Walmart's VR Training Rollout: Oculus Go Headsets in 4,700 Stores
In September 2018 Walmart announced it would bring virtual reality training to every US store, supplying Oculus Go headsets and training content made with the Strivr platform. The rollout covered 4,700 locations and more than 1 million store associates.
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From Walmart Academies to every store
Walmart began with VR in 2017, using it to upgrade training at Walmart Academies, where managers and department heads rehearse the stress of retail, with a Black Friday simulation as the best-known scenario. The idea came from Brock McKeel, senior director of central operations, who watched University of Arkansas football players use VR in practice and heard from the coaches that it improved performance. VR went into 30 academies first, and the training reached all 200 Academy facilities in 2017, serving an estimated 150,000 employees a year.
In late September 2018 the company announced the national rollout. According to Walmart's announcement of September 20, 2018, starting the following month each supercenter would receive four headsets and each Neighborhood Market and discount store two, with more than 17,000 Oculus Go headsets in stores by the end of the year. Associates on the floor would get the same training as the managers in the Academies. More than 45 modules were already available on the standalone headsets, in three areas: new technology, soft skills such as empathy and customer service, and compliance.
Oculus Go made the scale possible. Unlike the Oculus Rift, it needed no high-powered computer and no cables, and unlike Samsung's Gear VR it needed no high-end smartphone.
Strivr, the platform behind it
Strivr built the program. Its founder, Derek Belch, came to VR through football, as a graduate assistant coach at Stanford who went on to study virtual reality there, and Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, is a co-founder. The platform lets a company create, manage and deploy VR training and see who uses it and how, which helps spot behavior patterns during training. Strivr's catalog covers customer service, operations, safety and security, diversity and inclusion, and crisis management.
What is true today
Strivr's own About page says the company was founded in 2015 out of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, naming Walmart, Bank of America and Verizon among its enterprise partners. A Walmart customer story on the site describes a rollout of new equipment to all 4,700-plus stores and training for more than 2.2 million associates, with a 96 percent cut in training time, from 8 hours to 15 minutes. That story is the company's own account of a training program for new equipment, and it reports a 30 percent rise in employee satisfaction scores and a 12.5 percent average gain in post-training assessment scores.
The company's home page now leads with AI-powered error detection through smart glasses, while the VR platform pages remain. The old Oculus Go product address, oculus.com/go, now forwards to Meta's Quest page.
Questions about Walmart's VR training
How many Walmart stores got VR training in 2018?
The plan covered every US store, 4,700 locations, with more than 17,000 Oculus Go headsets expected in stores by the end of 2018.
Who built Walmart's VR training?
Strivr, a company founded in 2015 out of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, built it. Walmart named Strivr as the platform it used to create, manage and deploy the training.
Where did the Oculus Go product page go?
The old oculus.com/go address now forwards to Meta's Quest page.