Is retail e-learning that useful or it’s a waste of resources?
These days, retail organizations heavily invest in their learning and development. This trend has also been boosted because of the customers’ affinity for online shopping. However, the customers have also started coming back to the stores ever since they have been vaccinated.
But still, retailers have to provide customers who are willing to take the risks to do in-store shopping with an exclusive experience because online shopping is less time-consuming and easier. That’s where retail e-learning for your employees assumes importance.
Retail e-learning is encouraging offline shopping by training employees in the following ways:
Saving customers’ time:
The customers have although started stepping out of their houses to visit stores, just like online shopping, they desire a fast experience. So, the employees can’t take much time in disclosing complete information about products to customers. Hence, the employees must be given access to the LMS even on their mobiles, which means that the particular software must be compatible with cellphones. Accessing the information on the LMS as micro-learning videos on a cellphone is quicker when the employees have less time on their hands. This way, employees can explain the product features in detail to the customer when giving him/her a demonstration.
Maintaining a collection of products offline:
Also, the companies must have an excellent repository of products, even offline. This implies that whatever products are shown on the website, must be available in-store too. A customer should not feel frustrated when he comes to the store after liking a product on the website and does not find it in the brick and mortar store.
Help customers in finding products:
Just like an online mobile app has a search option through which the customers can search for products, an employee in a retail store performs the same function.
Therefore, he has to be trained through retail e-learning on how to find products placed on shelves.
When a customer finds the required product quickly, he does not feel like he has wasted time in offline shopping, unlike online shopping where everything can be done by touching the required button.
The employees also are quitting their jobs in retail stores quite quickly because of long working hours. Such employees are indeed unable to get even some time off from their work for necessary family matters. They can only do so once someone is ready to switch places with them and take care of their work in their absence. But this isn’t possible, because hiring in the retail companies is not so great. So, the lack of a workforce is a problem.
Employees rewarded for their performance
Since such employees have long working hours, it is the company’s job to keep them motivated. When employees are learning well, and spending time on LMS, they can be given gift points for in-store shopping. The employees have to be tested through assessments and the top scorers deserve such shopping points.
This will prevent attrition among employees caused due to hectic work schedules. Follow-up sessions are also necessary when any complaints are getting filed against employees. Hence, they can be given a recap of what they were taught during the retail e-learning sessions. Employees can be sent e-learning materials for recall in newsletters, or a flashcard-based session boosts their knowledge.
Also, during the pandemic, some employees were not given an option to work from home. The companies were in no mood to spend on Digital Marketing to boost the visibility of the site on search engines. Hence, such workers had no option but to leave the job due to the conditions of the pandemic.
But developing a beneficial training program depends on the retail e-learning vendor chosen by a company.