Cerevrum taught the staff of Burger King to communicate with guests of restaurants in English

2019: A pilot project on improvement of communication in English of staff of Burger King

On December 17, 2019 the Cerevrum company announced the termination of a pilot project on improvement of communication in English of staff of network of Burger King restaurants. The pilot project passed in restaurants of Moscow and St. Petersburg, including, the capitals located at the airports; the online school of English Skyeng acted as the partner of the project.

According to the company, check of efficiency of technologies of immersive training for training of the employees working at point of sale for free communication with clients foreigners became a main goal of "pilot". In this project need of use of technologies of virtual reality was caused, first of all, by impossibility to use traditional forms of education in network of such scale as Burger King. So, for example, standard "scripts" do not allow to reach the desirable level of communication (so, to achieve increase in additional sales), at the same time group or individual teaching is long, costly, organizationally inefficient, and in the conditions of a staff turnover does not result in necessary result. At the same time, use of technologies of virtual reality of Cerevrum allowed to motivate employees and most full to involve them in learning process, having provided content, the most approximate to real working conditions; make digestion of material easy, comfortable and effective. Besides, training using this technology did not assume "switching off" of the employee from production process – it is carried out directly in a workplace, and takes only 15 minutes a day.

The Cerevrum company offered the VR training methodology which is accurately registering optimal parameters of simulation: quantity of steps, list of hints, length of phrases, methods of submission of the theory, etc.

During the project the Cerevrum company prepared VR simulation of real cases of communication of staff of Burger King with foreign guests. Each simulation included the digital copy of a real interior of restaurant, the virtual visitor with modeling of his behavior and also the module of assessment of extent of assimilation by the employee of a training material. From employees it was required to hold dialogue with the virtual guest; and they had to offer it not only dishes from the menu within basic "script", but also to show skills of communication behind its framework. At this Cerevrum provided several options of simulations – for different situations, level of knowledge of language and also determination of an optimal variant of a technique. For assessment of the course of passing of obucheniye, completion of content of simulations and improvement of a technique statistics collected by the platform was used: number, duration and frequency of sessions, number of successful passings, loudspeaker of results, etc.

Assessment of results of training was based on several metrics. First, even before start of the project "entrance" testing of employees was held (including, by method of "the secret guest" – for assessment of ownership of professional lexicon and the level of contact during the conversation; also the employee survey was conducted). Then, already during training, the level of digestion of material was estimated by the system (for example, the ability to construct the correct response phrase was traced). At last, upon termination of training, the level of proficiency in language was estimated by the same technique, as on "input". The processed data showed that 65% of the trained employees improved the assessment, 46% began to communicate more surely, the number of the dishes offered foreign guests increased; considerably also the volume of their sales increased.

In further plans of Burger King network – to use Cerevrum technology in scales of network for increase in sales volume and also personnel training to skills of communication in English. Then it is going to implement profound training in Russian and to start virtual fact-finding excursions for beginners.

For December, 2019 technologies of virtual and augmented reality stop being exotic, and become the necessary instrument of corporate training. Use of such technologies is the fastest, low-cost and effective method to bring closer educational process to reality. Virtual reality allows to create quickly at the person steady necessary skill first of all the brain perceives a virtual situation practically as real, creates neurocommunications and, respectively, it is considerably more prepared for it in normal life. Andrey Badmayev, the co-CEO of Cerevrum company told