Staff Training Platform for Retail Operation

Staff training platform for retail operation is crucial for achieving operational excellence as well as developing great customer experiences in the evolving retail industry. Staff training platform for retail operation helps businesses train and build store teams that are competitive, increase employee productivity, and keep customers happy. Smart retail companies are using employee training platforms to streamline and improve the training process. Continue reading this blog to know more about why businesses are choosing staff training platforms for retail operations. 

Let us take a look into what constitutes effective staff training, why staff training is important for a retail business, and how to accomplish it in the best way possible. We will also discuss what is a staff training platform, its functions and how it adds value significantly in cultivating operational excellence across multiple retail outlets. 

What is a staff training platform?

Staff training platform in a software solution built to offer effective training for the employees. The platform enables training managers to create, manage, monitor and deliver impactful training to their teams and staff members. When it comes to to the retail world, staff training platform like Taqtics is exclusively designed to meet the specific needs of the retail industry to achieve operational excellence. 

Taqtics uses a Learning Management System (LMS) that has tools to train and monitor the training progress of store team members across multiple retail locations. This platform has smart tools for course creation tools to personalize the training experience according to the retail operation needs. Taqtics also offers a staff training management system, dashboards, different types of ways to conduct assessments or quizzes, a content library where all the learning materials are safe with easy accessibility, automated reports, data insights and performance analytics.

How to choose the right staff training software?

There are different staff training software available in the market. Choosing the right staff training software with the best tools and features for your retail operational needs is crucial to the success of your retail business. Here are some of the important features to consider while selecting the staff training software for your retail business. 

1. Training: When you are selecting staff training software, choose the platform that can be personalized to the training needs of your retail business. Pick the platform that best aligns with the training requirements and your business goals.  Ensure that the platform supports uploading multimedia content and different modes of conducting training assessments. 
2. User-friendliness: Make sure the platform you choose has an intuitive user interface. to make the onboarding process easier for your store teams. Every member of the store team should use the platform every day, thus it is crucial to make sure that it makes navigation simple for users. Look for a lot of bugs or excessive buffering in the software. Check to see if the platform runs smoothly. 
3. Customization: A good platform will have the option to customize the platform according to the retail training needs of your business. Personalization helps to build an exceptional training process for your retail business. 
4. Integrations: Choose a platform like Taqtics which ensures that you can seamlessly integrate with already existing integrations like employee databases, or POS systems. This ensures that shifting to a new training system is smooth and hassle-free. 
5. Reporting and Analytics: Platforms like Taqtics, create automated reports on the progress of every store team member that you can download in no time. There are also data insights on the learning curve of all the store team members. This gives visibility to understand where every individual staff member is performing well and where they are falling behind and address these concerns. 
6. Scalability: Traditional way of classroom staff training along with paper-based learning materials is a tedious, time-consuming and expensive task. However, with staff training platforms like Taqtics, you can easily train, manage and monitor multiple store teams easily. Whether you have a lot of store outlets or you are planning to scale, staff training platforms can accommodate your needs without any hassle. 
7. Onboarding Process: When you select a staff training platform, it is important to evaluate the level of customer service, onboarding support and ongoing assistance that will be provided by the seller of the platform. With consistent support and training your teams with the tool properly, you can have your team ready in no time to use the platform. 

How do you train retail staff? / What kind of training can be given to employees?

Training your retail store teams requires equipping them with the knowledge, skills, and tools necessary for them to work seamlessly on a business day. Let us look at some of the important elements when it comes to training store teams. 

