Polestar boosts learning engagement for 275% more active users with Sana

Challenge

Polestar is a rapidly growing EV manufacturer, but their outdated learning systems were holding them back. Relying on two inefficient platforms and external vendors for content creation led to delays, high costs, and a lack of control. This inefficient and inflexible approach hindered their ability to scale training, keep pace with rapid growth, and deliver the premium customer experience they aspire to.

Outcome

Polestar transformed its training approach using Sana's AI-powered LMS, creating and translating content in-house while reducing reliance on external vendors. In under a year, they produced more than 700 courses for 5,500 users, are efficiently rolling out a new sales process, and have increased monthly active users by 275%. Now they’re able to foster a culture of continuous learning and improved customer experience.

Lack of control over the learning process

Polestar has been on an exciting journey since we launched our first model back in 2017. We have grown rapidly, expanding from a one-car company to a manufacturer with multiple vehicles. With the upcoming launch of the Polestar 5 in 2025, our focus is shifting further towards luxury, which means we need to make adjustments to how our staff interact with customers, and impart new knowledge quickly.

However, we were starting on the back foot because of organizational changes, and a complicated setup with two separate Learning and Management Systems (LMS). Over the last few years, Polestar and our parent company Volvo Cars have become two separate companies. But we still had the legacy of a separate LMS for commercial training and one for technical training. Having two platforms was overly complicated and inefficient when it came to content creation and administration.

The biggest challenge was our lack of autonomy to create our own learning material. Our previous LMS didn’t support in-house content creation, so we used external companies to develop course materials and programs; translate and localize the content; and manage updates to the content on the platform. It was frustrating to not be able to fully control our own learning process, and to encounter delays whenever we needed to make updates. It also meant that my colleagues and I spent too many hours on low-value tasks managing this large Learning and Development (L&D) effort.

This reality made it almost impossible for us to align our internal training to match the pace at which the brand and our cars were evolving. The content creation process took so long that we couldn’t deliver the right training in time to our frontline employees—people working in our stores, call centers, technicians, managers, and inside sales teams. It meant that they didn’t have the up-to-date information needed to best serve our customers, and our customers didn’t get the Polestar experience we aim to deliver.

We have the ambition of being a luxury car manufacturer, but for us, that doesn’t just mean building a great car. We also want all the touchpoints a customer has with us to have a luxury experience. For example, the service a customer receives from one of the sales representatives in a store is crucial. That’s why L&D sits under Customer Experience, and not Human Resources.

We knew we needed a different solution. We scanned the market for a platform that would allow us to fully own the content-creation process, quickly translate and localize it, and scale our training efficiently. We needed an all-in-one solution, and that’s what we found with Sana.

Partnering with Sana felt natural, even during the tender process. Before we signed the contract, the people from Sana invested so much in helping us simplify our complicated processes, and challenged us to think in new and different ways. I have never experienced that before with an LMS provider. The decision to choose Sana felt very easy to make.

A single space to quickly create, translate, and publish content

Today, all of the L&D content creation we do happens in Sana. I cannot overstate how huge this is for us. We have gone from having to order all content creation from an external company and wait for delivery, to now having stakeholders from every Polestar department creating and sharing their own courses in Sana. That’s a huge improvement.

Our biggest win is how much time we save with creation and translation. All of our learning content used to be produced in PowerPoints, converted to PDFs, and used to create courses. The whole process could take up to 35 hours.

When we switched to Sana, it was easy to take all of this excellent training content we already had, and turn it into highly engaging, user-friendly courses. I could just convert the PowerPoint into a PDF, upload it to Sana, and the platform automatically created a Polestar-branded course or program. I am saving up to 15 hours of work per course. With 60 courses that have been created in Sana by converting existing PDFs, I have saved 900 hours in total. It’s just astonishing.

When it came to the translation process, this was the step that took even more time. We need to translate and localize training content for frontline staff in six languages, and technical content in nine languages. Before we adopted Sana, the translation process required exporting content to Excel files, sending it to an external company, and having human translators do the work. Then our local teams would edit it because the translations were never perfect.

It meant that our international markets would wait for up to four weeks to get training content they needed right away. These delays led to a poorer customer experience because our frontline staff didn’t have the right knowledge at the time of our product launches.

Now the process of distributing localized training materials, in the correct language, is done in 4-5 hours. And we don’t have to hire a separate company to do this. We’ve saved a tremendous amount of time and money, and we can guarantee that our sales representatives will get the most up-to-date training in time. This is one of the ways in which we provide an outstanding customer experience, which is our ultimate aim.

