Teach Your Retail Employees to Draw Customers Back with Enterprise Learning Management System

While technology dependency has been growing in all industries for years now, the face of retail industry changed after Amazon started its multilevel eCommerce business surpassing Walmart. By 2015, consumers had become so internet friendly that brick and mortar stores were facing a crisis quite unknown to their business till date. However, they were still popular because it is intrinsic to human nature to trust their tactile experience more than just audio-visual while making a purchase. Also, buying from a store was always faster than ordering online. But the pandemic changed it all. 85% Americans have said that Covid-19 impacted their shopping habits in some way, including reduced overall spending, increased online shopping, and increased use of delivery services, reported by Statista.

 

But things are taking a brighter turn. While a recent McKinsey reports, 60-70% adults are now omnichannel consumer with both sales in brick and mortar stores and eCommerce growing, an eMarketer survey projects that 81% customers are willing to go back to the store.

 

Growth Market specialist, Bharat Jain at G-Cube suggests, ‘The trends are positive and retail owners should jump to the occasion. Training plays a very important role in this phase of adaptation which will enable the employees to keep up and draw the customers back to the stores.’

 

 

Promoting Your Employees as Brand Ambassadors

 

While the willingness to return to stores is increasing, the affinity towards online shopping is not reducing. Retailers have to step up to encourage the willing customer to take an action and that is possible only by giving them a great experience. As your in-store employees are in charge of the customer experience, this is where your employees can become the true ‘brand ambassadors’.

 

 

Train to be an Expert than a Sales Support

 

A very important part of the online shopping experience is the abundance of information about the product, usage and also comparison charts which is completely unavailable at the stores. Retailers have to fill up this gap by training their employees to become product experts. Providing a continuous learning environment with small nuggets of information based on the category of product they are handling through an automated workflow on the mobile LMS shall help the employees retain knowledge better. The information is also available to them at the point-of-sale where they can not only provide demo of a particular item but compare the features while giving sales advice to the customer.

 

 

In-person Search Optimization

 

While looking for an item on the shopping app, a customer gets choice of both browsing and searching. So basically, they have the option to look through a lot of items and also search for anything specific they want. In a store this search engine is your employee who is helping the customer find the right product. At times, they cannot find the right items while searching manually and this leads to higher waiting time and dissatisfied customer. Integrating your retail management system with your LMS can bring all the information regarding the shelf, storage, and product details in one place which the employees can access with simple keyword search which is far more efficient. This reduces customer’s wait time replicating the online shopping experience helping your retail employees give a great experience to the buyer.

 

 

Keep Your Employees Motivated

 

According to National Retail Federation, the attrition rate in retail in USA is just above 60%, which is very high considering the overall average of 19%. Therefore, keeping your employees motivated to put in the extra effort is essential. An enterprise LMS provides you the opportunity to gamify the learning strategy for your retail employees. With easy integration with multiple business systems, you can give redeemable points to the employees based on their real-time KPI data, create leaderboards, and track the star performers. Getting recognized for one’s effort always makes them put in some extra.

To ensure the above you will have to invest significantly in developing and delivering training programs that can inculcate these habits and behaviours. However, that is not the final step, as the learning content has to be distributed along with follow-up trainings. Assessments and post-training support has to be delivered as well. To manage such a mammoth operation a learning management system which is equally effective on all the devices and is configurable to adapt to your organization’s culture is necessary.

 

 

G-Cube Learning Management Suite is being used by top retail industry players with positive results. To know more about the implementation strategies, write to us at info@gc-solutions.net and talk to a learning consultant.

5 Tips to Create and Deliver the Right E-learning Content- Utilizing the 'Goldilocks Principle'

With changing corporate training demands of modern learners, the need to deliver the right kind of training content is becoming evident. There is a fairy tale of a small girl named Goldilocks, who avoids the porridge bowls that are too cold or too hot. Instead, she prefers choosing the one which is just right and moderate. This concept is also applicable for workplace training where employees choose e-courses that cater to their pertinent learning needs.

• Too hot content: The text-heavy online training courses are very boring, resulting in poor learner engagement and retention levels.

• Too cold content: When e-courses lack relevant information, it gives a negative impact on the overall learner performance and knowledge retention.

• Just right content: Different learners have different training needs from onboarding and compliance to sales enablement, skills development, and more.  Therefore, it is essential to deliver the right content to the targeted learners which result in improved employee participation and workplace competency.

What is the Right E-learning Content? 

It is crucial for organizations to provide e-learning courses that meet their personalized needs. There are several tips for designing just the right kind of training content. These include:

• Understand the audience

The initial step is to understand the type of audience and their custom training needs. So, it becomes crucial for trainers and managers to choose the right topics for the right learners through surveys, group discussions, and assessments.

• Create digestible content

If you talk about applying the Goldilocks principle in e-learning, then creating an easy to access and quick to digest training content is essential. For instance, short and crisp chunks of information can be delivered across mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, enabling learners to digest information anytime and anywhere.

• Design the content right

Sometimes, even a perfect training course is considered too hot because of its poor design structure. A clutter-free design is preferred while creating training modules which boosts the overall learning experience. Also, engaging elements such as avatars and tool tips are embedded with e-courses to aid learners easily access every module, engage better, and progress more during the program.

• Reduce choice overload

Once you choose the relevant topics of training, the next important factor is to ask the learners whether they are prepared to apply what they learned in real-life scenarios? Or whether the entire program focuses more on a specific module in comparison to others? The feedback from the learners helps organizations to bridge the gaps between the content created and training goals.

• Use additional resources

Additional resources are also added with e-courses, enabling learners to explore the content of their choice at their own pace. These may include videos, external links, tutorials, and more which maintain learners’ interest and avoid boredom through the entire course.

The above-discussed tips focus both on understanding the bespoke training needs and creating the content in the right way. Modern learners readily engage with the right training content, leading to increased levels of participation, retention, and overall learning uptake.

Suggested Further Reading: Using the Goldilocks Principle in Your E-learning Courses by Damian

How to Plan Your ELearning Program

E-Learning is becoming increasingly popular today. Almost 50% of the global fortune 500 companies are using eLearning for training and development of their workforce via custom eLearning, game based learning, simulation based learning etc. Even in institutions, schools and colleges the shift of learning is moving from traditional classroom to virtual learning. It is essential to create, design and develop eLearning courses that will help learners engage themselves and achieve their learning goals. 

Here are few strategies to create, design and develop effective, immersive and successful custom eLearning program:

1. Know your audience: Before actually starting the eLearning designing process, it is important to know your audience. Your eLearning approach will differ as per your audience. For young online learners there will be a different approach while on the other hand if your audience is experienced, senior professionals then your methodology would be different.
   
2. Content should be concise, clear and engaging: Content is the heart and soul of any eLearning course because content adds a lot of value to it. For custom eLearning it is necessary that content should be effective and relevant as per the needs of learners. It should include real time examples about the subject they are trained for.
   
3. Accountability Standards: Instructors should be well trained to follow best practices and should be from a range of backgrounds to complement the course.
   
4. A Good learning management system: To make eLearning course engaging and interactive, you need to keep up with the trends of new technologies. A good learning management system can give audience different learning methods to better understand the coursework. Learning management system can also help set a platform for bookkeeping issues such as assessments, quizzes, grades, homework etc.

In addition to these strategies, end results of the eLearning program should also be highlighted. What learners should learn, what certificate they will get on completion of the course and how they can implement the knowledge in their day to day work, improve their performance and achieve their goals. Although there is a lot of effort and cost included in designing an eLearning course, all of these strategies have the authority to produce meaningful and memorable eLearning experiences.