To check off all learning goals and maximize the impact of your training, you don’t necessarily have to get trainees in the same room. With the right tools and engaging content, you can build an efficient strategy for virtual training. When it comes to right tools, Richard “Bo” Bodo at Kärcher North America chose Kahoot! with its powerful challenge feature.
Kärcher North America redefined their training strategy for distributed teams with Kahoot!
By using game-based learning to redefine their virtual training strategy, Kärcher checks off all learning goals even if trainees are miles apart
![Richard](https://kahoot.com/files/2018/04/richard-bo-bodo-karcher.jpg)
About the company and their Kahoot! Hero
Kärcher is a global family-owned company that operates worldwide and is known for its high-pressure cleaners, floor care equipment, parts cleaning systems, and window vacuum cleaners. Richard “Bo” Bodo is Director of Training at Kärcher North America who helped the company redefine their training strategy with game-based learning.
![Kärcher North America case study](https://kahoot.com/files/2018/04/karcher-north-america-case-study.jpg)
How Kärcher started their learning journey with Kahoot!
As the Director of Training for Kärcher North America, world’s largest manufacturer of cleaning equipment and solutions, Bo leads a team of 7 trainers focused on sales, service, and product knowledge training in North America, primarily USA and Canada.
Training for over 11 years, he has tried a lot of different methods and tools to increase learning impact. When he tried game-based learning methods for the first time that became a real game-changer! Bo heard about Kahoot! at a conference, and just days after he was already creating his first games for content review – it was that easy to get started:
“Soon, kahoots became part of every learning objective and now I host games every week. I typically launch a kahoot as the final step before summarizing a topic and moving on to the next one because I get a real sense of how well trainees mastered the content.”
Reinforce and recall training content
Bo typically starts a new topic with a short intro with slides, then spends most of the time on hands-on exercises and discussion and, finally, wraps it up with Kahoot! to reinforce key learning points. Hosting live games in class gave him the ability to recap on the content at a moment when all of the learners are extremely engaged.
Kahoots he creates have a lot of images to captivate everyone’s attention and the difficulty of questions increases gradually. According to Bo, having around 10 questions keeps it very dynamic and gives everyone a chance to win. To heat up competition, he often hands out a small prize like a $5 Starbucks card.
“Everyone loved the new game-based way of learning with Kahoot! where you don’t even realize you’re learning! It just happens naturally.”
Sometimes he gets trainees to play in Team Mode and it’s another interesting angle to drive learning. In this case, participants teach each other while they’re discussing questions. Great level of interaction!
Facilitate virtual training outside the classroom
After the team at Kärcher got their classroom game-based strategy in place, the next question was how to reach the same engagement and impact for remote trainees? This was a big priority, because Bo’s team had a huge geography to cover for training.
The solution didn’t wait long to present itself when they tried Kahoot! with its challenge feature (which is, as Bodo highlighted, is the greatest feature on the platform.) Challenges allowed trainers to share either a link or a PIN with participants so that they can play your kahoot of choice at a time that is convenient for them, no matter where they are. All they need to get started is a smartphone with the Kahoot! app on it.
Here’s Bo describing their experience: “I immediately used this feature with a key training initiative that I was launching in the US with a series of Kahoot! challenges sent on a weekly basis after the class. The results have been great and has allowed our sales team, which is scattered across the US, to have fun playing together.”
Assess content mastery with insight reports
Both after live games and challenges, trainers pull game reports, review them and share key numbers with sales leaders. This allows them to identify areas they need to coach and work with their sales people on. If trainers see that some questions got too few correct answers, they also flag them to address with further training.
“Having the ability to send a Kahoot! challenge to sales reps, service technicians, and dealers who are thousands of miles apart makes Kahoot! an invaluable way to educate and get feedback.”
Bo shared that he looked forward to scaling it further in Karcher’s training program. On top of that, he also planned to use it in an international Sales Competition around a new product. Stakes are high! Winners will get prizes and company-wide recognition.