Industry Context
High-pressure retail demands more than theory. The gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it under stress is huge. Traditional e-learning checks a box. It hardly ever engages. It doesn’t build confidence.
Extra already had a solid foundation with their customer service training. But “good” wasn’t enough. They needed a way to bridge the gap between the traditional training methods and real-world performance. They needed to practice the difficult converdsations before it happens in the aisle.
The hardest requirement was, can we do this with staff that is extremly busy service customers already?
The Challenge
Store employees face frustrated customers daily. Returns, complaints, product issues — all emotionally charged moments. Existing training covered policies and procedures, but couldn’t prepare teams for the unpredictable nature of real conversations.
The core problems:
- No safe practice space: Teams couldn’t rehearse difficult situations without real consequences.
- Inconsistent quality: Performance varied wildly between employees and stores.
- E-learning fatigue: Traditional modules were completed once and forgotten.
“The employees have gone from starting unstructured to becoming confident advisors.”
Working with legacy solutions:
Any company inheretly will have legacy solutions, older solutions running course management. LMS are constantly improving, but strict adherance to standards as well as slow moving changes in the industry, makes the solutions harder to use.
During integration with the current ecosystem, a well-known and well-built LMS had an outdated way to support emebds in their app. This required a lot of tweaking and work-arounds to bring a modern tech solution to life. The extra effort that was put into this paid off - we secured a smooth user experience for the people training.
The secret to getting this to work. Quick answers from the LMS partner as well as a pragmatic fast moving internal-IT.
The Solution
Extra deployed Apprendly RolePlay as their modern training arena. We moved away from experiences that rely heavily on the author. Instead, we used an immersive method that guides employees from knowledge to proficiency.
This is the safe ethical way to train. It is built for rapid change and privacy. Teams engaged in lifelike conversations with AI characters. Each character has a specific personality and goal. Users used voice and text. They didn’t just play once. They experimented and failed in a safe, private environment.
“Our customer satisfaction scores increased with 2-3% within weeks from launching with RolePlay”
While 2-3% seems small. One normally see in the lows of 0.2 or 0.3% increase during periods of intense training with traditional means.
What made it work:
- Lifelike AI characters with distinct personalities and goals
- Voice and text input for natural interaction
- Private environment where failing is safe and encouraged
- Instant feedback that shows what to improve next time