CASE STUDY
From compliance tool to culture engine: How a two-person L&D team transformed learning for 335+ franchise locations
with Christian Brothers Automotive
With a two-person L&D team and a branded platform called the Flywheel, Christian Brothers Automotive turned a culture that lived in one Houston training center into something every franchise location could feel.
335+
franchise locations across 31 states
1,600
active, up-to-date modules
50%
of employees active quarterly
Christian Brothers Automotive (CBA) is a full-service automotive repair franchise positioned as a dealership alternative: the place you take your car instead of going back to the dealer. With 335+ locations across 31 states and approximately 20 new locations opening each year, CBA has built something: a franchise system grounded in a genuine culture of care. Their guiding principle, “love your neighbor as yourself,” isn’t a tagline on a wall. It shapes how they hire, how they train, and how they serve guests.
Meet the L&D team: Lauren Strang, Director of Learning & Development, and Lisa Covington, Instructional Designer. Together, they train and enable one of the most varied workforces in franchising. Their learners include franchisees who own one to four locations and are hands-on in their shops every day; service advisors fielding calls at a front counter; and technicians doing their training in an automotive service bay—a loud, high-interruption environment where two or three minutes is a long window. Building a learning platform that works for all of them, at scale, with a team of two, is the story of the Flywheel.
The Challenge
A platform built for technicians left everyone else without a place to learn.
When Christian Brothers Automotive came to Wisetail in 2021, the L&D function itself was new. Before that, no formal learning and development team existed. The previous learning management system (LMS) had been built exclusively for automotive technicians, which meant it served one corner of the workforce and left everyone else (franchisees, service teams, support center departments) without a shared place to learn, reference, or grow.
The specific problems they needed to solve:
- The existing platform was built for one role. It couldn’t flex to serve franchisees managing payroll and operations, service advisors learning guest communication skills, or support center departments rolling out new brand standards.
- There was no culture of learning to build on. Team members had no reason to go to the LMS unless they had to. The habit of proactively seeking out training didn’t exist yet.
- Franchisees were growing in number, but so was the volume of one-on-one coaching happening at the Support Center. Every department was spending time answering the same foundational questions repeatedly, leaving less time for the higher-value, location-specific support that moved the needle.
- Technicians are among the hardest audiences to reach with screen-based learning. They work with their hands. They don’t love sitting in front of a computer. And they’re doing their jobs in service bays where you’re lucky to have a quiet three minutes between vehicles.
The operational gaps were solvable. The harder challenge was culture. CBA's in-person training at their Houston Support Center was genuinely different from the rest of the industry: warm, culture-forward, and transformative for many who attended. But most team members could never get on a plane to Houston. CBA made a deliberate decision: if culture was what made the difference, it had to exist everywhere. That meant building it into the Flywheel as an ongoing experience accessible to every team member, at every location. The result is a culture that shows up consistently across 335+ franchise locations, and that consistency is reflected in how guests experience CBA in the shop.
“We needed a system that matched our franchise model, not one we had to bend ourselves to fit.”
— Lauren Strang, Director of Learning & Development, Christian Brothers Automotive
The Solution
Christian Brothers Automotive's two-person L&D team built a system for every learner.
Christian Brothers Automotive launched the Flywheel, their branded Wisetail system, in 2021 and it has scaled with the organization ever since. The name itself comes from an actual automotive part: a flywheel propels a vehicle forward. The idea was the same for the platform. Not a compliance library. Not a university. A system that helps the whole organization move forward.
20+
new stores opened annually
1,600+
active, up-to-date modules
50%
of employees active
HOW THEY BUILT IT
Four phases of evolution
The first year or two was about getting caught up. Building foundational content for every department, starting with the questions each support team answered most often. If franchisees were calling accounting to ask the same thing every week, that answer needed to live in the Flywheel. This approach served two goals at once: it freed up support center staff to do higher-value work, and it gave franchisees a reason to go to the platform and find what they needed on their own.
Employee onboarding was one of the biggest early investments: over 150 modules to give every new hire a structured, consistent introduction to the brand. Critically, onboarding was designed as a blended experience, not a solo digital one. Each stage ended with a structured conversation guide for franchisees or shop leadership to use with their new team members, because culture isn’t something you can fully teach through a screen.
Getting people into the Flywheel required more than good content; it required changing behavior. CBA launched a points store, rewarding team members who invested in their own development with prizes they could redeem each quarter. They worked department by department to make the Flywheel a resource every support team referenced naturally in conversations with franchisees. Over time, it went from something you had to drive people to, to something people were referencing in support tickets, intranet posts, and coaching calls.
