Case study
How The North Face® use Wranx as a pro deal platform to improve brand knowledge & advocacy amongst retailers
The North Face® US worked with Wranx to build a pro deal programme for their retailers that was easily accessible and engaging, resulting in improved brand knowledge and training engagement.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Key customer challenges:
delivering product training to different groups, providing the right discount access
Type of solution delivered:
product knowledge training & pro deal programme
Number of employees trained:
12,749
Total training time delivered:
7,000+ hours
Customer benefits:
Improved training engagement, improved verification for discount programme
Creating a network of brand ambassadors
Built on innovation, The North Face® brand offers unrivalled, technically advanced outdoor products, with an extensive line of performance apparel, equipment and footwear.
In addition to their website and retail stores, The North Face® also distribute their products to a number of retailers and department stores.
It is extremely important for The North Face® to have a great connection with these retail accounts and the employees that work for them. In particular, the associates that interact directly with customers on the shop floor will need to be aware of The North Face® and possess key brand knowledge to be able to recommend their products to customers.
Therefore, The North Face® use a pro deal training programme to educate and reward these employees with a discount on The North Face® products. This means that employees are able to use their products first hand, enabling them to become ambassadors for The N
Making sure the right people access the right training and discount
The North Face® had previously used a pro deal platform to implement a reward programme; however, their biggest challenge was that they couldn’t fully understand who the user base consisted of – they needed to make sure that the right people were on the platform and receiving the discount.
They also found that there were too many barriers for employees trying to access the discount and do their training in a quick and effective manner.
The North Face® wanted employees to be able to choose what they learned about from a diverse library, instead of only being prescribed a single piece of training at a time.
Wranx worked with The North Face® to create a project plan that was built around their training initiatives and goals. As part of the onboarding process, Wranx set up a validation process for new users on the platform to ensure that the correct people were able to access the discount through a dedicated portal.
Wranx’s Support Team were also able to categorise learners into team and store cohorts, while also providing store managers access to the Admin Portal to view analytics for their team members and download reports.
A learner-centric experience
Wranx were able to whitelabel the platform, creating a dashboard that reflected The North Face® brand. This provided a more familiar, learner-centric experience for store associates. Wranx also created a bespoke ‘Media Hub’ for The North Face® to use on the platform, where learners could access a variety of on-demand resources in a number of formats. The Media Hub housed athlete and brand videos, product training videos, product catalogues and The North Face® Explorer Magazine.
This allowed The North Face® to take ownership of how their training content was presented on the platform.
An in-house Content Team working on behalf of The North Face®
Wranx’s Content Team converted The North Face®’s existing product content into a library of modules that were uploaded to the Wranx platform. The training modules covered a wide range of information on their products, including new seasonal launches.
Training modules were delivered in the form of ‘daily drills’ – 10–12 questions a day that take no longer than 2–3 minutes to complete. This bite-sized approach worked well for associates, who were also sent daily reminders to complete their training.
Wranx were able to build self-enrolment functionality for The North Face®, which meant that associates could choose to enrol on modules that were relevant to them (up to three at a time). Associates had to engage in training at least once every 30 days in order to qualify for the pro deal discount.
The North Face® also utilised Wranx’s in-app communication tool – ‘The Bubble’ – which allowed them to engage directly with their audience and communicate with them about new modules, contests, or discounted products.
Impressive engagement with training
After implementing Wranx, The North Face® saw that 97% of employees engaged with the platform, with 73% of employees qualifying for their discount. The North Face® also saw impressive engagement with the training, with over 2.2 million questions answered and over 7,000 hours of training delivered. Matt O’Grady, Senior Training Manager at The North Face® explains more:
The Wranx team worked well with me to understand our needs and smoothed out any queries before going live to be sure we were ready, but also made it known they were available to change plans at short notice if needed which was appreciated. Having a final quiz at the end of the burst fit the brief I needed – as was awarding prizes based on performance, but also participation – and the quiz was developed by the team which made it easy to validate winners but also show trends in that those with high participation scored highly in the test at the end. It’s really great to see such a positive result and the impact that the competition has made. The Wranx team have been integral in making this a success and I really see the value of repeating these initiative ‘bursts’ to boost engagement.
Feedback from associates stated that they found Wranx an easy, enjoyable way of learning about The North Face® and their new products, which came in useful, particularly when communicating with customers. 96% of employees felt that Wranx would enable them to improve in their role.
Wranx has been a great partner. I think the aspect I have been most impressed by is their willingness to innovate and also understand our business. They want to make sure that the platform is working for our business as much as possible. We have been able to work on several special projects in order to accomplish this. We are excited about how we can work together to create the most engaging training website in the outdoor industry.
I really enjoy the training. I actually look forward to logging in and keeping the streak going. I remember the answers by recognition of the slide. I also find myself on the sales floor reciting all the product facts to the customers. I am finding new things to learn about the products and history of The North Face® brand.
The more I see the information on each garment or item, the more interested I am to retain the information and be proud to have the knowledge. It is very useful information to provide to customers who come into the shop.
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of employees engaged with Wranx
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of employees qualified for discount
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