Offering Professional Development To Real Estate Agents With A User-Friendly LMS

Below you can follow along with a conversation we had with Karen, the Operations Manager at 1st Choice Real Estate School.

Struggling with LMS Shortcomings

Since 2008, 1st Choice has been using a learning management system to manage their professional development business. However, their previous learning platforms had a variety of issues:

• One of the LMS providers went out of business
• Another provider was bought out, after which the pricing structure and system changed drastically
• They encountered technical issues with user reporting, updating content, filing state requirements, and more

One of the most serious issues they encountered with past LMS platforms was a steep learning curve for users. As a result, Karen would sometimes spend hours a day on the phone with frustrated customers who were confused about how to complete their courses.

What Did 1st Choice Real Estate School Need from Their LMS?

Every state has its own industry regulations around continuing education that have to be followed, and Missouri (where 1st Choice operates out of) is no exception.

“We're approved by the State of Missouri and they require that there's timing. So, one of the requirements was that we had to know how long a student was in a course, because we get audited every six months on how long a student's in a course.” - Karen B.

Of course, their list didn't end there. Here are a few of the complex requirements 1st Choice had for their future LMS:

• Prevent learners from skipping ahead in a course
• Automatically generate certificates for students after completing training
• Let students come and go as they please
• Easily connect the eCommerce storefront with the courses and the LMS itself
• Ability to bulk upload quiz questions from their old platform

Finding the Right Solution

When comparing Academy of Mine with two other LMSs during the buying process, Karen said we were the only company that met the majority of their needs. Even more importantly, we were the only platform willing and able to custom-build features for 1st Choice to fill in any gaps.

Some of those LMS custom features included:

• Custom weekly reports to send to the state
• Customized curriculum for students to earn a certificate of completion
• Being able to customize certificates to include certain fields per state requirements (now a default feature)
• Tracking how much time students are spending on activities inside of a course (now a default feature)

We've adopted several of the custom features we built for 1st Choice into our main platform, as they were commonly requested by other customers as well.

Choosing to Use Academy of Mine

Aside from the customizations, here are a few reasons 1st Choice went with Academy Of Mine over other LMS providers:

• Competitors charged a flat fee for the number of users in your system
• Competitors’ sales processes weren’t personalized to 1st Choice’s goals
• Lack of free trial from other LMS providers
• Lacking important features that 1st Choice needed

And, as we hear from many of our customers, user friendliness was also top of mind. After Karen's experiences with other LMS providers, she was determined to find a user-friendly solution for the sake of her time and their customers' time.

When we asked about how she would describe Academy of Mine to a stranger looking for an LMS, this is what Karen said:

“I would tell them that [Academy of Mine is] user-friendly for the students and for the company. And they've been amazing to us. They've helped build our website and our LMS. And I would say to check them out because if there's something there that you don't see that they do, they might be able to build it for you.” - Karen B.

Investing in a System That Supports Continuing Education

1st Choice offers two types of training:

1. Professional development covering the specific training required to become a real estate agent
2. Continuing education, which agents are required to regularly take after they get their real estate license

Many LMS providers restrict the total number of users you can support at once, which causes issues for businesses have a lot of return students, like 1st Choice. Karen mentioned that past LMS platforms weren't very accommodating to their business model. They were regularly charged more money during the months when a large number of customers returned to take continuing education courses, even though they weren't new users.

Because of those previous experiences, Karen appreciated that Academy of Mine is flexible with the number of users a customer can have in their LMS (at the time, there was no user cap). Our pricing plans have changed since 1st Choice was onboarded, but our pricing is still affordable compared to competitors. We also consider the number of users on your plan as a soft limit. This means that if your plan says you’re only allowed 1,000 users in the system, we’re not going to upcharge you the minute we see you with a few hundred extra users.

How 1st Choice Uses Academy of Mine

All of that explains why 1st Choice went with Academy of Mine — now let’s talk about how they're using the platform and the results they're getting.

1st Choice gets a lot of mileage from our platform, using most of our features. They built their eCommerce website with us, and our software developers customized it to match their company branding and business requirements.

They also use Academy Of Mine to:

• Deliver and manage all of their courses
• Report on weekly user progress
• Send reports to the state of Missouri
• Create and deliver certificates

When it comes to course creation, Karen said that they use SCORM courses authored in iSpring and then upload those into Academy of Mine. They also create all their certificates and student quizzes using our solution.

Saving Time By Improving Customer Experience

One of 1st Choice’s hopes when migrating to a new LMS was to eliminate unnecessary customer support calls coming from confused clients who couldn't figure out how to navigate their online training.

Since Academy of Mine makes it easy for their customers to purchase courses and complete training, Karen now has more time in the day to work on other things.

“I used to get calls about our old LMS all the time like, ‘Okay, how do I do this or what do I do here? I don't know where I go. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.’ Academy of Mine has eliminated all those calls.” - Karen B.

Saving time wasn’t the only benefit 1st Choice encountered after improving their customer experience. Karen also said they’ve had more referral business because of how user-friendly their training is.

“My goal was to streamline everything, make it user-friendly for the students so I can work on other things and not have to sit here and answer calls all day long. And that's something that I wanted. I would say that was huge for us, just to be able to have everything there that the students could figure out on their own.” - Karen B.

Streamlining a Real Estate Training Business with an LMS

Regardless of industry or training type, LMSs are mostly known for their ability to streamline training processes: administration, reporting, content delivery, content updating, and so on. 1st Choice is living proof of this — after switching to Academy of Mine, they can do more in their business than ever before.

Here’s a list of broad improvements that 1st Choice Real Estate School has experienced since using our platform:

• Improved customer experience and significantly increased referrals due to user-friendliness
• Notable time savings from decreased customer support inquiries
• Decreased time spent sending weekly reports to the state of Missouri

They've also specifically appreciated how quick and easy it is to do all of the following:

• Reporting on activity and user progress for both students and course admins
• Uploading courses and updating course content
• Creating quizzes and using them across different courses

Another standout experience is the outstanding tech support, which really wasn’t something they were expecting after their prior experiences.

“If we have a student that gets stuck in something, I can send a ticket to AOM and they're on it to see what's going on. Them being there for us is helping us be successful.” - Karen B.

Outcomes and Results with Academy of Mine

By switching to Academy of Mine, 1st Choice has resolved many issues they faced with previous LMS providers, such as customer confusion, time-consuming content updates, and disjointed eCommerce systems. Their choice to use us has resulted in significant improvements, including increased referrals, time savings, streamlined training processes, easier compliance with state requirements, and access to customizable features. They're quite happy with their decision — and so are we!

If you think your training business could benefit from Academy of Mine, give us a call today.