Irish Universities Association: Improving the customer journey for lifelong learning
The Irish Universities Association (IUA) is leading the 5–year MicroCreds project in partnership with seven leading Irish universities to provide flexible and accredited micro-credentials – short research-led courses created in consultation with enterprise.
They came to Pickle Jar with their new national platform and first audience insights, but wanted help to develop a seamless customer journey that would support recruitment and the long-term impact of the project. They wanted to know:
How could they help existing and potential customers make the decision to apply for a micro-credential with them?
How could they make sure all partners collaborate to offer customers the ideal journey?
Understanding your audiences to meet their needs
We set out to understand:
What stakeholders thought, wanted, and needed
The why, what, where, and when of (potential) customers’ lifelong learning journeys.
To create insights that generate new possibilities, it was important that we didn’t just look at what already existed. Instead, we also focused on understanding people’s expectations and motivations, to develop what could be:
What do they value?
What do they engage with?
What is in their way?
What is blocking this specific journey?
To that end, our project included three main steps:
The discovery phase, when we reviewed existing insights, conducted stakeholder interviews with IUA’s seven partners, and organised a discovery workshop to map out the existing customer journey. Our goal was to get the partners’ perspectives on MicroCreds and their role in the project, as well as their needs, priorities, and challenges.
The research phase combined a competitor review, two online surveys targeting existing participants and the general population, and interviews with individual learners and enterprise contacts. We wanted to understand where people were going for their continuous education, what they knew about the existing offer, what they wanted, and what they needed.
Finally, the deliverables went beyond the research report, with a one-day workshop led by our Director of Experience Design, Dana Rock. IUA team members and partner universities gathered and collaborated to identify gaps between their existing and ideal journeys, and come up with actionable short- and long-term recommendations.
Designing the next steps
At the end of the project, our team listed four key areas for IUA to focus on. The customer journey was one of them, but our research highlighted how communications as well as insights and evaluation should be part of these improvements.
And because ideal customer experiences strongly depend on collaboration behind the scenes, it also reinforced the need for more collaborative ways of working between and within partner universities.
“Increasing access and uptake of lifelong learning opportunities in Ireland is a key priority for the MicroCreds project.
Our work with Dana and the wider Pickle Jar team allowed us to build on previous user research we have carried out to really get inside the mind of current and potential learners to understand what motivates them to enrol in short, flexible courses and more importantly what are the barriers preventing them from committing to a course.
Through the interactive workshop that Dana delivered for us in Dublin our partner universities, who all have different approaches to student recruitment, were able to come together to breakdown the findings of the research project into short and long-term actions that they carry out in their university to support the collective goal of increasing uptake in lifelong learning in Ireland.”
David Corscadden, MicroCreds Communications Manager, Irish Universities Association