1. Initial Training: This part of the training should include orientation classes and an introduction to the brand, its history, policies, brand standards, company policies, culture and more. This part of the training is where your store team members get to know the brand thoroughly. 
2. Product Knowledge: Once the store team members get to know your brand, the next step is to learn and understand the products of your brand in detail. The product-focused training sessions will ensure that your store team members understand all the products, their unique selling points and more to be ready for any type of customer. 
3. Customer Service: Frontline teams have to communicate with numerous customers on a business day. Therefore, it is important for them to have communication skills, conflict resolution skills, sales techniques and other strategies to offer shoppers excellent customer service. 
4. Sales Techniques: There are countless sales techniques and strategies. But the trick is for the store teams to know which technique and where exactly to use this technique. Therefore, training should be given to store team members on effective selling practices, upselling, cross-selling and other sales strategies. 
5. Compliance Training: Compliance training refers to the process of training the store team members on the different kinds of laws and regulations of the organization. This includes legal regulations, ethical conduct, data privacy, health and safety, environmental regulations and so on. 
6. Technology Training: This part of training helps the store teams to be well equipped with the knowledge and skills to function retail-specific tools. This includes point-of-sale systems, inventory management, digital SOPs, and more. 

7. Soft Skills Development: There are a lot of important soft skills that store team members need to develop to offer exceptional customer service. These skills include time management, problem-solving skills, leadership, teamwork, and more. 

As you can see, the training and development of your store team members have many elements that foster an effective training experience. All together, everything helps to empower and equip your store teams across multiple locations.  

Importance of training retail employees

Store team members are the face of your brand. They are the people who see and interact with your customers every day. Training builds the foundation for the smooth functioning of your store and to consistently offer your customers a great experience. 

1. Product Knowledge: There is a wide range of products available in the market today and customers are very well-informed about products. Therefore, store team members should be well-versed with the latest product range. With proper training, store team members can provide personalized recommendations and meet the unique needs of your customers. 
2. Efficient Management: Training helps store team members to build all the necessary skills like teamwork, time management, problem-solving, goal setting, task completion and more. This makes them more efficient and productive in their respective areas of work. 
3. Self-Reliance: In a store team generally store team members are dependent on their managers to solve issues and require constant supervision. With effective systems and management, store team members will be able to handle challenges and situations independently. 
4. Enhanced Customer Service: Effective and regular staff training will equip the store team members to deliver exceptional customer service. Always keep your store team updated on the latest developments in the retail industry. 

Your store teams aren’t just the representatives of your business, they are the key to delivering exceptional customer service consistently. Investing in the growth of your store team members is a direct investment in the success of your brand. 

How staff training platform works?

There are many solution platforms to conduct staff training regularly. Let us take a look at how an efficient staff training platform works. 

1. Quick Onboarding

With a high employee turnover rate, it is important to get the new staff up to speed as soon as possible before it starts to affect the customer experience and smooth functioning of the stores. Staff training platforms like Taqtics, simplify the traditional classroom training using bite-sized training content using videos, pdf files and other multimedia content. Conduct assessments, quizzes and interactive training sessions easily on the platform to analyse knowledge retention with an effective understanding of training. For example: In traditional training methods, the store team members will be given materials and verbally taught how to arrange the product shelves. But with a staff training platform, you can use video content, images and other materials to demonstrate the arrangement of shelves visually. Moreover, the store team members can revisit the training content to brush up their knowledge. 

2. Scenario-Based Retail Business Sales Training

Scenario-based retail training will effectively train your store team members to handle different types of situations and challenges that come across in a retail store daily. In this type of training, the content and theoretical knowledge are brought to life with practical scenarios. This gives a gist of what store team members need to work with in real-time. Their knowledge can be put to the test and can note down areas of improvement for each store team member. 

3. In-Depth Process Training: 

While quick onboarding resources are effective for getting the newest store team members to get started, certain processes in retail require more in-depth training. This can include customer service procedures, handling refunds, or managing deliveries. Breaking down the training into shorter modules of training followed by quizzes or assessments can enhance understanding. 

Benefits of staff training platform

Continuous Training: Modern store teams should be given continuous and regularly updated training to cope with the fast-paced retail industry. E-learning helps them stay updated on products, and processes, and access training content anytime, anywhere at their convenience. 

