How Steph made learning measurable at Victoria’s Secret with Ocasta Review
When Steph temporarily stepped into the primary leadership & development (L&D) role at Victoria’s Secret, she knew she wanted to make a real impact. The challenge she faced was picking the right priorities that would result in real, demonstrable, and positive change. Which is where our Review platform came in.
Stepping into a new L&D role
Steph had been running Victoria’s Secret Milton Keynes store for almost five years. She was proud to work for the world’s premiere lingerie and beauty retailer and its worldwide reputation for making women feel their best.
Steph knew that Victoria’s Secret relied on consultative shopping experiences. A store member is there to listen to the customer’s desires and recommend the best lingerie, bra, or beauty product to make them feel great.
So when Steph’s store became one of the first to start using Review, she saw the value not only in sales observations, but also in the power of having the tool in the palm of your hand.
“When it was first delivered to us, I thought ‘Wow, this is a great idea.’ Being on a mobile app, Review became super accessible and instantly more appealing to using paper. Even if you stopped halfway through because a customer approached you, it had saved everything. And the team loved that it was in the moment and interactive and digital. It's a simple system but very effective.”
– Steph Howe, Store Trainer at Victoria’s Secret
A few months later, Victoria’s Secret’s L&D Manager, Alex, moved on to new opportunities. Steph was asked to temporarily fill his shoes. She was excited and wanted her time in the role to positively influence the business. But how would she determine what would have the biggest impact?
Determining the L&D priorities
By examining the nationwide data gathered in Review, Steph spotted some key opportunities for improving learning within the business as well as some chances to improve sales within the retail stores, starting with one of Victoria's Secret's premiere experiences.
1. Bra fittings
Victoria’s Secret prides itself on its superior bra-fitting service. Wearing the wrong size bra can result in anything from discomfort to back pain, but it can also affect a person’s self-confidence, which is something that Steph is passionate about addressing.
Being sexy is an emotion and a feeling and any woman can feel it. One way to make her feel that is by getting her that right fitting bra. The bra that does everything she wants it to do for her and make her feel empowered and how she wants to feel.
This is such a fundamental part of Victoria’s Secret that every member of the team is trained to offer a high-quality fitting experience. Every member of the team is equipped with the knowledge needed to ensure each customer gets the features and benefits they’re looking for in a bra.
And that consultative process pays dividends for both customer and business.
“80% of people that go into our fitting rooms buy a bra.”
– Steph
So Steph knew it was vital that every customer was being offered a bra fitting. Which is why she was surprised when her Review data revealed that just 86% of customers were being offered a bra fitting.
2. Fragrance experiences
And there was another experience that wasn’t being offered as much as it should, though this one had a more obvious culprit: COVID-19. Amongst the many impacts caused by the pandemic was an inability to offer fragrance experiences.
“Social distancing meant it became difficult to spray the fragrance and show a customer how to layer products and intensify the smell to get the desired scent she wanted to achieve. We weren't able to display testers, either. So we really got out of the habit of introducing beauty in the way we always have.”
– Steph
Even after restrictions were eased, observation data in Review revealed that just 17% of the retail teams were offering a fragrance experience.
3. A vision of the future
Even though Steph had been told she was only in this position temporarily, she still had a grand idea that would fuel her efforts over the coming months.
“I wanted to make learning measurable.”
Steph had seen first-hand the sort of data that Review could collect from observations, and knew that data could be instrumental in furthering development. She could have made educated guesses based on her experience of managing the Milton Keynes store. But she knew that such learning would simply be based on her opinion, which wasn’t necessarily correct.
“Anyone can have different opinions about what works, especially when it comes to behaviours. And that was a fear for me going into the role. When you’re just doing what you think is right, you have nothing to back it up or no real measurable evidence.”
– Steph
Steph was looking for a way to determine what learning was needed, and how effective her training was, to be able to demonstrate areas of improvement as well as celebrate success.
Steph achieved all three of her goals and then some. But how did she do it?
How did Steph do it?
