Screen, screen, on the wall, how does Cisco IT teach Webex to all?

Within Cisco, we naturally make extensive use of Cisco Webex for collaboration and we find all sorts of ways to engage our users and drive adoption. It’s really a planes, trains, and automobiles strategy.

With employees in nearly 100 countries, using Webex is a great way to connect and communicate with colleagues. Webex Teams leverages asynchronous communication to allow all time zones to participate in the conversation and Webex Meetings gives everyone the opportunity to join an online meeting from anywhere, using any device. Cisco IT is one customer of cloud-based Cisco Webex services and we’ve got positive feedback from more than 100,000 users as the product weaves into the fabric of our work styles.

When we controlled the release schedules for the on-premise solution, it worked well for our old waterfall method of delivery. But our appetite for new features grew and the risk tolerance expanded, so we consumed our collaboration services from the cloud to meet the demands of an agile and fast-moving business. This paradigm shift meant we also needed to rethink our user adoption programs.

With cloud delivered services, the user experience changes a lot more quickly than for on-premise offerings. This has some great benefits because we can see visible progress in product development addressing things like security, trust, stability, and new usability features.

However, the regular releases also mean we need to constantly top up our user’s education on these services and the way these changes can benefit their work styles. Internally, we have an active change management campaign, called #teamup, to engage our Webex user base and help make the transition to Webex tools easier for everyone. #teamup employs multiple channels to share updates including endpoint messaging, digital signage, Webex Teams rooms, and training sessions to promote adoption and educate users on changes to service.

Our Video Everywhere strategy means video endpoints are deployed in all office buildings. It just makes sense to use this real estate to reach our employees in our 500 offices globally. We’ve transformed some of our video endpoints into dynamic billboards while they’re not engaged for meetings.

We altered our Webex Boards and room-based units to display messaging like quick guides to increase awareness and help our users stay up-to-date with new features or ways of working.

In this communal space, our Webex Board has a dual-purpose: supporting casual collaboration and running informal training and awareness sessions. It shows tips like:

How to control a Room device

How to join a meeting

How to view Meeting Participant

We’ve run sessions sharing practical advice on how to make the most of Webex Teams, cloud-registered end points, and Webex Meetings.

Cisco’s Customer Experience (CX) team delivered training with their User Solution Empowerment (USE) program at key offices across the world. CX User Solution Empowerment is something available to customers and partners of Cisco and we found that the simple guides and talks about how to use screen sharing and whiteboarding were particularly well received.

Our Executive Admin community particularly enjoyed these trainings as they are gate keepers for many of the information flows in their offices. We also targeted power users of collaboration services because they serve as both advocates and ambassadors in unofficial capacities.

Its long been a strategy that Cisco IT creates high-quality online content optimised for internal sharing and our power users take advantage of the opportunity to share. The strategy increases the likelihood that support material will be shared and encourages more (and faster) self-support.

Posters in our offices ramped up excitement around events, plus leaving them up after events directed people to specific intranet pages or Webex Teams spaces for further help. These Webex Team spaces had subject experts on hand to provide reassurance and guidance to users trying out the new technology and ways of working.

Of course, we didn’t ignore the chance to also use more traditional digital signage. Screens mounted on office walls with the Cisco Digital Signage solution broadcast targeted messages and content. We can select specific offices, floors and even times. It’s a very surgical approach for any stage before, during and after these user adoption campaigns. These tactics are really effective for addressing our current user base.

For new joiners, we added additional education as part of the standard New Employee Onboarding (NEO) program. Our NEO training offers an accelerated introduction and familiarity with key tools and processes for success in the workplace. Outside of the NEO training, #TeamUp, and USE adoption campaigns, we run a continual low-level awareness program too.

The screen real estate of various video end points is again used to offer quick tips and tricks or highlight new ways of working and places to go for further information including dedicated Webex Teams spaces, intranet pages and support pages.

So, whilst we’ve moved to the cloud, there is a range of channels and mediums for reaching employees including the video device screens, digital signage screens, Webex Teams spaces, Intranet pages, hard copy posters and advocates and ambassadors.

We really drink our own champagne as part of our planes, trains and automobile approach to driving user adoption of cloud collaboration tools.