Drive Millions of RMB in Sales with WeCom for Galeries Lafayette China

Galeries Lafayette

In this article, discover how ITC transformed the WeCom clienteling strategy and drove millions of RMB in sales for Galeries Lafayette

About The Client: Galeries Lafayette

The luxury department store chain Galeries Lafayette (GL) has been a leading name in fashion and event commerce for 130 years. It offers a constantly updated selection of top brands, from affordable to high-end luxury.

GL has grown its network to 67 stores in France and internationally, including five stores in China, one of the biggest luxury markets in the world, since 2013.

Galeries Lafayette has a strong and unique relationship with China. After celebrating its 10th anniversary in China as the country reopened post-pandemic, the luxury department chain has begun a new phase of growth in the region.

The goal is to accelerate the roll-out of the brand in China and create a major retailer capable of meeting the growing demands of Chinese clienteles. This includes creating innovative "store-in-store" models that showcase the best of France and enhancing digital services to provide a unique shopping experience.

Objectives

IT Consultis (ITC) partnered with the Galeries Lafayette China team to support their expansion journey in the Chinese market, with two key objectives:

Establish a robust customer database foundation with enriched profiles to ensure successful omnichannel clienteling
Enhance the shopping experience to boost sales revenue

Solutions

1. Holistic China Infrastructure & Customer Journey Audit (Digital & Offline)

Based on ITC's multiple store visit audits, change management workshops, and discovery interviews with various stakeholders at Galeries Lafayette, we discovered that the customer funnels were not optimized. The luxury department store was also facing challenges in:

Data silos
Loss of customer recruitment
Limited data collection
Lack of standard clienteling tactics (despite having leveraged WeCom and a CRM & Loyalty solution)
Inefficient selling tools

Galeries Lafayette China's marketing funnel was not optimized based on IT Consultis (ITC)'s digital and offline audits

2. Clienteling Strategy, Business Process Planning, & Documentation

To avoid data silos, working as a team, ITC and Galeries Lafayette effectively identified all data sources and established standard operating procedures (SOPs) for retail customer recruitment and data collection, including:

WeCom customer recruitment
Targeted WeCom clienteling & customer service strategies for Galeries Lafayette members and non-members
GL membership conversion (from WeCom) tactics

These SOPs took into consideration the omnichannel customer journeys in all in-store and online touchpoints (i.e., WeChat Official Account, eCommerce Mini Program).

From the data pool, we could set up standardized tagging strategies to build unified customer profiles across online (WeCom) and offline (in-store) channels, and developed segmentation and dedicated clienteling strategies with content guidelines.

Example WeCom tagging system for effective client segmentation

3. System Configuration & IT Operations Standardization

With the standardized WeCom clienteling system usage defined for each user type, we could configure the clienteling applications, set up clienteling materials, and document cross-functional procedures for Galeries Lafayette.

Examples of WeCom clienteling set-ups for Galeries Lafayette by ITC

4. Change Management Facilitation and End-to-End Training

As a team, ITC and Galeries Lafayette conducted on-site WeCom clienteling training for hundreds of WeCom users (e.g., Sales Associates, store managers, retail managers, CRM managers, marketing managers, digital managers, general managers, etc.).

ITC and Galeries Lafayette organized on-site WeCom training for their Retail teams — All-hands on-site training sessions for the Retail teams of all stores

Our holistic training covered everything from WeCom and EZR accounts activation, existing customer transferring, client recruitment and targeted clienteling strategies, WeCom Moments posting guidelines, WeCom Pay transaction processing and management, and CRM report generation.

Example WeCom Moments of Galeries Lafayette — Clienteling script guidelines for Sales Associates to create WeCom Moments

We also provided end-to-end user hyper care to ensure a smooth transition and address employee concerns.

Additionally, we clearly defined and communicated the expected clienteling KPIs and benchmarks, how the staff performance would be tracked, and incentive plans. The clienteling performance and progress dashboard designs were also tailored for Galeries Lafayette with defined access for different super admins.

Example WeCom dashboard views — Example WeCom clienteling dashboard views (illustration only)

Results

Millions of RMB in sales generated from newly added WeCom clients within just one month
Thousands of new clients added each week via WeCom
Projected 20% revenue growth from prospects within a maximum of 3 months of nurturing

Nicolas Morineaux - Chief Executive Officer at Galeries Lafayette China — ***Nicolas Morineaux*** - Chief Executive Officer at Galeries Lafayette China

"In just three months, we achieved remarkable results together. We transformed Galeries Lafayette China from an SMS-centric department store with 500 brands into a modern, digitalized solution. This rapid transformation was possible thanks to ITC's speed and efficiency.

Looking beyond this initial phase, we’re excited about future possibilities. Our partnership with ITC has laid a strong foundation, and we are eager to explore opportunities beyond China's borders - connecting with clients globally, enhancing client engagement before, during, and after their trips, ensuring a seamless, personalized experience."