The Challenge
Service technicians need strong attention to detail, physical safety awareness, customer service skills, and technical knowledge—all of which can be difficult to teach. A Fortune 500 client in consumer telecommunications needed to streamline their new hire training for field technicians who handle on-site internet installations and cable setups. With a focus on enhancing both customer and employee experiences, they saw an opportunity to elevate their training program using VR for improved safety and operational efficiency.
Before partnering with Roundtable, they relied on VILT (video instructor-led training), classroom learning, and on-the-job shadowing. While these methods were somewhat effective, they involved significant downtime and costs due to new hire and experienced employee participation, and often lacked engagement.
Safety was a top priority, as injuries and property damage carry financial and operational impacts. The client wanted a more impactful training experience to better equip new hires for handling hazardous situations.
Client’s Concerns and Pain Points:
- Instructor Led Training Fees
- Supervisor Salaries
- Productivity
- Learner Engagement
- Worker's Compensation Claims
We entered this journey with no prior experience with VR, and with our team and theirs working together, we were able to not only create some immersive experiences in VR, but we settled on headsets, mobile device management, analytics, and integration with our other systems. Roundtable was supportive to get us up and running, and was always there when we needed them.
Roundtable's Solution
The immersive learning program emphasizes essential on-the-job skills like electrical safety, site navigation, customer interaction, and more. Roundtable Learning collaborated with them to develop an engaging, hands-on virtual reality training experience. This program places technicians in a realistic environment where they can practice and learn from mistakes before working onsite. It covers basic tasks and simulates a variety of hazards, including rare and unexpected scenarios.
Key Learning Objectives:
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
- Customer Communication & Best Practices
- Environmental Awareness
- Foreign Voltage Detection & Shock Prevention
- Equipment Installation & Troubleshooting
- Avoiding Slips, Trips, and Falls
This VR program incorporates haptic feedback and audio cues to enhance the multi-sensory learning experience. When approaching potentially charged equipment, learners must use a foreign voltage detector to ensure it is safe. If they neglect this step, they feel a vibration in their controller paired with an electric sound in the headset, reinforcing the consequences of overlooking safety checks.
Beyond electric shocks or aggressive pets, technicians face a range of unpredictable hazards on the job, some with serious risk of injury or property damage. Learners practice identifying common risks, such as children’s toys, laundry baskets, and pets, and are also tested on high-risk, rare scenarios. For instance, in the simulation, if a technician enters an unfinished attic and steps off the beams onto insulation, they risk falling through the ceiling—a realistic hazard that is difficult to simulate safely in other training formats. The training even covers easily-forgettable items: there’s a reminder in the course to look both ways before crossing the street.
The program guides learners through a typical day as a service technician, from gathering PPE in their truck to running cable inside a home. This hands-on approach allows learners to actively engage in every step of the task.
I would recommend VR if you truly want the experience to last for the employee versus other methods. It especially highlights the importance of supporting safety in our organization. Through our VR experiences, we've captured our employees taking the wrong actions and quickly learn through the consequences in the scenarios. This is much more preferred than having to learn through mistakes on the job that could have lifelong consequences.
The Results
Significant interest, support and enhanced understanding including from experienced employees: Roundtable received consistently positive responses to the program including the validation or enhancement of knowledge on several tasks.
Findings of the VR Safety Training:
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) climbed significantly by over 120%, with much of this boost driven by tenured employees. NPS is a modern survey metric that gauges awareness, sentiment, and enthusiasm for a product, service, or solution. Initially, respondents were detractors, expressing skepticism about the VR training’s potential. After completing the training, only 2.3% remained detractors. The proportion of passives also dropped, from one-third to 21%, while the number of promoters surged by an impressive one-third.
Both the client and their learners valued the training, as users also reported enhanced cognitive and mental skills improvements: for 8 out of 10 topics covered in the training, the immersive training validated or increased their learning of the topic.
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Whether you want to meet in-person or virtually, our team will show you how immersive learning will transform the way you train your employees.
