M&S - Café Heroes

Check out our award-winning module for M&S, which picked up the coveted gold award for excellence in the production of e-learning at the November 2010 E-learning Age Awards.

 This case study explains how Kineo and M&S partnered to introduce e-learning to M&S Cafés to take on the challenge. The results were off the charts: a huge improvement in mystery dining scores. Sales targets were blown away; over 8,000 people were trained in a fraction of the time it would have otherwise taken and it saved M&S over £500,000 in year one. Find out how we did it in this case study.

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The challenge

If you're from the UK or are a frequent visitor, then you’ve probably been in an M&S café. How was your experience? If you went before March 2009, it maybe wasn’t as great as it could have been. M&S Mystery dining scores were well below what M&S aims for. With evidence of long queues and less than ideal service levels, this was an area in which M&S wanted to dramatically improve the customer experience.

The hospitality team at M&S decided to take on the challenge of raising the quality of service at M&S cafés across the group.

Their goal? Our project sponsor said: “We wanted to energise, motivate and build confidence in Café Customer Assistants and Section Co-ordinators, so that they deliver the customer experience you expect, to protect the brand, grow sales, and ensure that the loyal and valued customers who use the café continue with their current pattern of valuable spend elsewhere in the store.”

The project had five key desired outcomes:

1. Improvement in mystery dining scores.
2. Growth in sales in cafés.
3. Reduction in volume of customer complaints.
4. Deliver to 8,000 people as fast as possible.
5. Control costs and deliver a significant return on investment.

Better put the kettle on…

The approach

Below we outline some of the things we did together on this project to deliver results.

1. Drink a lot of coffee (at M&S of course) and talk to people

If e-learning was to work for this audience, it had to be authentic. It needed to reflect the energy and challenges of working in the M&S café environment. There’s only one way to find out what that’s like. We made many trips to M&S cafés during the project to immerse ourselves in the environment. M&S were brave and smart enough not to just show us to the best performing cafes. We got to visit some cafés that weren’t performing as well as they could have. During those visits we got to observe things first-hand, sit down with customer assistants, managers and customers, and really get under the skin of the challenges. Many of the key points made by customers and staff were directly included in the course where appropriate.

2. Be efficient – focus on mistakes that matter

We asked specific questions to keep the scope focused, for example:

• What is causing performance to be under target? (E.g. the queue is too long because the most experienced people are not working the toughest roles at peak times, and because some cafes aren’t using the more efficient working format of the ‘triangle’ – where three key people focus on one core task only).
• What are people doing or not doing, that could correct these things? (Get the ‘aces in places’ – the most experienced people working the till and the espresso bar during peak time. Work the triangle).
• Which mistakes, if we focus on correcting them, will have the biggest impact on the results? (Showing managers how to do a roster that puts 'aces in places', while putting newer team members in less pressured roles at peak time.)

The goal was to keep the whole e-learning module to less than 50 minutes, so we needed to make sure we focused on the mistakes that matter. Taking a critical mistake-based approach like this enabled us to make sure sections had the right focus.

For example, one of the key issues for customers was queue length. To respond specifically to this, we created a section that showed how easy it was for a twenty or thirty-minute queue to build up if you weren’t focused on managing the queue.

We followed this with practical tips for saving – and shaving – seconds off the wait time.

3. Get the tone right – make it authentic

We knew from talking to our subject matter experts, and the team members in the cafés, that robot-like e-learning speak wasn’t going to cut it for them. They’re service people and there’s a warmth, urgency, energy and humour in how they communicate. If the e-learning was going to make an impact, it first had to make a connection by speaking in their language.

Through testing different approaches with the team, we developed a tone of voice that got the message across  didn’t take itself too seriously in the process. We’d call it energetic, informal, aspirational – but not afraid to have some fun on the way. There’s muffin like including a few cake jokes…

4. Have a strong brand – think visually for every screen

We worked with the team to develop a visual identity for the module, and through collaboration we developed the theme of Café Service Heroes. It played to the goals of being warm, informal, aspirational and (where it needed to be) a little jokey.

The skill building section of the module was based on the concept of building up powers in key areas before facing the ‘showtime’ section, where you had to show that you have what it takes to deal with a shift in the café.

