The purchase of undergarments is a personal and intimate process. Our client knows this process very well, having been in operation as a large international undergarment producer since the 1800`s. Over the decades, they have generated and collected a vast amount of knowledge about their industry, and are consistently regarded as one of the leading underwear brands in the world.

Their business operation is based on a hub and spoke model, with the hub being the headquarters and the spokes being the individual countries. The hub sets out the general guidelines and strategic directions while the spokes retain autonomous decision making in the individual countries. This business model has many benefits – it keeps decision making quick and nimble and leaves loads of room for localisation of the brand, which makes it more appealing to local consumers. However, the challenge of this structure is maintaining brand unity and consistent operating policies.
Across the different countries, marketing materials and operational training vary widely. To ensure that all of this conforms to headquarters’ guidelines, the client wanted to have up-to-date insight by country, by store from the customers’ perspective.

We worked closely with the client to create a program to tackle these challenges. Mystery shopping is used to check on marketing materials in over 350 locations spread over Asia. The materials were checked according to standards set by headquarters, giving them an overview of each country’s performance.

The mystery visits also checked on customer service and store policies. Headquarters creates standard materials that each country uses to train their frontline staff. By checking on execution multiple times a year, the mystery shopping data provides the countries as well as headquarters great insight into the effectiveness of the training per country as well as insight on what to improve as a brand, but also by country, by region, by store.

To assist in training the individual stores, the program includes an interactive training survey. When a store receives their survey report, they would be able to see specific areas and points where they could improve upon. As further guidance, we would attach visual training material (in languages specific to the countries) to the report, giving store managers and frontline staff clear tactics to help improve their performance.

By making sure that the training materials were in the local language, frontline staff was able to increase their retention of the training and focus on improvement. By integrating specific feedback into the reports, headquarters was able to spread its training in a cost-effective manner and effectively reduced overall training costs for the individual countries.

The combination of periodic mystery visits with the customised training material generated an average improvement in scores of around 5% within the first 5 months, and it continues to improve.

Contact us to find out more or to speak with the client.