Zero manuals, total mobility: How Zerorez trains over 1,000 technicians with TalentCards

Founded in 2001, Zerorez is a carpet cleaning franchisor with over 90 locations across the U.S., UK, and Canada. Its proprietary components make the company an industry leader in the carpet cleaning business, with over 1,000 technicians serving over 400,000 customers every year.

But training over 1,000 technicians who are spread out internationally, and are constantly on the job and on the move, requires an approach that’s more than classroom and laptop-based training. Vice President of Training & Operations, Porter Trepanier, and Learning & Technology Solutions Manager, Broc Hoggan, share how TalentCards has put training at their employees’ fingertips, eliminated the need to print paper manuals, and cut the cost of onboarding new hires.

The problem

Finding time to train in a packed work day

Zerorez’s 96+ locations across the U.S., U.K., and Canada rely on technicians, warehouse staff, and fleet operators who spend almost no time at desks. “We get an hour in the mornings, and then our techs are out cleaning carpet— no desk, no computer, no quiet time.”

Before TalentCards, technicians ignored courses because they could see in our previous platform that the estimated time to take them was too long. The reaction was, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t have 45 minutes right now.‘

said Broc

Paper manuals are a high cost, low return training investment

Like many companies employing technicians and deskless staff, paper manuals were part of the traditional, established approach to training at Zerorez. But when they cost about $50 each to print, and the industry is subject to high turnover, this approach quickly becomes inefficient.

Printing manuals was a substantial cost, especially in our industry that has a high turnover rate,

said Porter

What’s more, the cost of printing manuals was carried by the individual franchises, adding one more thing that owner-operators had to be on top of.

Complex software slows adoption

Zerorez had been forward-thinking in its approach to training even before finding TalentCards. While similar companies were still entirely dependent on in-person and paper-based training materials, Zerorez had adopted training software to digitize and improve the process.

But when training software is complicated to use, it’s inevitable that people will fail to adopt it, and instead return to their traditional training methods.

A lot of these very robust platforms, they do everything you could ever want in an LMS, except make the training engaging for learners, and the Admin smooth for managers. All of these bells and whistles, heavy reports— none of that matters if your employees don’t use it,

Porter explained

Why TalentCards

On-demand micro learning, directly in the field

When technicians spend the majority of their day in customers’ homes cleaning carpet and carrying out professional services, there isn’t time for long, drawn out training.

Most people care about training most when they need it to fix a problem. And having that quickly available was important. Having things searchable that they can quickly look up and reference— that’s a big thing.

Porter explained

TalentCards’ micro learning approach has helped Broc break down training into bite-sized, step by step guides. With its flashcard format, training in TalentCards is as easy as swiping and tapping on your phone.

Now, with just a few taps, they can get exactly what they need and get back to work. That’s been super.

said Broc

From costly paper manuals to mobile microlearning

For Broc, the first priority in rolling out TalentCards was transposing Zerorez’s existing training materials into microlearning courses.

We were able to take all of our supplemental material— manuals, guides, quizzes— and condense it, take only what was most valuable, and put the main points into TalentCards for technicians to access via the app.

Broc explained

By moving away from paper manuals, Zerorez slashed printing costs and waste. “We don’t print physical manuals anymore,” Porter notes. Their 90-page binders have been transformed into concise card sets. Technicians enjoy bite-size lessons, and franchises no longer shoulder the burden of constant reprints.

Simplified admin & Smooth learner onboarding

One of the core reasons that TalentCards works so well for a franchise business like Zerorez is that the portal can be set up to match the company’s structure and hierarchy. By leveraging the dynamic Teams functionality, Porter and Broc mirror Zerorez’s corporate-and-franchise model: corporate admins oversee every location’s learners and reports, while each owner-operator manages only their own team.

With TalentCards, we finally see adoption and engagement clearly. We don’t have to dig through overly complex reports. It’s a very user-friendly system, and that's been really nice.

said Porter

Getting learners into the app takes less than a minute, with employees simply downloading the app and logging in.

The learner invitation process is super, super easy. With TalentCards, we’ve found something user-friendly— it’s the training platform our people actually use.

said Broc

The results

Thousands in cost savings

By eliminating the need to print paper manuals, Zerorez’s franchise owners save hundreds to thousands of dollars annually, depending on the headcount of each location.

Ιn addition to cutting printing costs, TalentCards has helped cut down on the amount of time new-hires need to spend on classroom training.

Onboarding used to be an extensive class, taking employees out for a whole day. By moving to microlearning, we’ve eliminated a lot of that classroom time. That means managers and owners are training on time and they’re avoiding overtime. That’s a lot of cost savings right there.

said Porter

Real learner engagement and satisfaction

In an industry defined by high turnover, strong training and development can make all the difference. Since rolling out TalentCards, more than 78% of Zerorez’s users have launched at least one course, and the platform’s quiz feature enforces a 100% pass requirement. Broc used TalentCards’ in-app survey tool to gather direct feedback from employees, revealing satisfaction rates of 89% and above.

Looking ahead, Porter and Broc are already thinking about how they can integrate TalentCards deeper into Zerorez’s training as the app continues to evolve.

Seeing what comes next, what features become available. There’s a lot of things happening with AI. We’re excited for what’s to come!

said Porter