Overview

Audience: Newly hired and experienced shipping and production employees

Responsibilities: I developed this project from concept to completion. This included a needs assessment, business goal development, action mapping, instructional design, eLearning development, storyboarding, prototyping, and visual design

Tools: Articulate Storyline 360, Adobe XD, Adobe Illustrator, Mindmeister, Google Suite

A local shipping and production company was experiencing a decline in the retention of their high profile customers. This was leading to business goals not being met and a major decrease in quarterly revenue.

After analyzing the performance problem, I discussed the issue with a designated company team and we developed a business goal. We discovered that new, and sometimes even experienced, employees were not properly preparing to handle high profile account owners. Based on the business goal, my proposal included a scenario-based eLearning experience to help employees practice interacting with such account holders.

Our goal was to increase customer retention by 20% over the next year and we determined the best way to achieve that goal was to provide employees with a risk-free environment where they could practice their abilities of interacting with high profile account owners and experience potential real-world consequences.

The client approved my proposal and we proceeded with design and development of the project.

Process

Action Mapping

After developing the business goal, I created an action map by consulting the subject matter expert (SME) to pinpoint the areas employees needed to excel in to be successful with high profile customers and thus, achieve the goal. We decided to measure the frequency of store visits to determine if customers were returning.

Text-based Storyboard

Once the action map was approved, I developed a text-based storyboard to implement the narrative that the project needed to tell. I weaved together various prompts that challenged learners to consider the four major areas of growth linked to the business goal.

Rapport: Employees need to build positive relationships with their customers by asking questions about the customer and their orders, addressing customers by name, and updating customer profiles as needed.

Restate and verify customer requests and concerns: Employees need to be thorough with customer needs by increasing accuracy of orders, de-escalating certain situations, and validating customer feelings and needs.

Knowledge of high profile customer accounts: Employees need to be aware and familiar with high profile accounts. This can be accomplished by proactively researching the account and being aware of usual budgets, customer guarantees, and repeat orders.

Display a positive demeanor: Customers will approach all situations with a positive outlook. It is beneficial to project the type of interaction you wish to have and show honest interest in the customer.

Each prompt within the narrative was designed to provide realistic practice within one of the target areas mentioned above. Along with the most optimal response were distractors, that represented real responses often given by employees to customers that led to negative interactions. Selecting one of these distractors provided reasoning as to why it was not the best choice and another chance to rethink the interaction.

Visual Mockups

After analyzing the text-based storyboard with the SME and receiving approval, I began creating visual mockups for the project using Adobe XD. Adobe XD allowed for quick iteration and easy improvements based on peer and client feedback.

Once I settled on a professional visual design, I created a complimentary color scheme to create consistency throughout the project. I then immersed myself in the detailed process of fine tuning each element to reflect the look I wanted. This included factors such as backgrounds and characters.

Visual Storyboard

Satisfied with the polished look of my final iterations, I combined my visual mockups with my text-based storyboard to create a visual storyboard. This was my opportunity to think through the programming and animation needed to make the project immersive and engaging.

Another of my goals was to create a realistic scenario in which the narrative flowed with the graphics. Building a visual storyboard allowed me to analyze the details of each slide and make sure the text matched the visuals.

Interactive Prototype

After getting feedback on the visual storyboard, I moved on to the authoring element of the project. I used Articulate Storyline 360 to design a functioning prototype that displayed the main theme of the project. It included the opening sequence, company introduction, and an interactive sample prompt. The purpose of the prototype was to test the functionality of the project and gain feedback on all elements.

This was a critical time in the production of the eLearning experience. For this reason, I sought feedback from both stakeholders and peers alike. I made minor alterations until the consensus form all parties was positive. Once I was also satisfied with the flow, look, and overall user experience of the prototype, I moved on to the development of the full project.

Full Development

Once the prototype was complete, I began the efficient process of creating the rest of the project. I used the framework and programming from the prototype to finish the additional prompts and narrative. The full project featured custom visuals and animations, mentor feedback, and branching scenarios with varying customer interactions. Overall, the end result was an immersive and engaging scenario-based eLearning experience.

Results and Takeaways

I believe in data-driven results. The continuation of this concept project would include data analysis to determine if the eLearning experience was successfully helping increase customer retention. During this phase I like to ask four questions:

1. Do learners like the experience and are they engaged in it?

2. Are they actually learning anything?

3. Are they applying what has been learned?

4. Is the overall experience helping the organization?

If I can answer “yes” to each of these questions, I consider the project a success. In this case, the immersive, eLearning experience provided learners with useable skills that easily transferred to real-world scenarios.

I asked a peer group to experience the entire project and the feedback I received included how lifelike the scenario was and how they could see the experience occurring in a real work environment. The SME feedback was inline with the peer group I consulted and the overall consensus was that the scenario-based eLearning experience would greatly improve job performance and therefore, increase customer retention.

Some positive criticism I took away from this project would be to: increase audio elements, increase branching scenarios, and the inclusion of a customer satisfaction report. With additional time and resources, I would have expanded the project to include these concepts.

The brilliance of this project was the opportunity to design an experience from concept to production. I did this by focusing on a targetable goal, creating an action map focused on that goal, working closely with an SME, implementing feedback from a peer group, learning new and creative programs, and making use of my detail-oriented work ethic.