Do you want to save money on staff training costs, increase knowledge retention and positively impact the experience customers have with your brand? KFC used VR to train their staff and achieved these results and more.
We’d love to talk to you about how your business can us VR as the training tool of choice!
Since 1940, KFC has delighted its customers with finger-lickin’ good fried chicken. However, delivering crunchy and delicious chicken bites hasn’t always been easy, especially when training staff on how to follow Colonel Sanders legendary process. With over 19 000 KFC cooks in the USA alone, KFC’s training and development team knew they had to support their existing training programmes with something the Colonel would be proud of and inspire a new generation of cooks wanting to join the growing organisation. It turns out that the not-so-secret secret ingredient is Virtual Reality.
VR Application Overview
While KFC’s cooking process hasn’t changed in 70 years, how they help their staff improve their skills has. A few years back, the organisation’s challenge was training multiple teams nationwide on how to cook KFC’s signature fried chicken. The traditional hands-on approach was costly and took up significant time. It also meant that if anyone made a mistake, it was more than just a splash of oil they had to contend with but the potential for serious bodily harm. Not to mention the mess and slow output of orders.
As a means to support their existing multi-step employee training programme, the team at KFC developed a fun and interactive VR training programme that implemented the rules of gamification. Called “The Hard Way”, the programme simulated the five-step process of cooking KFC’s signature fried chicken whilst giving them a high-level overview of what goes into perfecting the Original Recipe chicken. The actual hands-on training experience would usually take almost 30 minutes to complete, but thanks to the power of VR, this application took a mere 10 minutes, with staff having the option to play it over and over until practice made perfect.
ROI Measures
“The Hard Way” VR training programme was a success. Employees stated that they felt more confident in their ability to fry that delicious chicken without making a mistake. Their connection with course content and confidence in their knowledge resulted in lower staff churn and reduced recruitment and training costs. In fact, KFC announced that with each staff member training using the VR application, the organisation saved $8000….per employee! To top it all off, staff productivity jumped by 10%, and because the teams knew precisely how Colonel Sanders intended his chicken to be cooked, customer satisfaction improved by 5%.
KFC knew that training staff at scale would be challenging. However, being open to a VR solution that would support their existing training programme proved to be the right decision, resulting in a profitable outcome that positively impacted the business, its staff and customers.
