Virtual customers make learning fun

Recently JYSK employees around the world were introduced to new LMS training materials, which makes learning more fun.

Learning should be fun. That is the philosophy behind the new materials for the JYSK LMS-system.

The new Sales and Service Course was launched on the 28th of May, and according to Training Manager, Ivana Dragic Topic, the new material significantly improves the experience for the users.

“When we introduced MYLEARN, our new LMS-system, we used the training materials from Learning Arena. Although we improved them a bit and made them mobile, they were still built in an old-fashioned way. This meant that employees had to read all of the materials and then take a test in the end. The courses provided a lot of useful information, but we wanted to boost them, and make a better experience. Our new materials are much more interactive. They contain many questions, drag & drop quizzes and small game elements. Each answer provides feedback that the user can learn from. Doing it this way will hopefully make it more fun to do the trainings, and make it easier to remember the content as well,” explains Ivana.

Virtual customers

And when using M-learning the result does not only come back as a number, but as a Facebook review from a virtual customer.

“Based on the answers from the user, the virtual customer creates a review regarding the customer service experience. For example if the employee made it attractive to buy additional or more expensive products. In that way the users get feedback which is similar to what he or she experiences in the store every day,” says Ivana.

Therefore, she has also collected a lot of input to make sure that the questions and the trainings are as close to reality as possible.

“It is important that the training scenarios are as close to the “real life” in the stores as possible. Therefore, we have involved Store Managers and other colleagues from retail and HR. Especially Lovrenka Pupic from V611 in Croatia has been a great help providing a lot of great input to the final materials,” says Ivana.

Immediate feedback

One of the colleagues who has tried the new M-learning is Dragos Gherman, Store Manager in the JYSK store in Military Shopping in Bucharest.

“It was a really good experience. It is more interesting and entertaining because you work with a “real” customer. It is much easier to learn when it is not just theoretic questions, but actual situations where you receive immediate feedback,” says Dragos.

As Store Manager, he finds it important to go through the trainings himself, so he knows the content before the rest of his colleagues in the store goes through the trainings.

And luckily they have had very positive experiences as well.

“My colleagues are happy about the new system. It is not something I have asked them about. After trying the new learnings, they gave this feedback without being asked, and that is of course very positive,” says Dragos.

More on the way

And his Store Manager colleague Lisa Nordgård from Örkeljunga in Sweden agrees.

”The former education in sales and service contained a lot of text and after reading it you had to answer questions. This new education is much more fun and catches the users’ interest through interaction and puts us in situations that are really close to reality,” says Lisa and continues.

“Both me and my colleagues really liked this new type of training. I think it is important that you catch the users’ interest, and this new tool really does.”

So far, two new trainings have been launched in the new way, but JYSK HR will continue the development until all training materials have been improved.

Furniture and Duvets are the next two trainings to be released.