In today’s world information travels very fast — thanks to online media and widespread access to the internet across the globe and age groups. It has become very easy for consumers to write their experiences or reviews of any product or service and share them on online media platforms for others to see. This has been a goldmine of information and companies continue to track and study this data to gain better understanding of how their products are faring in the competition. While most of the companies keep a track of “Voice of customer” but very few utilize this feedback to improve their offerings and continue to deliver superior experiences for their customers.
Edwisor, a relatively small startup in the EdTech space, is one such company that has always kept the voice of customers on top priority and has continued to use it to make improvements in its offerings. Founded in 2015, Edwisor offers upskilling courses in emerging areas of technology such as Data Science and Web Development along with providing successful career transitions through its unique hiring assistance program that hinges on referral interviews. It took 5 years to find the right product market fit and develop an offering that is in line with customer expectations drawn from early adopters. Let’s take a look at what are some of the improvements that Edwisor made basis customer reviews and feedbacks:
100% Live Classes with small batch sizes
Until early 2020 edwisor offered pre recorded sessions and lectures to its customers which came with its fair share of negative reviews on social media platforms like Quora or Google where users mentioned that sessions were old, outdated and of little value as Youtube was being flooded with better pre recorded content every day. To add to the ire of the customers, many of edwisor’s users who were new to fields of web development and data science found it extremely difficult to understand from recorded sessions. The problems were genuine and noise was loud on various social media platforms. That’s when Edwisor started experimenting with live classes of varied batch sizes to identify the optimum learning method for its users — one that is appreciated by all users (new to experienced in the field)
Voila ! 100% live classes with small batch sizes of up to 20 people only ! Ever since this was launched in late 2020, the experience of customers has increased 10 fold and escalations on social media from enrolled users in the last 3 months is a big fat 0 !!!
Quality of mentors
For any education system to be successful you need 2 key ingredients — what is to be taught and who teaches it ! Edwisor has invested heavily into these 2 areas to ensure the quality of learning remains highest for its users. Edwisor follows a Kaizen approach of improving the content and quality of mentors teaching every cycle which means every successive class has a slightly better experience. Furthermore, the stringent process of selecting mentors stems from the real life experience — “you may be really good at what you do but you may not be able to teach others to be as good as you” — hence a lot of emphasis is placed on finding mentors who are not only good at their work but also are really good at teaching others what they do. Edwisor’s mentor selection ratio is ~8% which itself is one of the lowest in the industry. This approach has led us to have positive reviews about our mentors on various social media platforms. You can check to see there will be little to no bad reviews about Edwisor with respect to mentors.
Hiring Process
Being in the upskilling industry, Edwisor always focused on providing tangible outcomes to its users through successful career transition. While 100% placement is a myth and is used by many players as a marketing gimmick yet it is the most frequently highlighted promise that you can find for any EdTech player on social media and Edwisor was no exception. However, the company has taken a very different approach to hiring in recent times through referral interviews. Securing a job is an output of two key things — Skills and Interview Opportunities which means if you have the right skill set (technical + behavioral) and enough opportunities then you will definitely end up with a job. And this has been the key focus of Edwisor in terms of getting its users hired through its unique referral program.
For a small company to have improved so much just by listening to what its users say on social media is a great testament of the intention behind starting the company — solve the problem of unemployability in India by bridging the skill gap between industry and academia. From here on, many interesting improvements and innovations are in the pipeline for this small yet customer focused EdTech organization. Stay tuned to know more!