Summer Surge extended this further. Two consecutive summers, CBA launched new voluntary content every Monday: one year focused on leadership development, the next on wellness. Both built on something they knew from in-person training: when team members at CBA are invested in as whole people, not just as technicians or advisors, they show up differently. The engagement was strong, and the content lives on the Flywheel permanently. This is the culture strategy made digital: reach team members who will never set foot in Houston, give them the same experience that changes how people feel about working in this industry, and let that show up in how they treat guests.
As the platform matured, CBA made a significant structural change: they reorganized the entire Flywheel from learning by department to learning by role. Instead of navigating by topic area, team members now navigate by who they are. A service advisor, a technician, a franchisee: each sees a path built for them.
The content rule that makes this work in practice: nothing longer than five minutes. Technicians are in bays. Service advisors are watching the door. The format has to fit the reality of the work, or it won’t happen at all. Every module is built around that constraint.
The Flywheel now holds over 1,600 active modules, including approximately 450 sourced specifically for the automotive industry to keep technicians current with manufacturer updates, all maintained and kept current by Lisa and the broader L&D team.
Most recently, CBA launched their first official certification program: the Digital Vehicle Inspection (DVI). The DVI is the report guests receive every time they bring a vehicle to a Christian Brothers location, a direct expression of CBA’s core value of transparency. Training the entire service team and technician population to perform DVIs with excellence became the first certification goal.
The learning path leads through a series of micro-learnings, culminating in a badge awarded on the Flywheel. What followed surprised even the team behind it.
"I cannot tell you how many emails I've gotten asking: what other badges can I earn?"
— Lisa Covington, Instructional Designer, Christian Brothers Automotive
The results reframed what was possible. Gamification, specifically badges tied to structured learning pathways, unlocked engagement from a technician population that had historically resisted screen-based training. CBA is already mapping certifications to create visible development paths that start from day one and grow with the employee.
The Results
A reliable, single source of truth the whole franchise actually uses
Wisetail started as a platform CBA had to build habits around. Today, it’s where the workforce goes first.
“The Flywheel we built in the early days looks nothing like what it is today. We had to grow with it, and Wisetail grew with us.”
— Lauren Strang, Director of Learning & Development, Christian Brothers Automotive
Key Takeaways
Frontline franchise teams need a platform that fits the job
Start with fit instead of features
Christian Brothers Automotive's previous LMS was only built for one type of worker. Wisetail's role-based learning paths, fully brandable experience, and support for an entire franchise ecosystem in a single platform means CBA never has to bend their organization to fit the platform. When the system reflects how an organization operates, adoption follows.
Adoption is a behavior change, not a launch
Consistent adoption doesn’t come from great content alone. It comes from a team willing to put in the work to build the habit. Wisetail gave CBA the tools and flexibility, but CBA changed learners' behavior, department by department, year over year, leading to learning becoming a core function of CBA's operations.
Micro-learning is an operational requirement
Learning needs to be tailored to the person taking it. CBA’s five-minute maximum isn’t a creative constraint; it’s an operational necessity for their people. Micro-learning built for frontline realities gets completed; longer content doesn’t.
Culture at scale is an infrastructure problem
CBA’s in-person training is widely credited with changing how technicians feel about the industry. Translating that culture online extends that impact to team members who can't attend in-person training. In a tight labor market, that cultural access is an employer-of-choice argument.
Recognition and career pathways drive retention in high-turnover industries
Badges generate more enthusiasm than CBA expected from an audience resistant to screen-based learning. Certifications tied to measurable behavior change, instead of completion, are now a career path. Learning that leads somewhere retains people differently than learning that doesn’t.
Lauren and Lisa attribute a meaningful part of the Flywheel’s evolution to the quality of the partnership with Wisetail, specifically the responsiveness and accessibility of the support team. In Lisa's words, “I’ve never dreaded submitting a help desk ticket. I’ve always been thankful to have that tool available. We’ve never been made to feel like a problem or like we were interrupting someone’s day.”
For L&D teams operating without large headcounts or extensive resources, knowing that questions get answered quickly and that the platform can flex as the organization evolves makes a strong business case for sustained investment.
capabilities
Features that power Christian Brothers Automotive
Fully branded LMS
Customization to CBA brand and franchise structure
Role-based learning paths
Reorganized from department-based to role-based navigation
Microlearning content hosting
1,600+ modules, content optimized for attention spans
Points and rewards store
Quarterly prize redemption driving early engagement
Badges and certifications
Digital credentialing tied to structured microlearning pathways
Blended learning support
Pre- and post-event resources integrated with in-person training calendar
Commenting & social tools
Direct connection between team members and L&D or department trainers
Analytics & engagement reporting
Module-level completion data drives content decisions
