Unlocking the shoppie superpower - confidence!

For as many years as I have worked in cruise retail, as an industry we have been stuck in a never ending 'Groundhog Day' of having to cope with the continual challenges in respect to crew recruitment and training. We know that if we can get the best crew with the best confidence with the best products, the magic happens. But simply put, getting those 3 things lined up together has proven to be a never ending headache which has plagued all of us in the sector continuously.

When I conceived the idea of the Cruise Retail Academy, it was always to be laser-focused on trying to solve this problem - finding the best crew, giving them the highest confidence in selling the best products. I knew that if we could do this, then we could add so much value to our sector.

Remembering, M1ndset owner Peter Mohn's truly powerful statistic from the DFNI cruise conference presentation - 81% of onboard buyers were influenced by the crew interaction and 22% of guests noted that they were then advised on the best product for them - it reinforced for me how important this topic is.

Our first year has been spent focusing on finding the best crew and we are achieving this. Feedback from our onboard partners has shown to us that we have built a great system, and Rob being truly the best recruiter in the cruise industry (😉) is nurturing new talent to the industry in an incredible way and we really are seeing great results from this! (Meet a few of our recruits and hear their stories CLICK HERE).

Well, now as we start our next stage of development, we have formed a partnership with Frntlne, as announced this week (Click here to read more), to focus on the 2nd part of the challenge - Confidence.

Having seen many different e-learning systems, file shares, quizzes, training materials over the years nothing really struck me as a game changer. That was until I met Christina from Frntlne. With some amazing results from the in-flight retail sector, I was curious. As soon as I tried my first training course using the frntlne app, I thought - BINGO! we have it. This is the one! Stop the clock!!!

Why? Well, its easy.... Frntlne works so well because it is brilliantly simple. No fluff, no waffle, no BS - it focuses on the key brand info in a way which you retain. I took the course on Monkey Shoulder whisky and Rabanne fragrance, and I can tell you 6 months later - I still remember everything I learnt. I still have the confidence to promote these products. The brilliance of Frntlne is their training method - engaging Tik-tok style videos, bite size learning and repeating all of the most important stuff across a number of sessions. The methodology has been built scientifically, and as a result....

It works!

100% course completion, +20% increase in confidence and significant sales growth shown after training. These are incredible ROI stats for a training platform.

But the real beauty of frntlne is that it is all about empowering crew to learn. By putting the training on personal devices, and by incentivising the completion of learning and making it so simple, the methodology is incredible. Crew will happily spend their downtime, their vacation, their travel time learning and developing their skills. Name another e-learning tool in our industry which can do this.

Not only this, the focus on putting a human element to the digital training is fantastic - not AI, not PDF's, not faceless modules - but people.... ambassadors who know the brand inside out giving you the training. (Just watch the Hendrick's Gin training to see how amazing that is). It allows crew to imagine themselves repeating the same technique onboard. It allows them to build a connection. This empathy, this human touch is crucial in order to get the message through.

Building this partnership together, what I love about frntlne is that the team are genuinely passionate about their platform and this enthusiasm in what they are doing radiates through into everything that they are doing.

If you are a brand, and you are genuinely interested in building your cruise business through getting the onboard teams ability to be confident in promoting your product (driving this 81% interaction influence), then let's talk!

I have no doubt that in partnership, we can achieve amazing results together for the cruise industry, for both new crew but also importantly existing crew onboard.

Building confidence in a truly simple and effective way - let's do this!