Voice Training – Simple, Adaptable and Effective

Imagine ramping up new pickers to full productivity in less than a week.

“Just the initial training itself went from hours to literally minutes to voice train and get a new hire geared up and ramped up and ready to go. Hours to minutes.” – Chris Timmons, Eby-Brown

There are two things that stand out to me that make training on a voice system particularly easy – simplicity and adaptability.

Voice direction is the way people are used to receiving instructions. Before we know what barcodes or computers or even letters are, as children we respond to verbal instruction and talk about what we’re doing. Listening and talking are about as natural as interactions go, so it makes sense that training on a voice system is just inherently easier for users. Especially when compared to a complicated paper ticket process or learning to navigate an RF process using screens and scans. This is also the reason that we chose to use real human voice for Jennifer, instead of a computer-generated voice. It’s more natural. It’s easier to understand. It makes training as simple as possible. And users prefer it.

Obviously the software that is enabling this simple conversation is much more complicated and can vary greatly in quality, depending on your voice provider.  But, to a user of a best-of-breed voice system like Jennifer, the complexities of the technology aren’t evident (or shouldn’t be).  Read our white paper to learn more about the complexities underlying voice recognition technology in the warehouse.

Beyond the natural simplicity of the user-system interaction, Jennifer allows for the fact that people learn at different speeds, and that as people become more proficient, they want to eliminate or combine steps to work faster.  That’s why we typically provide slightly different dialogues for new users and experts.

Read our case study to learn more about how Eby Brown decreased training time, improved productivity 40%, and cut shortages 46%.