The Challenge
As the leading online grocery platform in North America, Instacart makes it easy for customers to skip the queues and order from their favourite stores. Customers can shop from more than 500 million products at nearly 55,000 stores located across more than 5,500 cities. Then, they’re connected with a personal shopper in their area who shops and delivers orders.
These full-service shoppers not only select the customer’s items, but they also have to make informed decisions about replacement items and communicate with customers on an ongoing basis. This means there’s a lot of important knowledge about various diets and nutrition, as well as best practices, that is helpful for them to know to be an effective shopper for their customers.
When Grace Dover, Manager of Shopper Learning, first joined Instacart, there wasn’t a streamlined process in place to help new shoppers be successful on the platform. Contract shoppers had access to some introductory content in the Shopper app, but the team saw an opportunity to significantly improve the resources available for new shoppers.
According to Grace, “The ability to scale learning has been really important as the shopper community continues to grow. By offering more resources we’re creating great experiences for both shoppers and customers alike”.
Instacart wanted to find a way to deliver helpful resources to shoppers that are located far and wide. “Instacart shoppers are all over the US and Canada,” explained Grace. “And, we really needed something that was flexible, easy to use and update, and delivered a more branded experience.”
Instacart also needed a mobile-friendly learning platform so shoppers can find information on the go. And, because a lot of shoppers are balancing other work or responsibilities in addition to shopping with Instacart, it was important to make it easy and flexible for them to complete lessons when it works for their schedules.
Grace Dover
Manager of Shopper Learning
The Solution
Now, with the help of Seismic Learning (formerly Lessonly), Instacart launched Carrot Academy, which offers more than 500,000 personal shoppers access to optional skills-based learning resources right from their phones. The company also provides shoppers with the option to take more advanced courses which helps shoppers deliver items beyond groceries, like prescriptions, clothing and even holiday shopping orders.
“We know that shoppers really value the service they provide for their customers, so it’s important to provide them with the opportunity to improve their skills and quality of shopping. Our main value proposition is to offer them access to lessons that will improve those skills, improve their customer ratings and empower them to deliver a great experience for their customers.”
Seismic Learning enables Instacart to assess how effective their lessons are with shoppers. By embedding things like knowledge checks, they’re able to get valuable feedback from shoppers which helps them make ongoing changes and improvements to content. “We’re always working to introduce new offerings for both customers and shoppers, which means there’s never a shortage of information to share with shoppers. Weaving in lessons as part of change management has been beneficial,” shared Grace.
Instacart has also been able to transform their learning efforts by working with Seismic Learning, which serves as an extension of Instacart’s Learning team. “The Services team has been great for the times when we’re at capacity and really need additional support,” shared Grace. “It’s so easy to give them an existing deck and have them convert it into an interactive lesson.”
Grace Dover
Manager of Shopper Learning
The Results
Since implementing Seismic Learning, Instacart has created a more scalable learning programme. And while Carrot Academy is optional for shoppers to use, Instacart has found that shoppers who complete lessons see positive results. “Shoppers who take lessons receive more positive customer reviews,” shared Grace.
Instacart has also found that shoppers who complete lessons right from the start are more likely to become engaged shoppers and complete more than five deliveries in their first two weeks. “Many shoppers are hesitant to start shopping because they don’t feel confident,” Grace explained. “But we’ve found that the earlier shoppers complete lessons, the more prepared and confident they feel to shop more. This makes a big difference to their experience with Instacart,” Grace added.
So far, Instacart has also seen a reduction in customer order issues. Because shoppers receive resources that help them make informed decisions around replacement items if something is out of stock, how to select high-quality items, and more, the likelihood for order issues has dropped. In fact, Instacart recently discovered that shoppers who chose to complete lessons actually experienced 15% fewer order issues.
With an average lesson satisfaction rating of 98%, shoppers love learning with Seismic Learning, too. Instacart has also found that an overwhelming majority of shoppers would recommend a lesson they take to other shoppers.
Instacart recently also relaunched its new shopper programme with some new courses. After diving into Seismic Learning data, Grace found that the completion rates of lessons significantly drop on ones that are longer than four minutes. So the team redesigned lessons to be short, sweet and truly optimised for a mobile-first experience. Grace also incorporated more lesson paths and plans to create certification paths for shoppers who want to specialise in different types of shopping.
“Overall, we’ve really been able to scale and easily build helpful lessons for shoppers,” concluded Grace. “Seismic Learning has been a really great partner to share feedback with and grow together.”
