital adoption solution vendor is that no two businesses are alike in their training needs — and that even within the same organization, different employees and teams will have different requirements. For that reason, the first thing you need to do prior to looking for a solution is engage people across your organization. 

Make sure everyone has an opportunity to voice their needs and requirements and use that input to define your ‘must-have’ features and functionality. If multiple user groups will be accessing the solution, you’ll need to make sure you go with an option that supports segmentation and targeting. 

You may also want to explore virtual IT labs for your training needs. Creating virtual environments provides hands-on experiences that work to make training more interactive while boosting retention.

Beyond that, there are a few features you should look for:

• Support for different types of guided learning, including interactive walkthroughs, step-by-step guides, smart tips, task lists, and product tours 
• Intuitive content creation and content management functionality 
• Contextual self-service help menus 
• Comprehensive analytics functionality, particularly concerning user behavior
• Intelligent automation
• Support for user feedback mechanisms such as feature requests and net promoter score (NPS) surveys 
• A vendor willing to assist with deployment, implementation, and management.