What does a digital-first mentality seek to accomplish? Simply put: it seeks to understand and enable audiences. That means providing visitors with the information they want, understanding what they need and building a system that extends a brand’s reach to pull in new audiences.
As an early adopter of a digital-first mentality, Valeo enhanced its ability to connect with its customers in multiple regions and languages. As a result of its educational, on-demand efforts, audiences increased consumption of Valeo’s content by 339%.
Want to see how Valeo launched its digital training program? Check out this on-demand webinar. [Watch Now.]
Why Valeo’s Move to Virtual Training Made Sense
Valeo is a global producer and leader in the automotive market. It employs more than 110,000 workers in 33 countries and supplies parts for nearly every aspect of a car.
Because of the scale and technical nature of the automotive industry, Valeo faced an uphill battle in ensuring its customers — mechanics and distributors — knew how to best use its products.
Initially, the automotive supplier used face-to-face training to educate its market. However, a few issues made in-person training untenable.
First, sending instructors out into the field was time-consuming. Instructors often had to book three days for in-person training (travel, training day, travel back).
Second, in-person education is fleeting. Often instructors would cover a topic or part once, then depart. To retain information, however, trainees need to revisit lessons again and again.
Third, language barriers limited reach. Valeo’s customers are as diverse as its offerings. To extend the company’s reach, it needed to scale its training program to accommodate more than 20 languages.
To overcome these challenges, Valeo turned to the ON24 platform. With the smart use of ON24 Webcast Elite and ON24 Engagement Hub, Valeo launched a virtual training program that extended its reach globally and:
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- Boosted content views by 339%
- Increased pageviews 158%
- Increased unique viewer engagement by 45%
- Provided virtual training opportunities in more than 20 languages
How Valeo Mastered Its Virtual Training Program
There are a lot of elements to plot out when it comes to engaging audiences through a virtual training program. Typically, a successful training program will incorporate a few key elements, including:
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- Easy-to-use interfaces
- Multimedia presentations
- Engaging visual storytelling
- Certifications
- Navigable content hubs
Let’s take a quick look at how Valeo nailed these elements in its on-demand training webinars.
Its Virtual Training Is Easy to Access, Easy to Use
Any virtual training program needs to have its audience in mind. Being conscious of your audience doesn’t only extend to the content you create, but also how easy you make it to consume your content.
Often, this means empowering audiences to find and filter to the content they want to see when they want to see it. This also means putting up as few barriers — like form fills — as possible.
To empower its audiences, Valeo uses Engagement Hub. Engagement Hub allows the organization to list all of its training content in one location — and allow audiences to filter to the particular content relevant to them.
For example, since Valeo is a multinational company, audiences can easily filter content based on language. Visitors can also filter content based on topics and programs.
By making its content easy to access, and, more importantly, by extending its content across different languages, Valeo helps itself to extend its reach and engage more potential customers.
It creates Multimedia Experiences for its lessons
Valeo’s live and on-demand virtual training sessions provide attendees with a fairly comprehensive understanding of a given subject — whether that subject involves a technical deep dive into automotive part technologies or an overview of new developments within the industry.
To make these presentations stand out — and to help its audience get a better understanding of the subject at hand — Valeo makes great use of multimedia capabilities within its webinars.
In some cases, Valeo will start its training events with a video recording. During this section, the instructor covers what they’ll discuss and why and what attendees can expect from the program.
Once the lay of the land is established, the media player will switch over to slides, so attendees can get a clear image and diagram of the part in question as instructors walk them through the details.
After walking through the slides, Valeo switches back to video so its instructors can show the physical asset and answer any questions through a live Q&A. In short, what Valeo does is:
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- Share pre-recorded video
- Move to detailed slides with audio
- Back to a video demonstration
- Answer questions through Q&A (both live and on-demand)
Valeo developed a clever and a well thought out approach to educational webinars in a highly technical field.
Its Program Provides Certification
Few people attend a virtual training program for the sheer pleasure of it. Typically, they’re in it for two reasons:
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- They, as professionals, are engaged in their field and want to participate in continuing education.
- They, as professionals, need to maintain status or achieve licensure through certification.
Regardless of an attendee’s reasoning, providing certificates of completion is a great way to draw in audiences, build awareness and establish a brand as a trusted resource.
And, low and behold, Valeo uses its virtual training program to issue certificates of completion to its attendees.
The criteria Valeo sets for certification (or any organization, really) can range depending on the goal of the program. Organizations can also set up certifications to comply with any accreditation requirements set by a governing agency like an industry association.
Organizations can issue certificates based on:
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- Time spent within a course
- How often an attendee engages with course material via polls and surveys
- Quiz scores and more
Its Program Is Designed to Engage
Valeo’s most important element in its digital training program is its ability to engage. By providing its audiences with multimedia, resource-rich and interactive experiences, the company can create a two-way channel between it and its customers.
And driving that engagement is important. That’s because Valeo’s training program is closely connected to its quality department and investigation of warranty problems and topics.
Through its webinars, the company monitors issues its audience of mechanics and distributors face thanks to features like Q&A, polls and chat. Those issues are then taken and made into more educational webinars for future consumption.
How Valeo’s Virtual Training Program Has Driven Results
Since implementing ON24, Valeo has produced two to three webinars per month and now offers more than 100 webinars in more than 20 languages.
Now, more workshop mechanics and distributors rely on Valeo’s digital experiences to gain technical knowledge, rather than face-to-face sessions. That means more presence within the company’s market, more awareness, and — thanks to its approach to virtual training — more international reach.