Visually-rich eLearning that increases employee knowledge and confidence to sell

Godiva started working with the Gomo authoring tool through our sister company, LEO Learning. Together, we created a custom theme for Godiva’s eLearning courses, which include onboarding training, and its seasonal product knowledge training for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, and Christmas—peak times for product sales. Due to their seasonal nature, these courses needed to be rapidly built for a quick turnaround against strict deadlines. Using Gomo as their authoring tool was critical to meeting those deadlines.

Then, in 2017, Godiva set itself the goal of increasing revenue. The chocolatier wanted its retail staff to increase sales in its stores, known as chocolate ‘Boutiques’. This required staff to develop a genuine passion that would allow them to speak with authority about the brand, fueling sales of its luxury chocolates. Godiva’s Chief HR Officer decided to develop a training initiative that would inspire and educate promising staff in Godiva Boutiques. These employees would be rewarded with enhanced roles and responsibilities that would, in turn, deliver a better customer experience and improved store performance.

One of Godiva’s key aims was to engage learners, especially its Millennial employees so the learning program had to deliver an interactive, dynamic and fun experience. To meet the learners’ expectations of how content was delivered, the eLearning, therefore, made use of a range of different interactive activities and media types including audio, infographics, animations and videos.

The design process aimed to inspire and educate Godiva’s mostly Millennial retail staff. As part of a blended learning program, The Godiva Global Chocolate Mastery Program consisted of five eLearning modules and a parallel multi-level game called Chocolate Quest: Guardians of the Cocoa Bean.

The learning was:
• Mobile first, accessible via in-store iPads
• Sensitive to all the different cultures of the learners
• Presented in bite-sized chunks (microlearning)
• Text-light wherever possible
• ‘Scannable’, with the main messages concisely expressed and further opportunities to drill down for more detail
• Bold, contemporary and focused in terms of visuals, with all images carefully chosen to complement and enhance the key messages
• Varied, with videos and animations included to create a diverse learning experience.

Designing a mobile-first learning solution

Employees within the Boutiques had no individual email addresses or computers. In most cases, they didn’t even have their own desks to sit at while learning. Some stores provided access to shared desktop computers, but the content had to work for busy employees working on the shop floor, primarily on in-store iPads. The eLearning modules were therefore designed to be consumed on a variety of devices, making full use of Gomo’s built-in ability to offer 100% responsive digital learning.

The design solution further capitalized on the mostly-mobile audience with features like vertical scrolling navigation and parallax scrolling. This helped to create a very modern, familiar and interactive experience for learners.

Godiva wanted the eLearning to be reminiscent of a high-end lifestyle blog but with traditional elements like pop-up subscreens and carousels, to remind employees that it’s still eLearning. A big challenge here was finding appropriate visuals that would generate interest in the history of chocolate but not be illustrations or black-and-white archive imagery. For a slick look across all modules, learning designers opted for top-quality photographic imagery to create a bold, contemporary design reminiscent of glossy lifestyle magazines.

The consistent visual style comes through from the learners’ first course touch-point: the welcome screens. These show learners which modules they need to complete, how long they’ll take, as well as course progress.

Another nice touch are the talking points, pop-up subscreens that provide useful and interesting conversation pointers to engage customers in the boutique. These are placed throughout the course, where relevant.

To reinforce the learning, designers used a horizontal carousel asset to show a brief summary of the main learning points.

The results: Greater learner engagement and improved sales

Employees embraced the eLearning, giving it an average rating of 8.9/10.0 and individual course modules rated as high as 9.4/10. A time-delayed learner survey saw a 17% increase in self-reported confidence to talk about the Godiva brand to colleagues and customers. Post-learning scores on ability (from explaining where Godiva sources its beans from and its stance on sustainability, to guiding customers through a tasting) saw an increase from average to good scores (5.1 to 7.7 out of 10), to near-perfect scores of between 9.3 and 9.5.

And, most importantly, a follow-up evaluation proved that learners were applying their new knowledge in store, which contributed to Boutiques represented on the program growing significantly faster year-on-year than Boutiques that weren’t.

“As a global company that is over 90 years old and counting, to be able to offer a digitized learning experience that mirrors a gaming environment, while challenging the learner and reinforcing key learning points from the digital module, enriching their jobs, improving customer experience and increasing sales is a true three-way win,” says Karina Chiechi, Learning & Development Manager Godiva Americas

Fantastic learner feedback

Learners have given extremely positive feedback on the program.

“There has been instances where a customer was impressed with my knowledgeable opinion and have taken a sale to a higher dollar amount based off my expertise.”

“Before completing the program, it was somewhat difficult to sell our G by Godiva bars consistently. Having the knowledge of the origins of cocoa and the quality put in to this bar have greatly increased their sales.”

“I am confident in my ability to deliver an ultimate chocolate experience. I make sure that when people come into my boutique they leave with chocolate and a knowledge of it.”

“I would strongly recommend this course to all my team because it’s not only a very good experience and opportunity for personal growth but I think it will elevate the customer service in the Boutique and, at the end of the day, help increase sales.”