Case study

How The North Face used bite-sized learning interventions alongside incentives to boost learner engagement by 274%

The North Face introduced bite-sized learning interventions to their employees in order to boost knowledge retention ahead of their busy winter period. By adding incentives to the mix, they were able to improve learner engagement by 274% and substantially increase customer satisfaction rates.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Key customer challenges:

Onboarding new employees and improving knowledge retention Type of training delivered:Product knowledge/ onboarding

Project duration:

2 weeks

Number of employees trained:

200

Total training time delivered:

65 hours and 6 minutes

Customer benefits:

Improved employee engagement, knowledge retention and customer satisfaction

Engaging new and existing learners ahead of a busy retail period

The North Face EMEA eCommerce team were looking to onboard and train new employees as well as improve existing learner engagement ahead of their busy winter peak period in November 2020.

The North Face was already utilising Wranx – a micro-learning platform that facilitates personalised learning through Spaced Repetition. This was the ideal tool to help employees fill knowledge gaps, taking learners just 2-3 minutes per day to use at a time convenient to them.

The North Face’s main goal was to increase the eCommerce team’s engagement on Wranx, with many of their customer service reps being first-time users and new to their role. Elaine Glover, E-commerce Co Sourcing Team Leader at The North Face EMEA explains more:

The long term goal was absolutely to increase engagement and activity on Wranx for all CSRs and the perfect opportunity is usually the 6-8 week ‘lull’ we have after summer peak and before Black Friday, where we recruit in high volume and can spend quality time coaching, training and filling knowledge gaps for the teams. However, as this year has been extraordinary and we have seen a huge rise in eComm orders and therefore contact, our much anticipated ‘lull’ gives us perhaps 2 weeks instead – so we wanted to make the most of every day where we could. 

Elaine Glover

E-commerce Co Sourcing Team Leader, The North Face EMEA

The teams that took part were all eCommerce reps, where their day-to-day role includes managing customer emails, phone calls, live chat and social media. Approximately 75% of all CSRs were less than one month tenured due to The North Face’s Winter Peak ramp up, so education of the brand, products and technologies was essential.

An effective solution to improve learner engagement and knowledge retention

As a long-term partner of The North Face, Wranx provides regular analysis and consultation on which initiatives could improve business performance and learner engagement, both in the short and long term. In order to boost learner engagement, The North Face worked with Wranx to launch a successful incentive competition for the eCommerce team within a two-week timeframe. The group of learners were sorted into teams and competed to win a The North Face waterproof jacket each. The North Face had to successfully communicate with learners to initially spread awareness of the incentive and to boost engagement on the platform. 

This was driven with leaders across two sites in Porto and Bulgaria, where rules, terms and marketing materials were agreed ahead of the launch. It was essential that Wranx could provide access to all new reps, as well as password resets to any tenured reps, in a quick and efficient manner. Daily reporting was also required to track individual and team progress to highlight success, as well as any areas of concern.

A streamlined competition that matched the brief

Learners were required to log into Wranx each day and complete short bite-sized ‘daily drills’ consisting of around 10 questions, taking no more than 2-3 minutes to complete. There were three modules in total available to learners: Onboarding: Heritage, Onboarding: Progressive Exploration and Summit Series. The Wranx content team also created an assessment that covered key topics across the three modules to test learner knowledge towards the end of the competition.

Each learner would have their engagement scores averaged to decide if they qualified to take the assessment, and their assessment results were also averaged to decide the top three winners.

Wranx provided daily reports to management so that they could keep track of user engagement, along with a final report that was issued detailing the results o

Unprecedented learner engagement

Thanks to the competition, there was an increase of 156% in the total number of active users and a 274% increase in the total number of logins. There was also a 483% increase in the total hours trained and a 376% increase in the total number of questions answered.On average, the users who were most engaged with Wranx performed the best in the final assessment.

On average, the users who were most engaged with Wranx performed the best in the final assessment. The teams who finished in 1st, 2nd and 3rd place were in the top 26% of all teams in regards to engagement. This emphasises that the higher the participaction level is, the more knowledge is retained, which results in improved assessment scores.

The North Face also noted a rise in customer satisfaction during this period after achieving their highest Net Promoter Score (72.73% in their Sofia site) in review of the eight weeks prior to the competition launch. They also saw an overall rise in NPS for ‘Product’ related queries, going from around 35% to 59% across both sites.

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.

Elaine Glover

E-commerce Co Sourcing Team Leader, The North Face EMEA

%

Increase in the number of logins

%

Increase in the total hours trained

%

Increase in the total number of active learners

Teams who finished 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in the assessment were also in the top 26% of engaged learners

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