Choosing an LMS can feel overwhelming because you need to find a system that fits your budget, offers the functionality you’re looking for, and can scale with your organization’s growth. With all of those variables to consider, it’s understandable why many buyers don’t ask too many questions about support beyond the hours it’s available. Many vendors compound this issue by claiming to have fantastic support with no evidence to support the assertion.
As a result, support is the number one reason why organizations leave one learning system in favor of another. The most obvious solution to this problem is an industry-wide standard that allows an unbiased third party to verify claims of outstanding support, but that has never existed in the e-learning space… until now.
The Craig Weiss Group has announced a Customer Support Certification Program that allows LMS vendors to announce their intention to provide superlative support to the public and then be held accountable for their performance. The Lead Analyst of the Craig Weiss Group, Weiss himself, also offers helpful resources to help buyers find a great LMS for their needs on FindAnLMS.com. You can create a free account on FindAnLMS.com to compare unbiased reviews of dozens of different platforms.
No money changes hands when an LMS vendor wants to join the Customer Support Certification Program. Instead, vendors are required to sign a Customer Excellence Pledge (or CEP for short) that commits them to the following four goals:
- Provide Outstanding Customer Service and Support to All Customers
- Maintain High Ethical Standards in Sales, Service, and Business
- Address Customer Needs in a Timely Fashion, including response times of no more than two hours during a vendor’s business hours, providing daily follow-ups where applicable, and offering transparency on how their support queue works
- Give All Customers a Dedicated Customer Service Member or Team to Act as a Consistent Point of Contact.
How Does the Craig Weiss Group Verify that Vendors Are Living Up to the CEP?
Once an LMS vendor has joined the Customer Support Certification Program, they are required to provide Weiss and his team with hard data pertaining to their customer service performance every six months. Some of the information asked for includes:
- Average Response Times
- Number of Follow-Ups
- Total Number of Support Queries (email or by phone)
- Top Five Customer Service Problems and How Long It Took to Resolve Them
- The Ratio of Support Queries to the LMS’s Total User Count
Successful vendors receive a badge that can be displayed on their website and are recorded on Weiss’s blog, e-learning 24/7. Membership in the Craig Weiss Group’s Customer Support Certification Program is not required to be featured on FindAnLMS.com, but support is an important consideration in all of the reviews on the site.
Which LMS Vendors Are Currently Certified?
As of January 2022, the following vendors are active members of the Customer Support Certification Program (listed in no particular order):
KREDO
JollyDeck
EdTek LMS
Knowledge Anywhere
IMC Learning Suite
Web Courseworks
G-Cube
Learn Amp
D2L – Brightspace
Schoox
Absorb LMS
SmarterU
Fuse
Rockstar Learning Platform
Agylia
Thought Industries
Eurekos
EdCast
Biz Library
The Craig Weiss Group will add new vendors to this list at any time provided they sign the CEP and pass initial scrutiny, and organizations are encouraged to contact their LMS vendors if they are not listed above. Likewise, members that fail to provide data to the Craig Weiss Group or provide substandard customer service may be removed from the list at any point.
What if I Have LMS Questions that Do Not Pertain to Support?
If you need help picking the right LMS for your organization, you should create a free account on FindAnLMS.com and compare unbiased reviews straight from one of the most respected names in the online learning industry. There is no better way to figure out exactly what your learners need and how to give it to them.
