Business leadership and leaders in human resources approached our training organization to fill an urgent gap in sales compliance competency. On top of how serious the project was, we also had a very pressing deadline to complete and implement a solution.
- Responsibilities: Learning Experience Design, Instructional Design, Assessment Design, LMS Administration, Project Documentation
- Tools Used: Articulate Rise 360, Bridge LMS, Adobe Illustrator
- Budget: Medium (rushed project)
- Company: Vivint Smart Home
- Year: 2019
Project Needs/Requirements
Vivint needed to train and test their phone sales employees using a rubric of sales compliance principles, something that had only been happening during new hire onboarding for employees. A new program would be systematic and repeated, offering the business the peace of mind knowing that their employees are always in line with best practice.
Initially, an instructor-led program was suggested, based on previous experience of the organization and how their employees tended to engage with elearning content (poorly). However, I proposed that an elearning program would be a better choice to implement for a variety of reasons:
- easy logistics for repeatability
- better tracking (time spent in training)
- a more judgment-free environment for the subject matter
The elearning approach was approved, and we moved foward using a training framework that involved giving a broad view of the principles and their enforcement, offering practical explanation of how to follow the principles, and presenting real-world examples and scenarios for the employees to practice their knowledge.
Real recordings of sales calls are used as illustrations and examples.
After completing training, employees would be tested on their knowledge, with a high standard for passing (90%) and an unlimited amount of attempts. This followed the principle of high standards, low stakes, something I proposed would foster the right environment for employees to learn to follow best practice.
Project Development
Development went quickly thanks to the rapid prototyping made possible by Articulate Rise 360. The service makes it easy to create “click to learn more” interactions to slow down learners and prompt them to engage with the content. For example, I placed the compliance principles in an accordian-style structure to allow the learners to read the high level statements and also drill down to get more detail.
To meet the fast deadline for this project, I developed and released three training modules that make up the larger program, each with its own test bank for the assessment. The courses were structured around different themes in the principles that were being taught and released according to the priority of the content (credit and financing training was most business-impacting, then legal requirements, and finally customer experience-related principles).
In writing the assessment for this program, I had the goal to create instructionally sound, psychometrically valid, and fair test items. Each test item had a piece of the training content attached to it, to ensure we were covering and testing all of the material. The test items also had descriptions of their reasoning, offering an explanation of why the correct answer is correct and why the distractors are not.
Project Results
The project met its requirements and has continued to be developed and maintained to stay current with business practices at Vivint. Overall the project was a success, establishing a system of compliance certification that ensures that Vivint employees are knowledgeable and competent salespeople, doing business fairly and offering an excellent customer experience. In spite of the perceived lack of engagement with elearning material, the organization now operates with near 100% completion rates.