Circle K: Sales and Service excellence across 14,000+ staff
Convenience giant, Circle K have found new ways to engage teams across 8 countries. Working with Attensi, Circle K has brought their game-based simulation training, ‘Customer Star’ to life.
14k
employees engaged in the ‘beat the boss’ competition
96%
knowledge gap closure
97%
of team members enjoyed this way of training
821
days worth of play time
“You get a new perspective on leadership as well as delivering great customer service. After ‘Customer Star’, I really do feel I can deliver exceptional customer service.” Kristian Bertelsen Store Manager | Circle K
Making customers’ lives a bit better every day
With customer convenience at the heart of everything they do, Circle K is on a mission to make their customers’ lives a little bit better every single day. Having great salespeople in-store will help deliver on Circle K’s strategy of winning the customer.
“Our people are like rockstars. And we can set them up for success.” Jens Rye Director People Development Europe | Circle K
Circle K wanted to:
Deliver on their promise to ‘grow together.’
Design training that would be highly engaging across their locations.
Provide a holistic training approach where individuals can adapt knowledge to their own personalities and skills.
“They can get an idea of what a good response is and what’s a great response to a situation – it steers them towards best practice.”
Jens Rye
Director People Development Europe
Focusing on the key areas of sales skills and service skills, Circle K enlisted the help of Attensi to create their bespoke game-based simulation platform, ‘Customer Star’. This needed to be a highly engaging, scalable training solution for their frontline staff. It also had to be flexible enough to cover all the complex operational moving parts that make Circle K tick.
Our focus became: Flexibility, scalability, adaptability, engagement and interactivity.
What did ‘Customer Star’ deliver?
Circle K needed ‘Customer Star’ to be something scalable and something highly engaging and, importantly, fun. Based on the information Circle K provided, we decided to design and implement five main modules.
Together, we created a learning journey that encompassed the customer experience from beginning to end.
- Working in store
- Shining on the till
- Feeling the pressure
- Knowing your customer
‘Working in store’ and ‘Shining on the till’ are free-roam modules that give users an interactive, more holistic experience – putting them in realistic scenarios that will help them to notice opportunities for upselling, their customer’s behavior and how they can balance their customer service duties with their operational functions.
Compared to more traditional training, team members have to take a much more active role in this type of learning. Their decision-making has an impact on their results, so they must have more of an emotional investment in the work they’re doing.
Some members struggled with this on their first try. But the repeatable nature of the training meant they could easily see their mistakes and learn from them ready for another turn.
The additional modules of ‘Feeling the Pressure’ and ‘Know Your Customer’ encourage team members to practice prioritization while maintaining high customer service levels. This isn’t always an opportunity given during peer-to-peer role play or in more traditional learning, so this has been a welcome practical approach from shop floor staff.
In addition to the core modules, ‘Beat the boss’ was added to the training – something we hoped would encourage the team to find their inner competitive spirit and up the amount of engagement by team members.
Even with eight years of experience, Assistant Manager, Sara was determined to beat her boss. It was a bonus that she refreshed her knowledge and improved her skills along the way.
“I thought ‘Customer Star’ was a fun way to learn and a new way to learn. You can play games, learn about work, and do fun things. I loved the beat-your-boss competition. I actually beat my boss.” Sara Larsen Assistant Manager | Circle K
The results show confident, comfortable employees
With so many components making Circle K a success, the People Development Teams across the sites has been having a blast being part of this new training journey. Lucy Salevik, Sr. Manager People Development Europe and Emma Blixt, Sr. Manager People Development Europe, share how important it is for Circle K to deliver the kind of training that enables teams to feel comfortable and confident in-store.
With so many components making Circle K a success, Lucy, Emma, and the rest of the team are excited to see how they can start to implement further game-based training throughout the organization, growing on the fantastic results they’ve seen so far.
The amazing results
14k
employees engaged in the ‘beat the boss’ competition
96%
knowledge gap closure
97%
of team members enjoyed this way of training
821
days worth of play time
Looking to the future
The interactive nature of the game-based simulation training has had a big impact on the teams at Circle K, whether they’re in the onboarding process or highly experienced.
“Even though I’m experienced in Circle K, I got the answer wrong several times I thought it was helpful as it made me rethink and see different solutions and opportunities.” Kristian Bertelsen Store Manager | Circle K
The next steps are clear. Define what needs to be refined and start planning the next phases and modules for the game-based training approach.
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