The Co-operative
'Dancing with Customers'
The Co-operative required a pilot bespoke online sales course to be produced that had a generic theme, with three different variations to cater for the different areas of the business participating in the pilot. The generic theme was 'Dancing with Customers' which is a concept that the Co-operative have implemented across their organisation. It was an approach to building rapport with a customer in the course of any customer interaction with a view to improving sales or numbers of appointments arranged. The course included six 30-minute modules on customer interaction.
The design of the Co-operative courses was chosen to reflect the colours of both the Co-operative brand and the specific logo that had been designed for the Dancing with Customers program. After discussion with the client, a "Salsa" theme was chosen a basis for the look and feel of the course. In line with this theme, an appropriate course character was developed that appeared in graphics and animations throughout the content.
Many of the learning activities within the course took the form of simulated interactions with customers either over the phone or face to face. In order to illustrate these, a cast of characters was developed to represent both the Co-operative staff and customers. A light-hearted, cartoon-style approach was taken with these characters to appeal to our target audience of call centre agents and younger, more junior branch staff.
The most common activities within the Dancing with Customers course were simulated interactions with customers - either on the telephone or face to face. Generally, the learner would be presented with part of a conversation then asked to select what the next response from the agent should be. The aim of these activities was to stay as close as possible to the actual experiences of the target audience.
The Dancing with Customers course was designed to provide information, tips and examples related to improving customer interactions and sales techniques. However, the course had a secondary objective of changing the attitudes of the learners and encouraging them to be more customer focussed. The main technique used to achieve this was guided self-reflection, where the learner is asked to consider and challenge certain aspects of their own behaviour.