The Sana platform has helped us effectively scale our training efforts across the company. We now have 5,500 users, 90 training programs, and more than 700 separate courses hosted and created in Sana. Every department has their own training material. This includes courses for both frontline staff like employees in stores, centers, and factories—as well as internal staff in departments like procurement, legal, finance, and R&D.

My team and I now save a tremendous amount of time. We’ve empowered the organization with the right tool to create their own training content, and we’ve streamlined translation processes.

Boosted engagement and usage

We used to have a pretty big challenge of engaging our employees with our learning content. It’s not surprising; our content used to be delivered in a PowerPoint, it was often outdated, and it had limited interactivity. We just didn’t have the right tools to catch and hold the attention of the learner, or to make the learning experience more impactful for them.

Plus, because of the time-consuming and expensive nature of creating content, we were focusing on only pushing mandatory learning. Which to be honest, can be quite boring.

Now when you look at the number of Polestar employees using Sana—and how they rate the learning material—engagement is not a problem for us anymore.

We have gone from about 400 monthly users in our old LMS systems to 1,500 each month using Sana. And after each person completes a course, we ask them for feedback in Sana. They are prompted to rate the course on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest possible score. We currently have an average score of 4.53 of 5 for all of our 712 courses. To me, it’s consistently showing that our staff is happy with the content and delivery, and that they feel the courses are engaging and meeting their needs.

Simply asking them for feedback is also a powerful way for us to boost engagement. Previously, there was no way for them to share their thoughts on a course. Was there something missing? Was something unclear? Now they can share their feedback instantly after the training, and that helps us make the content relevant and stimulating.

I think one of the key reasons we see high satisfaction numbers is Sana’s focus on creating content that captures users’ attention. For example, we’ve created video-based material that uses effective storytelling techniques to illustrate the Polestar driving experience for our sales staff. It then enables them to better connect with our customers’ aspirations and elevate the overall experience.

The numbers also show how much employees are enjoying the learning process, and how motivated they feel to keep learning. It has led to an improved learning culture overall. Sales representatives are asking us for shorter micro-learning videos to help them develop their product expertise or improve sales. So we use Sana to regularly send out these videos that are really popular with employees. It’s almost hard for us to keep up with the demand. But that’s a good problem to have.

Powering the transition to a brand new sales model

Polestar is currently undergoing a huge change in the way we sell our cars, and Sana has been instrumental in this change process. Previously, our sales process would not allow us to sell cars directly to customers in our stores. We could help them decide what features to include, and which specifications they wanted. But the purchase of the car had to happen using a QR-code we gave the customer in-store.

Now we’re changing the process, so customers can order their car in the store. This change is massive, and will change the way our frontline staff works. All of our systems need to be updated, as well as how we approach our customers. We developed a new training program called the Polestar Way of Selling in Sana, and by the end of this year, we will have trained all of our frontline staff across all markets in Europe in this new way of working.

Almost every department has been involved in upgrading our digital systems to reflect the new process. So having an LMS where they can autonomously create the content, upload it quickly and easily, make it available in the right language, and update it when needed has been key to making these changes happen quickly.

We are working our way through the different markets across Europe, and we’ve already completed training in Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom. I’m excited to follow this. And with Sana’s Insight function, it is easy for me and my team to follow the progress of this big training initiative on a daily basis across all markets. We’re also able to easily share the progress with different markets and stakeholders. The process has been smooth and efficient.

Challenging Polestar to become even more personalized

When we moved away from using two LMSs and transitioned to Sana, I was nervous. I worried that our employees would struggle to make such a big transition, and that we’d lose interest in learning among our employees. But Sana has made it easier and more engaging for our staff.

We’re even discovering benefits we didn’t anticipate. We can issue certificates directly in Sana when our staff completes necessary technical training. We have made onboarding more efficient, using personalized assessments and insights to tailor learning to the individual, and assigning the right materials so they gain the right baseline knowledge. The AI-powered search function also makes it easier for employees to quickly find the information they need in our vast library of content.

Sana has really become the all-in-one solution we were looking for. It covers all of our needs, and we actively use so many of its features. It’s a flexible platform, and we’ve been able to tailor it to our particular needs, which has saved us the expense of buying additional tools.

Moving forward, I see us utilizing the personalization functions in Sana even more. I believe we can do even more to make the learning experience relevant for the individual, assigning the right content at the right time in their learning journey.

I also believe that Sana will keep challenging us in this work, helping us make our process even better, and foster an even stronger learning culture inside the company. I’m proud that we’re already on this journey. It gives us a solid foundation to build from as we continuously improve our L&D efforts within Polestar.