Navigating training for customer-facing workforces is a challenge. Organizations in retail, food service, grocery and other frontline industries face time constraints, content crunches and engagement issues. But there’s a proven way to approach this challenge – and it starts with employee technology built specifically for the audience it serves.

The challenges of enabling customer-facing workers

Training frontline workers comes with unique hurdles. Limited time availability, varying skill levels, high turnover rates, on-the-job challenges and even geographic dispersion can all quickly derail an organization’s ability to give its people the resources, tools and support they need to have a great shift, every single day.

Because of these specific obstacles faced by retail, grocery and F&I workers in customer- or product-facing roles, traditional corporate training doesn’t cut it. Sitting through hours of one-size-fits-all e-learning modules on a breakroom computer can seriously impact knowledge retention and employee engagement.

Fostering competent, confident and comfortable workers, every single shift

Axonify is the frontline-forward learning and enablement platform used by companies like Walmart, Kroger and Foot Locker. Thanks to an approach to learning that’s based on decades of scientific research, we know exactly what frontline organizations need to drive knowledge retention, platform engagement and frontline enablement.

Microlearning is delivered in the flow of shifts, in minutes a day, because it’s designed specifically for how frontline employees work. Axonify uses AI and algorithms to personalize learning for each user – at any scale – to focus on the training they need to complete, so that when an employee logs in, the algorithm tells them, “Today, this is the most important thing for you to learn.”

And we deploy reinforcement to ensure that all the training we share sticks. Did you know that retrieving information from memory just a couple of times actually creates a memory trace that is resistant to forgetting? To make the most of this natural process, we space out learning over multiple events and use questions (lots of them!) to encourage repeated knowledge retrieval.

“If I could describe Axonify in one line, I would say it’s a tool that’s going to help us influence behavior in our organization versus just delivering information,” says Amy Parman, Senior Director of People Operations at Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe, who launched Axonify internally last fall.

“We were searching for a learning management system that would help us solve the problem of communicating with our people better, making sure that they have direct access to the information they deserve in their jobs so it does not get bottlenecked with the manager. We were also looking for a way to understand what they understood about their role, what we could help them with and how we could influence their behavior to line up how training affects our business outcomes.”

Using games, points and rewards to drive industry leading engagement

Axonify’s leaderboard is the most visited screen on the platform for a reason. Gamification has an incredible impact on users, both emotionally and socially. Think about it: have you ever tried getting someone’s attention while they’re engrossed in a game? Almost impossible, right?

Axonify takes full advantage of this phenomenon to stimulate neural pathways in the brain, putting it in a state of ‘flow’ that turbocharges memory retention. And we use a mixture of different game mechanics to tap into a range of motivations that entice workers to log in regularly.

Data-driven insights for continuous growth

If your training doesn’t translate to business results, what’s the point? With Axonify’s advanced analytics, you gain valuable insights into your team members’ knowledge gaps and learning progress to make data-driven decisions that drive continuous growth. In fact, we capture over 5,000 pieces of data on each user per year as they engage in daily training.

That data can also be combined with business data to find the true link between employee training and the KPIs that matter most to your organization. Real-time, actionable recommendations, like adjusting content or tweaking training paths, will help business targets stay on track and keep the program focused on tangible impacts.

Axonify: Frontline learning, solved

Over 3.7 million users in 160-plus countries use Axonify to onboard and train in five minutes a day, no break room Intranet required. With bite-sized gamified microlearning, custom training content, embedded communication and more, Axonify is revolutionizing the way frontline workers learn, connect and get things done. And all your people need to do is open the app. Five minutes later, they’re ready to start their day.

It’s frontline learning, solved.