Because many retail employees deal directly with customers, it’s essential that they receive adequate product knowledge and soft skills training in order to provide great customer service and to maximise sales.
Training in the retail industry does not come without its challenges though. Staff turnover can be high in this sector, business is often seasonal, and product ranges can change frequently.
When developing a retail training and / or elearning strategy, it is important to address these specific challenges.
Employee Turnover
The retail sector is notorious for its high employee turnover rate. In most retail businesses, employees come and go all the time, making it very challenging to have well-trained, customer-facing personnel available at all times.
Providing employee training when you are constantly recruiting new people is very difficult. High turnover also poses challenges with building customer loyalty because customers will be seeing different employees all the time.
Having a flexible, but high quality training programme in place (ideally incorporating retail elearning) can help address these HR and customer service challenges.
Rapidly Changing Business Environment
The retail industry is a very volatile environment that is influenced by changing trends and aggressive marketing. For retailers to maintain their competitive edge, it is important that they are able to pivot quickly when fashion moves into a new direction and / or competitors are using new marketing tactics.
Decisions made at the head office level need to be communicated down and implemented quickly to stay on top of the market.
eLearning can provide a great device for passing down information on new products, sales tactics, marketing ploys and other important knowledge.
When setting up a training strategy for your retail organisation, hiring a training provider with retail industry training experience is a must. The help of a professional training consultancy can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of your training courses and the return on investment they provide.
Below we’ve listed a few training and learning providers that have extensive experience with retail industry training.
Retail LMS Provider – iSpring
The iSpring LMS is a strong choice for retail companies because it’s designed to make employee training easy to deliver, engaging to complete, and simple to manage at scale. These points are all critical in fast-moving retail environments where staff are distributed across multiple stores and often juggling customer service duties alongside learning.
The platform supports mobile learning with offline access, meaning retail associates can complete courses anytime and anywhere – on the sales floor, during breaks, or while commuting – without being tied to a desktop computer, which boosts completion rates and fits into their busy schedules.
iSpring also enables centralised onboarding, product training, compliance tracking, and performance reporting, helping to keep knowledge consistent across all locations and ensure everyone is up to date on new products, policies, and customer service standards.
The integrated iSpring elearning authoring tool let companies create interactive quizzes, role-plays, and learning paths quickly, so training feels relevant and engaging rather than a chore.
In addition to its capabilities, iSpring LMS has been adopted by a wide range of well-known brands across industries, including major consumer products and retail companies, such as PG (Procter & Gamble), Lego, Adidas, Kraft Foods, L’Oréal, Puma, and Energizer. This demonstrates its applicability to complex, multi-location organisations with large frontline workforces.
One notable example in training is Oticon, a global company whose teams use iSpring LMS because it’s intuitive (described by a client as “very easy, just like Netflix”) and works well for mobile learners who travel frequently.
These kinds of success stories show how iSpring LMS can help retail businesses improve training consistency, reduce costs, and drive measurable improvements in staff capability and compliance, making it an excellent learning platform choice for the retail sector.
Online Retail Course Provider – The Friedman Group
The Friedman Group is a retail training and consulting expert that offers online learning packages for retailers that include access to a large number of courses on topics such as:
- Sales skills
- Store management
- District management
- Store meetings
Different packages are available for small, medium and large organisations. Training courses can be accessed online.
Retail clients of the Friedman Group include Sprint, Telus, Specialized and Godiva.
Find out more at https://thefriedmangroup.com.
You can also find online training relevant to the retail industry, including online sales courses over at e-Learning Centre.
eLearning Content Development – Sponge Learning
Off-the-shelf eLearning courses do not always meet the complex requirements of an innovative retail organisation. In some cases it is well worth the investment to have course content developed that is customised to your organisation’s unique situation.
eLearning Sponge Learning started in Plymouth, Devon in the South West of England is a custom elearning content provider that develops tailored online courses for organisations in a variety of industries, including retail.
There’s a further profile on this Plymouth-founded elearning provider here where there is more on what they do and the scientific rationale behind their work in areas such as gamification and games-based learning.
For more on their services and details of their national and international clients such as Tesco, Adidas Group, BMW, Lexus and SportsDirect.com.
Find out more on their Retail and Distribution learning solutions on the Sponge website.
Other retail websites and resources
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/hr-challenges-retail-sector-43858.html
www.theretailatoz.com/e-learning-for-retail/
https://www.vendhq.com/uk/retail-trends-and-predictions.
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Av Srivastava
eLearning Marketing Consultant
About Av
Av Srivastava is an elearning research analyst and marketing consultant who has worked with a range of learning solution providers in the UK and worldwide.
He writes about the latest and best elearning solutions to help buyers choose the ideal company for their needs.
He also helps a small number of elearning companies to understand their perfect customers, increase their visibility, and develop streams of inbound enquiries.
