Have you ever invested months building comprehensive training content, only to discover that almost nobody was using it? At Pigment, a business planning platform, we faced this exact challenge.
Despite our robust Pigment Academy featuring video tutorials, eLearning courses, and practice activities, the majority of our users—particularly the business users representing most of our user base—simply weren't engaging with the training.
The problem wasn't with the quality of our content. It was that users weren't going to the Academy in the first place.
This realization prompted us to fundamentally reimagine our approach to training—shifting from traditional, segregated courses to in-product guided tours that meet users where they already work. The results were transformative: 95%+ completion rates, 8x higher engagement, and 6x faster content development.
The disconnect: When training & users don't meet
Pigment serves two distinct user personas:
- Modelers—Technical specialists who build complex forecasts, import data, and create metrics
- Business users—People who primarily consume insights from dashboards but don't need deep technical knowledge
Our initial training was built primarily for modelers—detailed, technical, and housed separately in the Pigment Academy. Business users, who simply needed to find and interpret data, found this approach overwhelming. More critically, they weren't logging into the Academy to begin with.
We identified four key pain points in our traditional approach:
- Lack of personalization: Generic, one-size-fits-all courses didn't adapt to different roles and responsibilities
- High maintenance burden: Frequent product updates made training content obsolete quickly
- No behavioral data: We couldn't track where users struggled or abandoned the training
- Low engagement: Business users simply didn't end up being in the Pigment Academy
The core issue became clear: We needed to bring learning to the users, not expect users to seek out learning.
The solution: Learning in the flow of work
Instead of forcing users to exit their workflow and enter a separate learning environment, we embedded training directly into Pigment's interface using guided tours. This approach delivers guidance precisely when and where users need it—in the workflow.
Here's how our implementation works:
1. Role-based personalization
- New users select their role (Business User or Modeler) upon login
- This triggers customized tours tailored to their specific needs and responsibilities
- Content is filtered based on what's relevant to their particular use case
2. Context-driven delivery
We use several contextual triggers to determine when to offer guidance:
- The user's role and permissions
- Their previous product usage patterns
- Time since account creation
- Previous completion of other tours
This contextual intelligence ensures users receive guidance relevant to their specific situation, dramatically improving engagement and perceived value.
3. Real-time, hands-on learning
- Tours guide users step-by-step through actual tasks (e.g., filtering data, reading dashboards)
- Learners actively perform the work directly in-product as they learn
- Each step focuses on a single action with clear, conversational instructions
4. Built-in practice data
- Many new users don't have their company's data loaded yet
- We provide sample datasets so they can practice immediately
- This removes barriers to getting started and builds confidence
5. Automated follow-ups
- The next tour starts within 24 hours or remains available in the product
- This ensures spaced learning without overwhelming users
- Tours build progressively on previously mastered skills
The results: Measurable impact
The shift to workflow learning through guided tours delivered remarkable improvements across all key metrics.
Engagement and completion
- 95%+ completion rates on guided tours
- 8x more business users enrolled in training compared to the old Academy approach
- Deeper engagement—users stayed longer and applied skills faster
Development efficiency
- 6x faster content development cycle
- Updating tours took minutes, not days
- Content updates are synchronized with product changes
- Lower resource investment for greater learning outcomes
Strategic implementation: Starting with purpose
Before building the first tour, we established clear guiding principles:
- Focus on moments of need: By analyzing support tickets, user feedback, and product usage data, we identified critical moments where users consistently struggled. These "moments of need" became our priority targets.
- Design for minimal disruption: Nobody wants their workflow interrupted by lengthy tutorials. We committed to creating tours that were concise, contextual, and considerate of the user's time.
- Complement, don't replace: We viewed guided tours not as replacements for our existing comprehensive resources but as strategic complements. Tours would handle the "how-to" of specific tasks, while more comprehensive resources would continue addressing the "why" and deeper conceptual understanding.
The technical implementation was very straightforward. We used Userflow, which allowed us to create and deploy guided tours without any coding skills. This no-code approach enabled our learning team to rapidly build, test, and iterate on tours without depending on engineering resources. The visual interface made it simple to define each step, customize messaging, and set trigger conditions—making the barrier to entry much lower than many would expect for such a powerful workflow learning solution.
When should you use guided tours?
Not every training challenge requires guided tours, but they're particularly effective when:
- Training is contextual – Learners need to apply skills directly within a tool
- Subject matter is complex – Users benefit from step-by-step guidance
- Immediate feedback is necessary – Learners need real-time correction and validation
- Users are new to the product – Onboarding is a critical moment of need
- Content changes frequently – Tours are easier to update than traditional materials
- Behavioral insights are valuable – You want to track user interaction patterns
Key takeaways
Our experience with workflow learning at Pigment revealed several fundamental truths about effective training:
- Meet users where they are: If they won't go to your LMS, bring training to them
- Make it actionable: Transform passive learning into active doing
- Personalize for roles: One-size-fits-all training rarely succeeds
- Leverage data: Track behavior to continuously refine and improve
- Reduce context switching: Learning works best when integrated into the workflow
Our experience proved that the most effective learning happens not in separate training environments, but embedded in the actual workflow. By meeting users where they already are and providing guidance exactly when it's needed, we transformed training to become a natural part of the work process—shifting from "learning then doing" to "learning while doing”.
Image credit: wenich-mit