It’s been a couple weeks since the attention of the mobile industry was focused on Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. While there may not have been any surprise announcements, it’s pretty clear this year will be a busy one in telecom.
Major phone manufacturers announced new handsets for 2015 – ranging from minor upgrades to entirely new designs to capture the imagination and global market share. So while many are excited by the features, designs and capabilities of these new phones, there are others that must deal with the challenge of this constant rate of change.
Like in many industries, it’s the frontline teams that bear the brunt of keeping up with change. Employees in contact centres and retail stores are required to guide consumer’s decision making in an increasingly complex world. They are also expected to be ‘on the ready’ at all times. So the challenge is how does one stay up-to-date given the limited ‘spare time’ in the role? Typical training methods of frontline teams are inefficient and slow to respond to change. Developing courses and running training sessions requires long lead-times, and often end up occurring after new products are released. Add the opportunity costs of taking staff away from the customer, and one quickly looks for a better way.
We have a better way. It’s built upon our results driven model for rapid knowledge acquisition, particularly refined for the busy frontline environment. Last fall we helped Telenomics train their 17 retail stores when they introduced the iPhone6. They had 150 employees individually trained over the same period with no time spent in class or in groups. Results: An average overall increase of knowledge levels by more than 65% with less than 20 minutes of training, and a smooth launch of the iPhone 6. Note that the entire training campaign was rolled out in less than 6 days, with minimal management overhead. Telenomics was impressed, their staff were engaged, and we felt we were on to something.
The success we saw with Telenomics inspired us to look at the larger problem set beyond just a single phone model: all the new phones coming out in 2015. So we’ve created a library of training campaigns, one for each phone model coming out this year, new phones being continuously added. The campaigns can be rolled out to frontline employees when needed: as pre-launch training or as a post-launch refresh. We’ve also simplified the process of content creation and delivery for team trainers and managers: simply pick the phone models, assign team members and set the training dates. Campaigns run automatically across teams, and the management dashboard provides a view of who’s learning what and when. Training happens online or on mobile and at a time most convenient for employees. Our proven engagement model ensures employees are actively participating and acquiring the knowledge they need to support the product release.
So while it looks like there will be a record number of new phones released this year, there is now a way of getting frontline teams up to speed for every launch. Like everyone else, we’re excited about some of the new phones coming out this year, but we are even more thrilled about being able to help make those new phone launches a success.
If you want to learn about some of the phones announced at MWC:
http://www.cnet.com/news/mwc-2015-most-important-gadgets-news-themes/
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Best-smartphones-of-MWC-2015-PhoneArena-Awards_id66899
Our Telenomics case study: