What do you do when a customer yells at you?

At The Reject Shop, we're proud to be trialling VR training as a proactive step to support team safety and address the growing challenge of customer aggression. While this is a new approach for us, the early results have been encouraging. Since completing the training, the percentage of team members who felt very confident managing aggressive customers increased from 18% to 68%, with 98% of participants now feeling confident or very confident overall. These outcomes highlight the power of immersive learning to build confidence, reduce risk, and reinforce our commitment to keeping our team safe.

Frontline staff are facing unprecedented levels of customer aggression, yet traditional training methods fall short. And it’s taking a toll on both people and organisations. 

That’s why we developed Minaca VR: an immersive virtual reality training program and corporate training solution to help organisations reduce risk, protect staff and build resilient teams.

The Challenge:

‍A 2024 YouGov Survey of 337 senior decision-makers across healthcare, retail, hospitality and education revealed:

• 89% of HR leaders are concerned about the impact of aggressive customer behaviour on staff safety and wellbeing
• 80% want better or more frequent training for their customer-facing workers but struggle to get internal support

Cashiers, retail assistants and aged care workers are experiencing incivility and aggression more often and more intensely than ever before.

The Personal Cost:

• Stress, anxiety and trauma claims on the rise
• Low job satisfaction
• Burnout and fatigue

The Business Cost:

• High staff turnover and recruitment challenges
• Increased absenteeism
• Greater regulatory exposure

With new legislation redefining workplace violence, employers now have a legal obligation to address these psychosocial risks. ‍

The Solution:

‍Drawing on years of experience developing bespoke immersive training programs for organisations like Woolworths, St John Ambulance and SocialWise VR, Start Beyond saw a growing need for an accessible, scalable solution to help frontline teams manage customer aggression more effectively.

Earlier projects like Woolworths’ Customer Acts of Violence and Aggression VR module, which went on to win Best WHS Training Program at the 2024 National Safety Awards of Excellence, demonstrated how immersive learning could transform staff confidence and safety outcomes.

Building on those insights, and with expertise from workplace psychologists and Work Health and Safety (WHS) specialists, Risk Collective, we developed Minaca VR: a ready-to-deploy training program that helps customer-facing workers across retail, hospitality, and health and aged care sectors navigate real-world conflict with confidence.

Minaca VR combines decades of behavioural science, workplace law and safety research with Start Beyond’s proven immersive learning methodology and gamified VR design.

Designed to enhance, rather than replace traditional training, Minaca VR fills key gaps in conventional learning by providing remote access, repeatable practice and realistic, scenario-based experiences that mirror real-world situations. 

Early trials revealed powerful findings. Here’s how it’s performing in one real-world pilot.

• In May 2025, major Australian discount retailer, The Reject Shop, trialled Minaca VR
  
  
• Over 5 weeks, 95 team members completed the retail module (77 of whom had previously experienced customer aggression)
  
  
• Before training, only 18% felt ‘very confident’ handling aggressive customers. After the VR session, 68% felt ‘very confident’
  
  
• Overall, 98% of participants reported feeling either ‘confident’ or ‘very confident’ in managing rude, aggressive or disrespectful customers

Trials with other organisations, including Optus and The University of Technology Sydney, are underway and showing promising results

Even for organisations with well-established training programs, Minaca VR has proven to deliver measurable improvements in preparedness and resilience, giving staff the tools to respond safely and effectively when tensions rise.

‍What is Minaca VR?

Minaca VR is a low-cost, scalable virtual reality training program designed to equip frontline staff with the skills to handle aggressive customers safely and confidently.

Delivered through Start Beyond’s world-leading Oncio platform, this immersive training program works seamlessly across headsets, desktop and mobile. 

There’s no need to purchase extra hardware or software, and organisations can get started easily with a three-month pilot program. With unlimited access for unlimited users, Minaca VR is built for scale.

Why Minaca VR works

• Places learners inside dramatic 360° real-world scenarios, face-to-face with the most common misbehaving customer profiles
• Delivers in-depth analytics on user confidence, decision-making and knowledge gaps
• Proven to be 4x more effective than traditional training methods
• Prepares workers to recognise and respond to emotionally charged workplace hazards with speed and effectiveness
• Designed for retail, hospitality, health and aged care, it delivers realistic conflict scenarios in a plug-and-play format

‍The Result:‍

Minaca VR is already making an impact. And the feedback is consistent: 

• It’s safe – staff can practice in realistic scenarios without real-world risk
• It’s engaging – VR solution that keeps learners focused and invested
• It’s empowering – employees finish the program feeling more capable and resilient

Unlike traditional eLearning or classroom sessions, this VR corporate training solution can be tailored to different industries and workplace scenarios. 

With frontline staff facing more workplace aggression and high-risk customer behaviour, Minaca VR provides a tangible solution to training staff effectively and most importantly, safely.