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When Sarah Casalan became president of The UPS Store, Inc., a few years ago, she spent a week working in one of the stores herself. It’s a customary experience for company leadership, intended to provide insight into what franchisees and customers alike could use help with. Sure enough, insight came on Casalan’s first day in the store — in the form of a large stack of training binders. “My head of instructional design would say that he remembers the day of that phone call very clearly,” she says with a laugh.
To Casalan, it was immediately clear that all of this paperwork was the wrong approach. And since then, she’s heard time and again from operators that a more sophisticated system was needed to prepare workers. Training binders are a vestige of the franchise’s 1980s origins, not how you engage workers in the 2020s. So in 2024, the company successfully launched its first digital, mobile-friendly training system. The interactive training modules are much more enjoyable for workers, she says — and much more 21st century.
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“The magic of The UPS Store happens over the counter,” Casalan explains. “If you can’t meet someone’s needs or solve their problems over the counter, it is terrifying and it’ll ruin your day — so we need to make sure [employees] are empowered really quickly with all of the knowledge.”
Though the company officially began adding self-serve kiosks in stores in 2023, customers still prefer white-glove service. This improved training helps ensure that customers can get satisfying service as quickly as possible, even at busier locations — and it’s one of the ways The UPS Store has stayed on top. This is the company’s ninth year in a row in the Franchise 500’s Top 10, and its 35th consecutive year as No. 1 in its category.
Ultimately, though, the new training system — which will continue to evolve in the coming year — is about more than just customer experience. It’s part of the company’s larger effort to better support franchisees. Another outcome of that effort: Its in-house franchise consultants used to serve 35 or more UPS Stores each. Many of them are now averaging less than 30, to give them more time with each franchisee. “We are supporting our franchisees to help them achieve their goals faster, so that they can support [their customers,] the small-business owners in their community,” Casalan says. “We’re realigning all of our efforts around that, and I think that has made all the difference.”
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