Top Tips for a New Builder

In the world of WalkMe, a builder is the person who uses WalkMe’s tools to create guides and walkthroughs that will allow users to learn and adapt to new software.  While WalkMe’s platform has a lot of tools to offer, getting the most out of them requires proper planning and forethought.  Whether you are a builder, or you have one on your team, here are a few key concepts that can help to improve the quality of guides, accelerate development and rapidly deliver results.

Use WalkMe’s Builder Knowledgebase

WalkMe offers a wealth of resources to bring builders up to speed.  Start out by exploring these resources so that you are well informed when it comes time to implement your walk-thrus.  Explore WalkMe’s best practices guides for building smart walk-thrus and for designing the walk-thru user experience.  The information contained in these guides is backed by both research and actual field experience implementing WalkMe.  Smart walk-thrus are the most important to familiarize yourself with, but WalkMe offers best practices guides for all of their apps.

Beyond best practices guides, WalkMe also offers a series of online and instructor-led courses to familiarize yourself with their platform through WalkMe University.  If you are starting from scratch as a builder, then the courses offered by WalkMe University are an excellent way for you to gain first-hand working knowledge of how to implement the WalkMe apps.

Decide Which Apps Are Right for You

WalkMe is made up of a number of different apps that can be applied to helping customers, onboarding new staff or accelerating overall digital adoption.  Each tool has is designed to solve specific problems.  It is important for builders to familiarize themselves with each app and which problems it best addresses so they can apply the right solution to the problem they are faced with.  Making the best use of WalkMe doesn’t necessarily mean using all these tools, it means using the tools that are right for the problems you are facing.

Smart Walk-Thrus

Dynamic guidance that offers a visual flowchart and can help users through the completion of a process.  Ideal for feature adoption, onboarding/training and support.

Launchers

A kick-off point for beginning guidance or support. Allows users to play a walk-thru, open a resource, run a validation check or start a survey.

ShoutOuts

Eye-catching messages that create engagement with users of your software. Perfect for announcements, such as changes to your site or anticipated downtime, promotional offers, such as free trials or limited time offers, and reminders for employees of important pending tasks.

SmartTips

Offer guidance and validation on forms where data is entered into your site.  Ideal for providing additional details about the information that needs to be entered on your site and validating that the email meets certain criteria, such as entering a valid email address.

ActionBot

Full-on automation for common tasks across applications and simplifies the interface down to natural language.  Automates FAQs and common requests, streamlines common HR forms like vacation days and payroll questions and eliminates errors when trying to enter data, like a lead into your CRM software.

Resources

Shortcuts to content you had previously created.  Great for filling the gap on features that you haven’t created walk-thrus for but have existing documentation that can be referenced.  Also, useful when you want to supplement a walk-thru with additional content in video or other forms.

Onboarding

A list of required training for new employees that helps them track their onboarding progress.  Helps to accelerate onboarding of new employees but can also be used to engage customers.  In the sales process it can improve customer conversion but creating a checklist that highlights your differentiators and post-purchase, it can be used to ensure that customers get the most out of your product.

Try it Out

Before setting out to make your first walk-thru that you plan to put into production, take some time to work with the tools that WalkMe has to offer to builders so that you can familiarize yourself with them.  Try building some simple walk-thrus for yourself so you can experiment with all the different features of the build tools.  Try changing the color of balloons and text or try to create an ActionBot routine that automatically sends an email for you based on some simple inputs.  Having a chance to experiment and explore without a pressing deadline looming is a great way to better understand how each of the apps can meet your needs.

Another great way to expand your knowledge is to look at what other builders are doing.  If you can find other builders that are willing to share their work, then you can take a look at how they are applying WalkMe apps to solve their problems.  If you create a co-sharing relationship, then it also opens the door to you receiving feedback from whoever you share your builds with.  Other people can both learn from what you are doing and comment and suggest if they see ways to improve.

Make a Plan

Once you have reached the point where you are comfortable with the tools in your toolbelt, then it is time to turn theory into practice.  But that requires that you have a solid plan in place as to what exactly you are going to do.  Are you focused on helping new customers on your website to navigate more easily or is your focus on getting the sales team to actually use the CRM you paid so much money for?  As a builder, having your business objective and challenges laid out is critical to ensuring that you are building the right solutions to overcome those challenges and meet your business need.

Once the business needs are understood it is time to start designing what exactly your build will look like.  An important tip here is to keep it simple.  Far too often, new builders are over zealous and excited about implementing their first guides.  As a result, they end up adding far too much content which ends up having the opposite of the intended effect.  People don’t like having to read or follow too many instructions.  They want just enough information in order to not be blocked and to keep moving forward.  Fight the urge to add a ton of content, and instead, challenge yourself to see how streamline you can keep your builds.

Builder-User Relationships

As a builder, it is important to form strong relationships with a few key users of your builds.  This is important for two reasons.  First, you need to spend as much time as possible shadowing users and learning about their challenges and struggles so that you can create builds that help them through those tough moments.  The better your understanding of the user, the more useful your guides will become.  And second, having users involved throughout your build process allows you to check-in throughout development to ensure that what you are building meets the needs of the user.  Engage them at periodic intervals as you are building your walk-thru to try it out and see whether it is giving the support they need.