Challenge
Frustrated with the default search pages in Cornerstone, Electrolux wanted filtering learning to be made easy. Engagement with learning was low. Navigation was user-initiated and search-based, putting the responsibility on the employees to think up search terms to find learning content. Electrolux also wanted to offer the same improved experience to all their employees and those of their suppliers, and wanted to make learning personal even though colleagues were spread across the globe.
Solution
We developed a bespoke learning experience for different employee groups across the world. We transitioned the employees’ experience from a user-initiated search bar to a more visual, explorative approach, giving them a personal experience in their language of choice. We also provided the L&D team with the tools to manage their own content and guide their employees’ and suppliers’ experiences.
Outcome
From a humble custom page design, to a global learning content management system, the success of our work for Electrolux has seen our relationship go from strength to strength. Electrolux were brave enough to push boundaries and look past what was available as standard. We produced unique components, requiring development work inside Cornerstone and not available to other organisations, pioneered new ideas and truly embraced personalised learning on a global scale.
Step 1: Customisation
Electrolux wanted to customise pages beyond what Cornerstone allows as standard.
Initially, they wanted a custom page to deliver relevant learning to different groups of employees. Service technicians were first. Primarily this custom page was about pushing employees to learning content related to the appliances they’d be working with.
Frustrated with the default search pages in Cornerstone, Electrolux wanted filtering learning content to be made easy. Learning was to be organised into appliance categories – cooling, ovens, laundry – then organised to the individual appliances. Features such as hovering over blocks, produced a list of links to relevant sections and learning.
In this way, we transitioned the employees’ experience from a user-initiated search bar to a more visual, explorative approach. No longer did employees have to think up the search terms that might bring up the right learning. Electrolux even curated their learning content to match the new navigation.
Step 2: Adapting for other audiences
Following successful feedback, we duplicated the experience for contact centre advisors. Using the same template, just with slightly different links, the learning could be altered to give access to manuals for the appliances – helpful when advisors were on the phone to customers.
Our work for Electrolux started small, with one-off static welcome pages, created for each of the user groups. Once these were created, we added more features such as a keyword tagging carousel to show individual learning objectives. We even translated the learning experience into 26 languages.
Step 3: A flexible custom CMS
Our next phase of development was to build a custom CMS. Electrolux wanted to be able to create different pages based on the same template – creating tailored experiences for each of their suppliers. For example, when John Lewis became a stockist for their goods, they needed to create a dedicated page for their sales and customer support colleagues to access.
As the CMS evolved, we needed to expand the functionality, introducing pages for different countries e.g. John Lewis Germany, John Lewis England, each based on a different grid and then translated. This is where a bigger challenge arose. We were not just serving up pages in German to visitors coming from Germany. We were serving up content related to their country, but in the language they specified in their user settings. This meant they could be served one of a possible 26 page versions.
This solution ensures that users always see relevant content to their past history and future needs, in their language of choice – the ultimate personal learning experience.