How Zeus Street Greek delivers new training and information to the majority of their workforce in under 24 hours

Introduction

Zeus Street Greek, a leader in the "fresh, fast, casual" dining sector, operates 31 locations across Australia with ambitious growth plans.

In its journey to becoming the country's leading Greek fast-casual dining franchise, Zeus Street Greek recognised the need for a modern training and communications platform to scale business operations, reduce overhead, and drive brand consistency and compliance across locations.

Before switching to Mercu, our previous system was holding us back. We had to manually create and archive user accounts, which led to blind spots and increased compliance risks. The system was cumbersome to use. Creating new training in SCORM took a long time, and the average time-to-completion for new modules across the network took months. Additionally, staff struggled to access the information they needed promptly. All these issues combined harmed our brand consistency and hindered growth.

- Selena Seigo, Head of Training

Challenge: A legacy platform unfit to support business growth

Before partnering with Mercu, Zeus Street Greek used World Manager for onboarding, training, and communications. This system presented several challenges:

• Lack of third-party integrations: World Manager's lack of third-party integrations with tools like Deputy required manual data entry every time someone joined or left the business. This created unnecessary administrative overhead, blind spots, and compliance risks around user access.
• Login issues and high IT support overhead: The platform's email and password-based login introduced unnecessary friction when accessing training and comms. This resulted in continuous IT support requests, harmed training completion rates, and slowed training coverage.
• Slow content authoring: Due to its reliance on SCORM, creating new training content on World Manager took a lot of work. This hindered the ability to effectively respond to changing business needs (e.g. the roll-out of a new menu) with new or updated training modules.
• Clunky, desktop-focused user experience: World Manager's user experience did not meet the expectations of an increasingly younger workforce and busy franchisees, resulting in low platform engagement and necessitating constant follow-ups to drive training completion and network-wide comms coverage.
• Lack of AI capabilities: Having failed to adopt AI in its product offering so far, using World Manager put Zeus Street Greek at risk of missing out on the immense benefits that AI can deliver in empowering staff with instant access to the knowledge and tools they need to get the job done.

Solution: Implementing Mercu's AI-powered training and communication platform

Zeus Street Greek chose Mercu for its accessible user experience, robust third-party integrations, rich automation workflows, and AI capabilities, which provide staff with instant access to knowledge and tools in the flow of work.

Key features of the Mercu solution include:

• Robust Third-Party Integrations: Mercu's seamless integrations with tools like Deputy automate the creation and archiving of staff records, dramatically reducing administrative overhead and increasing compliance coverage.
• Mobile-First and Password-Less Access: Mercu offers frictionless access to training, communication and knowledge by leveraging SMS and WhatsApp as entry points. This removes barriers to engagement and meets the technological expectations of an increasingly younger workforce and busy franchisees.
• Efficient Content Authoring: Mercu's conversational approach to training and communication enables content updates that are up to two-thirds faster than traditional methods like SCORM. As a result, the team saves hours regarding training creation or training updates and can quickly adapt to changing business needs.
• Advanced AI Capabilities: Mercu's AI Assistant empowers restaurant staff by providing instant access to critical information (e.g. recipes, equipment troubleshooting, HR-related queries), significantly enhancing autonomy and operational effectiveness. This immediate availability of key data reduces errors and ensures greater consistency across all locations.
• Exceptional Support: Mercu's support system boasts an average response time of under one minute. The multi-channel support structure guarantees that everyone from head office staff to franchisees and restaurant team members receive timely and relevant help, ensuring seamless and continuous operations.

Results: 4x faster time-to-completion for critical trainings while reducing overhead and improving employee experience

Adopting Mercu transformed how Zeus Street Greek runs onboarding, training, and communication across their corporate and franchised stores, delivering significant improvements across daily operations:

• 4x faster time-to-completion for new training: Accessible technology, engaging content, and automated nudging by Mercu make cutting through to frontline staff a breeze and greatly accelerate time-to-completion for new training and comms. This approach ensures that all team members are consistently informed and compliant with the company updates and best practices.
• Maximized Operational Efficiency: By integrating Mercu with Deputy, Zeus Street Greek significantly streamlined workflows, eliminating frequent password resets and reducing the need for manual data entries. This reduced time spent on administrative tasks by tens of hours per month and expanded the scope of training and compliance activities. As a result, staff can dedicate more time to customer service and other high-value tasks, enhancing overall operational efficiency at every location.
• Elevated Training Engagement and Effectiveness: Mercu's mobile-first, password-less system, combined with accelerated content updates, significantly increased staff engagement with training programs. This led to higher completion rates and more consistent knowledge acquisition across all levels of the organisation.
• Enhanced Responsiveness to Business Dynamics: Mercu's AI-driven content authoring tools and swift support responses enabled Zeus Street Greek to adapt quickly to evolving business needs and market demands, ensuring the brand remained agile and responsive.

Setting the Standard for Innovation in Fast Casual Dining

Mercu's AI-powered training and communications platform provides Zeus Street Greek with the tools necessary to achieve its goal of scaling to become the most recognised Greek fast-casual dining brand in Australia.

Through Mercu’s innovative technology, Zeus Street Greek not only enhanced its operational efficiency but also improved its market position by providing an exceptional experience for both franchisees and their staff.

Mercu has dramatically improved our training and communication, allowing for instant, hassle-free engagement with our franchisees and restaurant staff. Their innovative platform, which requires no logins or apps, has significantly reduced operational overhead and streamlined our processes. The Mercu team's commitment to excellence and listening to our needs is unmatched and they consistently deliver top-tier support and drive substantial time savings for us.

- Ramon Castillo, COO

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*Image credit: https://zeusstreetgreek.com.au/