Lowest prices, best experiences: Bunnings first Festival of Learning
Intent Advisory was thrilled to play a part in Bunnings’ inaugural Festival of Learning.
This is an edited excerpt from an article that first appeared in leading marketing publication mi-3.com.au by Nadia Cameron. Please click on the link here to read the original article in full.
Fostering a customer-focused mindset, resiliency in oneself, courageous leadership and gen AI were among the 15 topics explored by more than 1,000 Bunnings staff in its first-ever Learning Festival for support centre employees. As many brands struggle to lift flatlining customer experiences through external channels and fewer than one in 20 prioritise the role employees have in this mix, Bunnings has been busy ensuring staff in corporate HQ also have the smarts to help realise its principles of widest range, lowest prices and best experiences for customers. With sessions averaging at least 300 participants and an 80 per cent-plus engagement rate, the experimental learning platform has been deemed a hit and a sign of the connective tissue between customer delivery and employee engagement, Bunnings head of talent and capability, Mark McLaren, tells Mi3.
What you need to know:
Bunnings has debuted its first ‘Learning Festival’, a music festival-inspired training and development day for support centre staff delivered virtually.
Facilitated by internal staff as well as external experts, topics covered everything from personal growth to genAI, data-driven decision making and project management.
According to Bunnings head of talent and capability, Mark McLaren, building a learning culture and engagement across corporate HQ employees is intrinsically linked to Bunnings’ ability to deliver its customer experience proposition on the retail shopfloor.
According to customer mindset session facilitator, Amanda Fong, [of Intent Advisory], getting every single team member to feel a strong sense of ownership around CX is vital. Per Fong: “If every team member feels empowered to do their bit to improve the customer journey – then Bunnings will keep customers satisfied, engaged and loyalty will remain strong over time.”
It was with the view of improving learning experiences for Bunnings’ head office staff to ultimately impact the quality of experiences delivered to customers on the retail shopfloor that led to the debut of the hardware retailer’s first one-day Learning Festival in May.
An organic idea that came out of the learning and capability delivery team, the ‘festival of learning’ was likened by Bunnings head of talent and capability, Mark McLaren, to a music festival. It even came with its own Coachella-styled T-shirt featuring a list of the day’s ‘performers’.
Delivered virtually, the one-day program featured 15 curated sessions informed by staff feedback, covering personal growth topics such as resilience and vulnerability as the key to unlocking creativity and innovation, and building a customer focused mindset. Other sessions covered generative AI innovations in shopper experience, data-driven decisioning and a DIY playbook for project management.
“The thought was: How awesome would it be if we were able to create a learning experience where people could curate their own learning through the day with topics that are really relevant. Like picking and choosing bands at a music festival because it’s important or relevant to you at the time,” McLaren told Mi3. “We wanted a solution available to everyone in the support centre environment. Our target was to generate a different way to bring learning to the team outside traditional, four walls content.
“A festival was a novel, fun way of doing something. Internal and external input was then used to decide on the topics and focus that came up during the day.”
According to McLaren, recognising HQ employees as instrumental to what happens at the coalface of retail with customers is a mentality that’s been in place since 1994 when Bunnings' first warehouses opened.
“What we provide into our team should ultimately impact our teams serving our customer. The Festival was deliberately targeted at support centre, who don’t always traditionally get training experiences store leaders get,” he said.
Building customer-focused mindsets
When Amanda Fong was approached by Bunnings to curate the customer content of the Learning Festival, she was immediately taken by the retailer’s openness to try something different.
“Bunnings is already known for its brand value and strength. In many respects that only highlighted the need to approach this session with a higher degree of creativity,” said Fong. “The first thing was getting someone from Bunnings that had customer running through their veins. That was Steve Hoffman, head of customer experience at Bunnings. What I loved about bringing Steve into the fold was that we could lean on his retail experience to create a backdrop about the ever-evolving nature of retail and in turn the criticality in keeping a customer-first mindset.”
The 'morning TV' format adopted was about creating engagement and bringing to life key concepts while driving home key messages, Fong continued.
“The real driver behind this session was for every single team member to feel a strong sense of ownership around the customer experience. Put simply, if every team member feels empowered to do their bit to improve the customer journey – then Bunnings will keep customers satisfied, engaged and loyalty will remain strong over time,” she said.
Key topics addressed included challenging the notion of what customer actually means in the context of Bunnings' business, plus broadening what customer-first looks like via case studies. These included non-retail and international brands. Another must for Fong was expanding the team’s understanding of the lifetime value of Bunnings customer and their role in shaping this.
“It was about challenging the team to step into the shoes of its customers," she added. "Hammer Time."