We sat down with Christopher Smith, E-Learning Manager at Brompton to tell us more about the value Brompton has seen from their training programmes.

Q: How does L&D fit into your push for innovation?

The biggest thing for Brompton is changing the way people move within cities.

We don’t want a whole army of cars, or the sales team jumping on planes to meet and train sellers all over the world. Let’s improve how a city functions. We need more people on bikes over shorter journeys.

With Docebo, we can now train users online across 48 different countries, with 1,500 different dealers in 11 languages, efficiently and quickly.

Q: Why did Brompton need a LMS?

A big push factor was when we worked out that we have 1500 dealers, and if I were to visit everyone, I could only give less than 40 minutes of training before having to move on to the next one.

Once you factor in costs, flying, hotels – it’s physically and financially unviable to deliver physical training. We now have six hours of training content, so it would be impossible to fill that into a 40-minute meeting.

What’s great with a LMS, is the user can learn when they want to. It’s less intrusive, so we don’t force people to go to training in a physical place at a specific time. This reduces customer costs, as it doesn’t ask people to travel or sacrifice a day out of the shop.

Q: Why did you choose Docebo?

We had a list of 15 vendors in the beginning and we whittled it down to four or five, and then Docebo was one of our top two.

For us, this is a long-term project so we wanted someone that we can rely on and have a good relationship with. If there are teething problems at any point, then we can lean on them.

With the platform, the two main things were the user experience and the admin experience. For the admin, being able to show different types of people different courses, and to be able to run reports was important. It’s very easy to navigate.

We wanted something that we could implement and, ultimately, run itself as much as possible. We’ve got 1,600 users so if you have to do even five minutes’ work, every other week for those 1,600 users, it’s not going to work. It’s great that you can automate a lot in the platform.

The Virtual Coach with recommended courses is valuable and Docebo’s investment in artificial intelligence (AI) will be invaluable as we grow. We can lean on Docebo to embrace the latest AI technology and we get to piggyback on the best of it. If not, Brompton would have to invest in it.

Q: How is Brompton using Docebo?

We use it in two ways. Externally, with 1500 dealers across the world, training will help elevate the brand and improve user experience worldwide, which is really important for us now that we’re a global brand. If we can help dealers improve their knowledge, they will ultimately sell more bikes and fix them quicker.

Internally, we’re using it to onboard new staff, and increase output. If staff are better trained on the factory line, we can produce more bikes. We’re in a fortunate position where we’re struggling with demand and so the Academy is central to our growth. A better-educated workforce can produce bikes quicker with fewer faults.

Q: What impact has Docebo had on Brompton so far?

Docebo has had a revolutionary impact on our customer service team. When they receive questions, they can send a link to a video rather than have to spend 20 minutes on a call. Our head mechanic has appreciated it, as he spends less time doing/traveling to face-to-face training so we’ve reduced the costs of flying and staying in hotels.

Q: What content is most popular in the Brompton Academy?

Videos and interactive slideshows are working well, especially with our ‘Youtube generation’ parts of the workforce. A video is easier to use to breakdown complex tasks, especially ‘how-to’ videos. So, people are watching these videos in order to be able to do that job. It’s difficult to find that content somewhere else so the Academy gives it a kind of stamp of approval.

Some of our main KPIs were that we wanted people to have found the training useful, to have understood it, and to have learned something from it. At the moment, we’re at about 94-95% across all of those. The average time on the Academy per user is also at 55 minutes.

Q: Why would you recommend other companies use a LMS?

Using the Docebo platform is helping us to drive sales and reduce touch points between sellers and our customer service team. Ultimately, it helps your bottom line. If you can educate your workforce, then it will lead to more output. If you can educate your dealer network, then they can generate more sales. We’re trying to have every store on the Academy.