In advance of marketing services company Dominion Enterprises’ initiative to move its external training model from an on-site to a remote approach, a comprehensive program of employee engagement was envisioned to aid and smooth the transition to the new training paradigm. Called EChO, the program seeks to Engage, Challenge, and Orient the newer and tenured employees in an effort to instill or reinforce the familial “we’re all in this together” approach to customer support that has underpinned the company’s successes in the automotive dealer management systems (DMS) marketplace over the last 20 years.
Program Details
To ENGAGE employees, staff members are administered an internal expectations assessment to gauge their perception of the company and of themselves as employees. This is an anonymous survey that yields baseline readings of opinions, as well as directional pointers for possible improvements. Second, a learning styles evaluation is administered to identify the style or styles of training that would be most effective with the current staff.
To CHALLENGE employees, Dominion Enterprises created new learning opportunities in-house for employees to review and provide feedback on the revamped customer training curriculum, practice and assess their skills at presenting the material remotely—particularly in the area of remote classroom control—and learn techniques for orienting customers to using all the tools at their disposal, both in the learning phase and going forward as the dealership goes live. A second component of the challenge has been the introduction of employee committees to encourage a deeper commitment to the company and to one another in meeting goals and challenges that emerge—such as the change in the external training model.
To ORIENT employees, Dominion Enterprises retooled the monthly employee newsletter so it now delivers more individual recognition, as well as corporate and division reminders. In addition to the employee newsletter, all employees receive the customer newsletter, which also was redesigned to both remind and inform customers of program features they can use to improve their processes. This customer tool also serves as a general tickler for employees to help them make wider recommendations to customers with regard to the capabilities of the product. In addition to the local company news and information outlets, Dominion Enterprises has begun leveraging these efforts with a wider recognition campaign by contributing achievement news to the available division and corporate news channels.
Results
The 2015 expectations survey showed a 5 percent bump in employee satisfaction with the company’s commitment to training. Assessing the success of training efforts, Dominion Enterprises found ongoing adoption rates for single-topic training classes as high as 92 percent, with continuing training topic skills assessment building on an initial average of 81 percent. Supporting these efforts, the company has increased readership of the employee newsletter in seven of the nine issues last year, resulting in an overall readership of 86.25 percent.
The true success of this story is in the savings this new external training paradigm has produced: a 67 percent savings in man weeks and a 64 percent savings in travel expenses per new customer installation.
