L’Oréal delights customers by empowering beauty advisors with Microsoft Teams

Building a “nonstop” two-way flow of information

The improved connection that L’Oréal beauty advisors experience with Teams flows two ways. Office-based employees now receive valuable insights directly from the shop floor, where beauty advisors interact with customers in real time. “That exchange is nonstop,” says Cyril Chapuy, President of L’Oréal Luxe, a division of L’Oréal. “Beauty advisors are the people in the organization who know our consumers best. The fact that they can use Teams to exchange their insights among their colleagues and with headquarters is a big win.”

Beauty advisors like Jenifer also receive important information like sales targets and weekly reports in Teams, which helps them stay on top of sales performance. “Prior to Teams, we relied on email or even physical mail to receive targets and figures reports,” she says. “Now, I use Teams to access all that information in one place and make sure we are on track to achieve what we need to.” For Jenifer, one of the key benefits of Teams is how using it helps her focus her time on customers. “Through Teams, I access everything I need on one device, so I don’t have to leave the shop floor as frequently,” she says. “I’ve freed up more time to do what I really care about, which is giving great customer service.”

Creating new connections and prioritizing balance with Teams

Nicolas Koller, Head of IT Retail at L’Oréal, knows that the right technology has the power to unify a global organization and add to the customer experience. “Each beauty advisor at L’Oréal needs to feel a sense of belonging to the brand, and it’s hard to make that happen without technology,” he says. “We use Teams to create the sense of belonging that empowers beauty advisors to be the best ambassadors for their individual brands.”

To do that, Nicolas and his colleagues have launched branded home pages in Teams. “We provide a customized home page in Teams for each beauty advisor, which reflects the brand they work with,” explains Nicolas. “It’s an immersive environment that gives them the right information at the right time.” The company has also improved onboarding through its combination of Teams and Azure Active Directory, which L’Oréal uses to automatically assign new hires an identity. “A new beauty advisor joining the company will automatically receive a digital identity thanks to Azure Active Directory,” continues Nicolas. “It’s a very smooth, user-friendly approach.”

Extending the use of Teams to frontline employees is a big step toward creating a more cohesive, integrated business. “Connecting beauty advisors to the brands and people working in the offices has had a really disruptive effect,” says Nicolas. Jenifer notes that she can now chat effortlessly with people across the country, and even with teams based in other countries. “One of the benefits of Teams is that I can use it to connect with international beauty associates,” she says.

In the past, L’Oréal beauty advisors had to juggle various platforms to chat with each other and receive communications from their head office about training, product launches, and promotions. “We used multiple messaging applications,” explains Jenifer. Beauty advisors even used social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram to communicate. The global beauty company adopted Teams to establish a more efficient, user-friendly process with a single, centralized hub for communication. “With Teams, everything is in one place,” says Jenifer. “Communications feel more comfortable and manageable.” And, no longer needing to switch between platforms means that Jenifer and her colleagues don’t lose time changing applications. “We’re more efficient using just Teams,” she says. “Accessing all my visual merchandizing guidelines, training guidelines, and key figures in one place is very useful.”

Keeping a global company efficient and aligned with Tasks in Teams and Shifts

With a busy schedule and multiple hats to wear, beauty advisors like Jenifer use Tasks in Teams to delegate activities and stay up to speed with the fast-paced world of retail. “I’ve gained efficiency with Tasks in Teams because I can send colleagues tasks directly in real time and easily check those lists, rather than trawling through communications and documents to find what needs to be done,” says Jenifer. And, in her role as a creator of educational content, Jenifer uses Tasks in Teams to stay on top of content creation and assign responsibilities to her team. “Using Tasks in Teams helps me balance my various roles,” she says. 

Nicolas and his colleagues also use Tasks in Teams, among other Microsoft tools, to promote a more cohesive global organization. “Retail is defined by operations that need to be performed every day,” says Nicolas. “We use Tasks in Teams to manage those activities and make sure that key operations are performed the same way everywhere. It’s about harmonizing and streamlining operations.” While L’Oréal is currently in the early stages of deployment, Nicolas is excited about the tool’s potential on a global level. “We see huge potential for using Tasks in Teams as a way to share tasks to all beauty advisors across the world,” he says. 

Jenifer has also discovered a way to make scheduling easier. “I use Shifts to keep track of what’s going on in the store when I’m not there and to create a more structured schedule for myself and my team.” Jenifer does this directly within the Shifts app in Teams.

Empowering beauty advisors with a one-stop solution

With 36 brands and 88,000 employees under its purview, L'Oréal is a global beauty company that uses technology to create a close-knit culture. “Everything starts from Teams as the entry gate. Now that we have delivered Teams to beauty advisors around the world, we can broaden the scope of the service, for instance, introducing e-learning, payroll, and real-time sales information to the platform,” says Nicolas. “We want to bring our retail employees something innovative that can enhance their capabilities and create a sense of connection to L’Oréal. That’s why we chose to extend the Teams platform to frontline retail employees across the business,” concludes Nicolas, who describes Teams as a “living product,” with endless potential for added capabilities.

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