Steph took the data from Review and used it to inform a three-step process that created a positive cycle of improvement: advise, amend, and award.
Advise
Steph created monthly interactive training called a Skill Builder. It’s an interactive document filled with linked documents, inspiration videos and images that focused on the behaviours she wanted to encourage, all directly informed by the data coming from Review.
“I use Review to get a snapshot of the last 28 days and show me what’s happening across all our UK stores. It tells me what we need to work on, and what we need to celebrate. And that’s where I lean into education for the new month.”
– Steph
The store leaders use these Skill Builders too, reinforcing the key lessons when they conduct observations and create the action plans that team members use to improve. The combination of the wider message with targeted and personalised coaching meant that team members receive exactly the right information they needed to succeed.
Amend
Steph had seen how good Review had worked in-store, but she had a vision of how it could be tied even closer to her L&D goals. She wanted to be able to make agile changes to the observation questions and criteria to reflect and inform the training materials she was creating.
“I wanted to be able to change certain questions, so the Ocasta team showed me how to do that. Now I can change them as soon as I want. I completely own it for Victoria's Secret. Ocasta’s training was so effective I was ready to hit the ground running.”
– Steph
This meant that she could adjust the observations to gain further insights into whether the training was working.
“So if the team member didn’t offer an experience, the leader has to record why. Maybe the customer didn’t want a fragrance experience because she always wears a fragrance she is used to, but maybe it was because there wasn’t a tester available. Or maybe they didn’t feel confident in delivering that experience. And that gives us more insight.”
– Steph
Steph used this insight to feed directly into her Skill Builders. This created a tight feedback loop that meant she could adjust her training based on live data from the stores, rather than outdated information.
Award
Finally, Steph directly tied the sales observations to Victoria’s Secret’s reward scheme.
“We call it Learn It to Earn It. It links into results, and we know behaviours drive the results, and the behaviours are what we're measuring using Review.”
– Steph
The reward scheme was directly tied to a team member’s sales observations. When an observation met expectations, team members were one step closer to unlocking a level of reward within the scheme.
This encouraged team members to seek out observations, which then helped to reinforce the learnings that Steph had previously distributed.
The results
Steph had identified three data-led priorities to tackle in her time as Interim Store Trainer: more consistent bra fittings, more consistent fragrance experiences, and making learning measurable.
Review helped her tackle all three.
When we first began working with Victoria’s Secret, 86% of customers were being offered a bra fitting. At the end of Steph’s L&D initiative, this was up to 96%, an increase of 11.63%.
And in just one month, a combination of Steph's Skillbuilders and line manager coaching had increased the consistency of fragrance experience offerings by a staggering 46%.
And Steph certainly made learning measurable at Victoria’s Secret. The cycle of improvement she created with sales observation data not only led to demonstrable results, but also increased general store performance, with average observation scores increasing by 7%.
And, more importantly, Review had given her the tools to choose the right training priorities, as well as the peace of mind that she was doing the right thing.
“Review gave me the confidence to go after what I was going after. When presenting my ideas, I had the evidence to back it up. Instead of doing what I thought was right, I was doing what I knew was right.”
– Steph
And Steph’s impressive achievements created one last result that both she and everyone at Ocasta were thrilled with: she was permanently promoted to the Store Trainer position.
What’s next?
It’s been an absolute delight to support Steph on her journey. She’s really made the most of Review in driving her L&D initiatives, backing up her moves with data from the shop floor and building systems that reinforce better learning and better results for the entire business.
“I feel like I've unlocked something here with taking results and changing them. I wouldn't have that if it wasn't for Ocasta. I felt confident stepping into this role because I've got that evidence; if I didn't have that, I wouldn’t be so sure about what to focus on each month. Review has helped me focus on what to go after next. It's been a great contributor to the success of our training.”
– Steph
Steph’s journey is remarkable, and it’s within anyone’s reach. Anyone can get the same sort of results with Review. Get in touch with a member of our team today. They can talk you through how to start using Review to get more from your L&D programmes and achieve some incredible results for your retail stores.