"The ease of creating a course with Opus is the best I've ever seen. I believe that anyone could do it."
Andrea Vetos, Operations Director, and Jordan Shuman at Silverstar Car Wash gave us a look into their journey from paper training to robust digital training. Founded in 2010, Silverstar Car Wash is the premier Midwest car wash chain.
Finding the perfect LMS
Silverstar Car Wash is known for its human-centered approach to training and employee hiring. They invest thoroughly in their training platform, to create leaders and further develop the careers of their frontline team. Because of this, Andrea and Jordan were very particular about the kind of learning management system they decided to implement. Their humble beginnings of training content took nearly 4 years to perfect. They knew whatever platform they’ll use, needed to fit their values, mission, and passion for learning.
In their search for a training application, they ran into some bumps on the road. Many of the platforms were not easily accessible. Andrea and Jordan knew that having modern relevant technology was the only direction they wanted to take. However, the platforms they tested out had no mobile capabilities. “We went digital to keep up with the times. Everyone has a cellphone.” Jordan stated. The platforms were “confusing, and hard to navigate”. In many cases, they had to spend countless hours training their teams on how to use the platform. This defeated the purpose of accessibility and ease.
What made Opus stand out was the ability to use a mobile device. Sign-up was easy. The onboarding process was smooth. Andrea says “Opus checked a lot of the boxes that we discussed for years. Within a week, we were sold.” Andrea and Jordan found a company that aligned with their own values and training roadmap.
Training technology that grows as the company grows
Silverstar Carwash started at one location in Sioux Falls, SD. By the time they decided to go digital, they grew to 10 locations. As their company grew, their needs for training did the same. Andrea and Jordan shared that they “have sites that are an hour away or three hours away. We always knew that we wanted to do something digital. We wanted to find the right thing.” They did not want to have their frontline workers go through a difficult, rigorous process to learn a training platform. With Opus, the onboarding took less than a week. As someone who never built on an LMS platform or navigated one in the past, creating content in Opus was extremely easy for Jordan.
As the Silverstar Car Wash grew, tracking became more difficult. With Opus, the dashboard reporting saved them from hours of developing their own tracking system. Reports are sent out quickly, and Jordan is able to quickly glance and see how every location is doing.
Multimedia capabilities also set Opus apart from other platforms. Andrea can send gifs and corresponding images within courses and message blasts. This provides some levity to the training at hand. It also, Andrea says keeps her frontline connected, engaged, and light-hearted. Silverstar Car wash does quarterly training celebrations to reward people. By being able to track, pull data, and have an overview of what all employees are doing, recognizing their people have become easier.
Consistency, safety, and compliance with Opus
“We’ve always had a pretty good focus on training, but now having a platform and being able to get people into that really easily.”
At Silverstar Car Wash, safety is their number one core value. Opus provides consistency for their onboarding process. The training process is now streamlined and easily audited. The AI technology lets Silverstar Car Wash make changes under seconds, which is distributed across all locations. No more missing information, games of telephone, or inconsistencies in messaging. One of the most valuable parts of Opus for Silverstar Car Wash was the emphasis on safety during the onboarding process. “Having everyone receive consistent information is important. Knowing everyone will be safe by going to the same course was essential for us.”
Andrea and Jordan's frontline team works all year long. The changes in their car washing methods change as the seasons change. Instead of relying on their onsite managers to communicate to multiple staff, all they had to do was change their process and procedure on Opus and send a message with a video to all employees. This helped everyone stay on the same page. Silverstar Car Wash finally found a company they can rely on to keep mesh with their mission and encourage career development through engaging training. For Andrea and Jordan, Opus is the new era of training.