1. Manage Learning at Scale: With digital learning, you only need to generate content just once and then you can distribute it to any new store team member as required. For retail businesses with several stores, this is essential as it makes it simpler for you to adapt promptly to business changes, integrate new store team members more quickly, and boost productivity. 

2. Easy Language Support: Content can be quickly translated and adapted for store teams all over the world using software tools. By using a customized approach, e-learning is more effective and costs less than conventional training techniques while consistently contributing to the performance of the retail stores.  

3. Flexible: Digital learning is flexible and accessible anytime, anywhere, and on any device which satisfies growing demand. To fit into busy schedules, it can be supplied in bite-sized forms followed by assessments or quizzes to ensure the level of understanding of every store team member. 

These are the top 3 important benefits that widely help the retail store training process significantly. Platforms like Taqtics is designed exclusively for the operational needs of a retail business and offer more than just digital training and assessments. The platform offers Digital SOP checklists, digital audits, Visual merchandising execution tools, attendance trackers and more. 

How to create a staff training platform? / How do you create a staff training plan?

Step 1: Identify and evaluate the need for training through surveys, interviews, and tests

Start by identifying the precise skill gaps or areas where your workforce needs to improve. Then, gather information about current skills and training requirements, conduct surveys, one-on-one interviews, and skill evaluations. Identify the most important training topics by analyzing the gathered data to find recurring trends.

Step 2: Set clear objectives for the training process

To set clear goals and to communicate to the store teams what’s expected of them from the training, you need to ask the question, what’s the purpose of this training process, what skills do you want your store teams to be equipped with and what are overall results you want to achieve. Quizzes, assessments, interactive sessions, and scenario-based training will help you understand where each store team member stands in their training process. 

Step 3: Select the type of training methods that are best suited for your store teams 

When it comes to digital training, there are numerous options available for you to choose from to deliver your training. However, it is very important for you to understand the needs of the training and select training delivery methods that comply with the needs and requirements of your training process. Instead of sticking to one medium of delivering training content,  use multimedia like videos, presentations, PDFs, images and so on to conduct effective training courses. 

Step 4: Choose a training platform that is aligned with your training requirements

While there are many options out there, it is important you focus on the business objectives, training needs, easy navigation for store teams and other important factors before you select the best option that will work for your business. Select a platform that is flexible, customizable and user friendly like Taqtics. Designed exclusively for the retail industry and it’s everyday operational needs, Taqtics offers a platform with all the smart tools for training and other tools like digital checklists, attendance tracker, live photo feature, geofencing feature, VM execution tracker and more. 

Step 5: Monitor the training progress and results regularly 

Assess the effectiveness of the training course you have prepared through the results and progress of training store teams. This will keep you updated on where every store team member stands and performs on an individual basis. Platforms like Taqtics offer dashboards with the clear status of every store team member’s learning curve. 

Step 6: Identify areas for development, and collect feedback from both trainers and trainees

Use the data insights and progress report to learn the impact of the training course you have created and how it contributes to better store team productivity. Update the training manuals, methods of delivery, or platform itself as needed. 

These are the most important steps to follow while switching your training process to a digital platform. Ensure to keep your store teams updated and educated on the recent trends and developments in your industry. 

What is LMS in retail?

A learning management system is software that allows different institutions to deliver digital learning experiences. This can range anywhere from a 5th grader attending a ten-minute class and quick quiz to Master level programmes. When it comes to retail, the Learning Management System (LMS) is a software platform used in the retail industry to deliver and manage training programs for its employees across multiple locations. It provides tools where retail businesses can create, distribute, and track training content. LMS allows employees to access training materials and complete courses, and for the management to monitor their progress effortlessly.

What is retail training?

Retail training refers to the learning process of the store teams about the business, its products, customers, standards, and opportunities of a retail business. It aims to enhance their skills, knowledge, and capabilities related to various aspects of retail, such as customer service, product knowledge, sales techniques, and operational processes. Retail training helps employees perform their jobs effectively, improve customer satisfaction, and contribute to the overall success of the retail business.