Chief Learning Officer - January 2008 - (Page 52)

CASE STUDY continued from page 47 don’t know everything there is to know about a car. This complexity is why specialty shops exist, devoted to a part of the vehicle, such as the transmission. Adequate technical coverage can improve the likelihood that a vehicle is repaired correctly in its first visit to the shop, which, in turn, improves CSI. In addition to completing courses and assessments, individual certifications include CSI and other performance metrics. Chrysler’s service technician certification programs also include industry-standard technician certification (ASE). Similar to the scorecard metrics, these performance objectives are normalized, based on dealer size, to level the field in terms of certification. A sales consultant working for a smaller dealership can get the same performance-based certification as staff working at a larger dealership. Since CSI statistically correlates to overall performance of dealers, Chrysler can ensure that certified dealerships will be higher performing by embedding CSI and similar customer satisfaction metrics into certification requirements. To help dealerships meet those requirements, other certifications can require training that impacts CSI, either directly or indirectly, as in the example of how technical coverage in the service department can affect CSI. Chrysler’s performance-based certification both drives the training that can lead to increased performance and ensures that dealership certification is a credible imprimatur in the marketplace. In addition to supporting performance-based, cascading certifications, the Chrysler Academy Learning Center addressed several challenges specific to training an extended enterprise retail channel. Some of the relevant features included: • The ability to geographically target training opportunities based on convenience and locality to the students who need the training. • The ability to measure course demand geographically, so training providers will know where to provide training events and ensure that the maximum number of seats will be filled, which maximizes the training investment itself. • The ability to base manager certification requirements on the accomplishments of their staff, essentially leveraging the employees’ direct managers to ensure they get the training necessary to provide outstanding service. • Advanced prerequisite and equivalency processing capabilities to reduce confusion and complexity in handling complex technical skill curricula for service technicians. These capabilities allow them to keep up with rapidly changing technology in the most efficient way possible by providing abbreviated “update courses” that focus on those elements the technician hasn’t already covered in other training. Conclusion Both the dealer scorecard and the performance-based certification help improve customer satisfaction and enhance the credibility of Chrysler LLC’s Five Star certification. In the future, the scorecard will likely undergo several changes, reflecting the importance of CSI on overall dealership performance. Currently, CSI focuses on the service department experience, but Chrysler could implement a customer satisfaction metric focused on the entire dealership experience. This metric could be measured by the rate at which vehicle owners return to the same dealership to subsequently purchase a new vehicle or by the relative success the dealer has in attracting purchasers who had previously purchased a competing vehicle. Future developments in the learning center will facilitate its evolution into a true learning portal for dealers. This development will bring together information from multiple sources to provide dealer employees with an on-demand learning environment. Powerful search capabilities will include peer-inside course content, “ask the expert” forums, wikis, blogs, chat rooms and other resources to provide the learners with exactly what they need to perform their jobs better than ever before. Managing Channel Certification To implement a performance-based certification program, Chrysler needed a learning management system (LMS) that corporate staff could use to administer sophisticated requirements with interrelated, cascading certifications. Chrysler selected an LMS from Latitude, which designed its solution to meet the unique needs of channel training and certification. The LMS was integrated into the Chrysler dealer portal and other business systems and branded as the Chrysler Academy Learning Center. January 2008 Mark Place and John Zonneveld are senior consultants at Latitude, a technology consultancy focused on improving the operational performance of the extended enterprise. They can be reached at editor@clomedia.com. The Chrysler Academy Learning Center has a certification/compliance engine with the ability to handle various types of certification requirements beyond simple course completions, which allows for the performance-based program and helps deal with many channel-training challenges. The ability to nest certifications within other certifications provided the cascading structure to drive training through all levels of the dealership. It also reduced the effort required to maintain the program and adjust requirements, since administrators take a modular approach to administering their certification structure. 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Chief Learning Officer - January 2008 Editor’s Letter Table of Contents Imperatives Selling up, Selling Down Strategies Take Five Environment Sips of Knowledge at E. & J. Gallo Winery CLO Profile Productivity UST Global: Opening Employees’ Eyes to New Learning Tactics Applying CRM Concepts to E-Learning Human Capital Capital One: Experiences in Innovation Learning Solutions Macy’s: Using Feedback to Develop One Leader at a Time Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - January 2008

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