Sections of a training manual

The call flows should include prompts for what to say, what to do, and what questions to ask. While procedures are detailed information for specific processes, a call flow is more of a guide to help the rep determine which procedure needs to take place to resolve the call. In a manual, create separate call flows for specific inquiries.

A call flow takes you to the correct procedure and helps you determine what needs to be accomplished to resolve this call. Once your agents discover the purpose of a customer's call, then they will need specific procedures. The procedures provide step-by-step instructions on how to handle different inquiries and situations. Use the procedures to help agents know where to click in your system to accomplish a process. Procedures should include both written explanations and visual aids to help agents feel confident in performing tasks.

Warning: In your training manual, this is where you have to be extra cautious about including too much or too little information. It helps to write your manual so that it is easy to see the important next steps. This could be by bolding, using different colors, indented, or something else that helps the vital information pop. Customers frequently call in when they need help troubleshooting an issue. Your call center agents need to be able to walk a caller through a troubleshooting process in detail.

Have an entire section dedicated to walking agents through your troubleshooting steps for specific transactions. Some of these troubleshooting scenarios could include:. As your call center agents follow these troubleshooting guides in your manual, they need to know what order to try solutions.

By breaking these steps down, you're providing your agents with a guide that is easy to look up and follow in your training manual. Now you know some vital help guides to include in your training manual. You need help guides that will assist your agents throughout all stages of a call. If you include all of these in your training manual, your agents will be able to use your manual both in training and for years down the road as they reference it on the job.

Of course, you will need to update the training manual as procedures and policies change. Your employees are counting on you for help as their entire work might depend upon the information present in the training manual.

Gather your peers around and start working on a training manual collaboratively. One person could be in charge of writing it, while others search for information, organize information, or create visual assets for the manual.

In order to create an effective training guide, you need to have a good idea of what type of content you want to include in it. Compile all the information, knowledge, process, checklists, etc.

Make sure you are thorough with every point and have everything you need to write a training manual. Never, ever, rely on your memory! Even skipping a small step may lead to confusion amongst your readers. For example, forgetting to tell the reader about an important switch in a piece of new machinery, can not only be misleading but can also be dangerous.

The content of the training manual directly depends upon the type of audience reading it. If your training your employees on new software that no one has used before or training new hires , then going in deep with explanations and describing the steps precisely and clearly can help them grasp the knowledge quickly.

However, if you are teaching them some additional features of software they already use, no need to go all-in from scratch. Keeping your audience in mind will give you an idea of how broad or specific you need to be throughout the manual. Outline the flow of the training guide into chapters, sections, or parts.

Make sure that the training manual is in a smooth flow and covers all the steps in-depth from start to finish. Organizing the information is important to avoid confusion and make it an easy read for your audience. Adding a table of contents to your training manual is a must. If your training manual is heavy on pages, the importance of having a table of contents increases exponentially.

The table of contents provides navigation to the reader and helps them go to a particular topic quickly. This is especially useful when employees need to go back to the training manual to refresh their memory on a particular topic, helping them save time and effort.

Using a document editor that automatically creates a table of contents along with subheadings is a good way to achieve this. Ending each section of the training manual with a summary can do wonders for your employees.

They can quickly get a recap of whatever they have learned so far, which helps save them a lot of time and effort. Training manuals are well, boring. They are filled with text and are not very engaging. On top of that, visuals are processed 60, times faster in the brain than text.

You don't want to clutter your manual with too much, but use visuals if you can. You can have screenshots of steps in computer work. You can include charts of important data. Pictures of tools or machinery the person will use are good, too.

There really is no limit to what types of visual aids you could include, so think about what you are training for and what would be most helpful for the user to see. Include checklists of important steps. For many manuals, you'll be detailing the steps of various processes, and checklists are a great way to sum things up.

When a user needs to refer back to a section that includes specific steps, the checklist will refresh their memory and can be checked much more quickly than multiple paragraphs of text. Checklists could include materials needed, sections for before, during, and after completing a task, or how to evaluate work once it is done. Include activities and quizzes that measure learning. You want to ensure that users of your manual are learning as they go, so write up small tests of their knowledge.

Include the answers in a separate spot so they can check how they did. You could have multiple choice questions, fill in the blank and matching, or scenarios for problem solving.

The purpose would be to help them along the way in gauging how much their are learning. If you want to create a training manual, you could use any word processing software, like Microsoft Word, Pages Mac or Google Docs. Not Helpful 0 Helpful 2. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. Once the manual is complete, gather a test group to see if it makes sense and is an effective training tool.

Get feedback from them on any ways they think the manual could be improved. Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0. Try to use language that is simple and concise so it will be easy for people to understand. Don't make the content so formal that it gets boring, or your audience won't stay interested.

You Might Also Like How to. How to. About This Article. Co-authored by:. Co-authors: Updated: September 15, Categories: Teaching Business Writing. Article Summary X To write a training manual, start by compiling all of the information the manual needs to cover and then determining whether dividing it into chapters, sections, or parts would work best.

Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read , times. Reader Success Stories Maggie May 5, Short, it covers the main points, straight to the point, and I like the simple way the graphics cover the subject. One does not have to spend much time reading a book to learn something. You may post my review. Great job. With an understanding of things like audience skill level, their context, and their content preferences, you can build your content to fit their expectations and needs.

And, while you probably do, spending some time to flesh it out and bring the picture into clear focus will help you craft training content that truly solves your audiences problems.

A great training manual is easy to navigate. Someone encountering it for the first time feels comfortable discovering the information they need and a returning user is able to quickly find specific content and topics. You can make sure this is the case for your training manual by strategically planning your content. Simply put, this means laying out all of your training material and organizing it in a logical fashion.

There are different themes you might use to organize and categorize the topics in your training manual. You could organize them by:. If you do have a lot of topics, consider placing them in groups and using headings and sub-sections to create a logical flow and organization within your manual. Use this structure to create a table of contents in the final manual. In many cases, there will be ideal ways to deliver your content.

Figuring out which it is requires thinking about both your audience and your content. You have a number of options for delivery. Common delivery mediums for training manuals include:. Questions like these will tell you if things like video, interactivity, and particular assessment strategies are viable techniques to include in your training material.

At the same time, some topics are more suitable to video, while others are better for text and imagery. You can combine different formats in one and provide rich, media supported content. TechSmith Camtasia is a great tool used by professional video creators, but is easy for beginners to get started with.