DRIIVE towards the launch of a new product with the tour the Hans!

Hans Anders, a European optician and audiologist retail chain, launched a new line of sports glasses in 2022 called DRIIVE. The glasses were created in partnership with Team DSM and featured Hybrid and Pro models. The sports target audience was entirely new to Hans Anders and its 2,500 employees across 650 locations needed to be trained on the new product and the needs of their prospective customers.

The Challenge

DRIIVE glasses are curved and require an optician to measure the fit and strength in a different way than the company’s standard glasses. Employees in every store location had to gain a deep understanding of this measurement technique, as well as all product details, to manage customer expectations and successfully sell the product.

With a training challenge this big, the team at Hans Anders knew they would have to get creative.

The Solution

Luckily, Hans Anders uses Totara, the world’s most powerful and flexible LMS, as their learning and development platform. Using the learning solution’s customization ability, they were able to gamify learning for employees. A learning campaign named “Tour de Hans” (a winking nod to the Tour de France) was launched with a special landing page within the Totara platform.

The gamified learning course had five stages, or in Tour de France terminology “etappes.” The etappes were divided into the following categories:

• Pro vs Hybrid
• The sporting customer
• Spectacle strength
• Multifocal sport glasses
• The finish

Employees received sports-themed badges after completing each stage. For example, in the Pro vs Hybrid module, learners were given scripted e-learning where they walk through hypothetical scenarios with sports enthusiast customers. Next, they added a drag-and-drop game with facts about the most important aspects of the Pro vs Hybrid glasses. A custom right-rail HTML block included hyperlinks to information learned during the etappes, such as infographics and FAQs.

Upon successful completion of the level, employees received a Tour de Hans-themed jersey.

The goal was to make learning easy, fun, interactive, and challenging for employees. Collecting cycling-themed jerseys and completing levels of a learning game within the Totara platform creating that learning experience. Once learners completed the “Tour de Hans,” they entered a recap module of all the lessons to encourage stickiness of learning.

And then it’s time for a reward! An honouring ceremony showers learners with confetti and a “making of” movie (which even includes bloopers).

Results

It only took two learning & development specialists three weeks to design and set up the whole program in their Totara platform.

The sales department has indicated that rolling out a product in this way provided a cost reduction of 40% compared to earlier new product rollouts.

All employees of Hans Anders were invited to follow the Tour de Hans. In the Netherlands 911 users finished the first badge and 856 completed the entire course! Additionally 200 employees from Belgium finished the course as well, a total of well over 1,000 learners!

The level of participation is extra you take into account that the course was not mandatory to follow. Managers did not follow up on the progress of their employees. How they managed it? They enrolled everyone shortly after the announcement was made that Hans Anders had a new product. This means that the timing of the learnings was in line with timeline of the product launch.

The feedback they received was very positive! It was an entire new campaign launched on Totara, and so it felt like it was received as if a new learning platform was implemented. It created a very positive buzz around the Learning Management system.

The sports glasses were a brand new category for the employees and the program really helped them to gain confidence in consulting and selling the product to the customers.