The Costa Coffee franchise group was experiencing several challenges when it comes to learning and growth of their dispersed workforce.
First, they found that their onboarding processes for new employees were inefficient and time-consuming. Their employees were updated on their progress towards KPIs on an irregular basis, if ever. Further, frontline employees received delayed information about the latest Costa operational updates and product changes as information was not centralized, ultimately affecting their customer service performance. Also, it was difficult for the company to ensure a consistent standard of training across all branches. Lastly, employees had difficulty streamlining communication as they used multiple applications. The information they received got lost due to an overload of unfiltered data.
Eko enabled easy access to the company documents, policies and learning materials to all employees, creating an engaging onboarding experience for new hires while driving long-term growth for existing employees. A centralised communication hub ensured information was always up-to-date, accessible and transparently shared.
As a Costa Coffee franchisee business, the Soar Group needed to uphold the standards of their franchisor’s globally recognised brand and service. With that, it was essential for all frontline employees to be well trained on the product, operations and customer service skills to deliver a customer experience that adhered to a consistent quality.
The implementation of Eko’s Library helped centralise learning resources and training materials in bitesize chunks. This feature enabled employees to digest information easily in various formats, rather switching between different sources and reading lengthy manuals. With a much more accessible and engaging learning channel, onboarding and training employees proved highly more effective.
Keeping the information in a centralised repository ensured that learning became an accessible and ongoing process for all employees. The company effectively empowered staff to be better equipped in their roles and ready to handle customer requests effectively. With every employee able to access the Library, the company ensured that learning was consistent across their multiple sites.
The Soar Group understood that when hiring new employees, especially millennials, it was essential to drive a high level of engagement to boost long term retention rates.
As a way to engage their employees, they implemented Eko’s Thumbs Up to foster a culture of recognition and rewards within and across teams. By boosting staff morale through this new feedback channel, the company motivated staff to reach new growth milestones or complete training effectively.
In turn, sharing Thumbs Up commendations made employees more engaged by making learning more rewarding for them. At the same time, it created a better relationship between staff and management by enabling a dynamic feedback system.
Keeping non-desk workers connected and informed on the latest company developments was challenging across the 17 franchisee branches.
The company utilised Eko’s Broadcast to push out important updates to the entire workforce transparently and instantaneously. After doing so, they had insight into readership through Read Receipts and Acknowledgements from individual staff members.
The management team also organised their communication through Topics, which created subtopics within Chats for better organisation and traceability. This ensured that crucial product information did not get lost in conversation and staff could easily catch up on projects after onboarding.
By implementing these features, the company’s employees were able to communicate effectively and be fully informed on company information no matter where they were. Managers could rest assured that information shared was up to date and instantly reached the frontline.
“The speed of communications to my staff through Eko has saved me a lot of time - I would say in the 10s of hours a week”
Berian Burtt-Jones
Operations Manager of Costa Coffee Soar Group
Utilizing Eko has been a tremendous help in improving their workforce's employee development in the company. Eko has made training and learning on the job efficient, engaging, and easy for Soar Group's employees.
Information on new product launches is now shared to frontline staff every day through Eko, making employees always up-to-date with what's happening in the company. Also, progress on employees KPI targets is now discussed with them every Friday, without the need for managers to visit the branch. Their staff now have constant access to the knowledge base, equipping them with updated continuously information to perform their role efficiently and with confidence.
Employee learning milestones can now be rewarded with customized Thumbs Up stickers, helping strengthen the culture of feedback boosted employee morale and motivated staff to grow long-term. Ultimately, they saw a 50% reduction in time required for new staff to be onboarded to workplace tools
“Having to pull out a 150-page manual and read through it is daunting. Now staff can just pull out their iPhone and learn in their own time, and I think that’s fantastic.”
Omar Chagani
Managing Director of Costa Coffee Soar Group
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