5. Put your money where your mocha is – give practice opportunities

You’ve got to get people stuck in, with any module. Working in an M&S café and providing great service is very hands-on. So the e-learning couldn’t linger in the theoretical – it had to give people the chance to do something.

Throughout the e-learning we applied best practice in learning design:

• Create realistic situations
• Give people opportunities to try things and make mistakes
• Give coaching and feedback

Here’s an example of this cycle in action – in the ‘Showtime’ section of the module:

Learners work through the scenario dealing with different customers and challenges. Later, this includes making decisions about whether to go to clean a table or serve the next customer, so it combines tactical as well as conversational decisions.

This builds up to a short final assessment on each area, to demonstrate capabilities in key 'service hero' areas.

The results

We aimed to deliver on the needs for:

• On-time and on-budget delivery; to meet pressing deadlines for roll-out.
• Creating a module that addresses key business needs; improving service, reducing customer complaints and wait times, and driving up sales.
• Creating a warm, friendly and on-brand e-learning experience that people would connect with and respond to, positively.
• Ensuring delivery to a large audience at speed, and delivering cost saving.

How did we do?

Time, budget, and delivery: The project delivered on time and within the target budget. This meant that over 8,000 people were trained in under six months – a logistical feat which would not have been possible if M&S had been using face-to-face methods. The cost savings are estimated by M&S to be £500,000 in year one.

Connection with learners: The results were overwhelmingly positive. By the time the entire 8,000 initial target population had been trained, within six months, over 95% of all responses were in the 'agree' / 'strongly agree' category.

It’s great to get positive feedback like this, and for M&S Hospitality it had a further benefit; making the team in cafés feel positive about the investment made in them by M&S. The M&S employee engagement survey shows this area now has the highest level of positivity and commitment in employee scores across the whole business.

But what did it mean for business results?

• Mystery diners and customer comments: Results improved over the six months, post roll-out, from 64% to 86% – and that was directly measuring the aspects of service that the module targeted: queue reduction, customer satisfaction and speed of service.
• Sales: Like-for-like sales, the standard measurement in retail, increased for cafés by over 6% in the six months, post roll-out – which is more than twelve times the industry average improvement during the same period. Proof that the positive, friendly service and confident, suggestive selling was working.

Our M&S client summed up the view at M&S about this project’s achievements:

"The M&S Café e-learning project has been one of the most successful training initiatives I have ever seen launched in the catering industry in over 30 years of working in some of the most successful restaurant brands in the UK.

By combining lively, practical and memorable tips we have brought this area alive and when combined with minimal hands on training is a very powerful combination.

The project was ahead of timescale and under budget, and the run away success has led the way for e-learning in M&S, leaving the hospitality division as the pioneers of a host of new e-learning activities.

We saved over £400,000 by not having to pay for travel & accommodation for our team members along with pulling them out of their stores for over a day in some cases whereas we can now train in-store in around an hour. We also have a succinct benefit of being able to train new recruits on day one; arming them with the basics before they walk on the floor which in the past would not have happened.

We saved at least another £100,000 in creation of paper-based materials that would need replacing and that would be against our core values on environmental credentials.

Apart from a half million pounds saving we hit our target of training over 8,000 people in just six months that would have taken considerably over a year by other methods.

Our mystery dining scores jumped over 10%, moving our internal scoring from 'achieve' to 'exceed' thus ensuring customers received a better experience and we also saw a dramatic reduction of customer complaints. Mystery dining has improved in Café to 86% with a starting base of 64%.

We are also 'safer' with our food safety and operating standards now sitting at 'Exceed' level at 88%.

Our sales target was simply left standing, as our customers' experience, along with an increase of morale and, acceptably, some product innovation, has led us to a 6% progressive LFL sales growth, which is twelve times more than the current industry trend.

We beat our sales target by over 5%, but most pleasing of all was the impact on our people. By helping them with skills to carry out their role we improved morale considerably. Within our own confidential staff survey, hospitality has now the highest commitment and positivity within M&S.

We saved over half a million pounds, we improved our skill base for our teams that led to incredible commitment and positivity, we improved our customers' experience and as a result became more profitable – what an incredible story of success!"

Download the full e-learning case study.