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Summary:
- The strategic role of the Customer Relations Center at Decathlon
- Decathlon's DNA: passion for sport and corporate culture
- Train CRC teams: between field experience and relational excellence
- Customer relationship and commercial performance: a lever for business
- Visio Store: Decathlon's new hybrid channel
- What is the future for the Visio Store?
- Tips for excelling in customer relationships
- Customer experience as a strategic lever for the company
The strategic role of the Customer Relations Center at Decathlon
Maxime Santilli (Sqwad): “Can you explain your activities at the CRC in a little more detail?”
Christophe Leclerc (Decathlon): ” We manage nearly 1.5 million contacts per year across all channels.”
The Customer Relationship Center manages around 1.5 million requests per year via a wide variety of channels: telephone, email, mail, chat, WhatsApp or even Messenger, in order to allow “100% of our customers to contact us through the channel they prefer”. The CRC relies both on an internal team of around 90 employees, based on the Decathlon campus in Lille, and on external service providers mobilized as reinforcements, especially during peaks of activity related to trade, deliveries or product returns.
Decathlon's DNA: passion for sport and corporate culture
Maxime Santilli (Sqwad): “Can you tell us a bit more about the brand's DNA and how do you convey it to your internal teams?”
Christophe Leclerc (Decathlon): “At Decathlon, what has united us all for 50 years is above all the passion for sport.”
Christophe recalls that Decathlon's DNA has remained the same since its creation in 1976: a company founded by sports enthusiasts, which still today continues to recruit employees driven by this same passion. This shared culture results in a simple, accessible and caring customer relationship while remaining professional: “consider your customer as a friend”. He also stresses the importance of always giving honest and appropriate advice, even if that means not selling the most expensive product.
Another strong pillar of this culture is the responsibility granted to employees very early on: “Very quickly, we trust them and remind them that they have the right to make mistakes” explains Christophe, a principle that encourages autonomy and innovation. The CRC is fully in line with this culture, in particular thanks to its direct proximity to a store concept that allows it to remain as close as possible to the field and to the customer experience.
Training CRC teams: between field experience and relational excellence
Maxime Santilli (Sqwad): “How do you train agents who exchange and interact with Decathlon customers or prospects?”
Christophe Leclerc (Decathlon): “98% of the CRC team comes from retail: they already know the customer and the products.”
The training of CRC teams is based primarily on their solid field experience: almost all of them come from Decathlon stores, where they were salespeople, department managers or managers. They therefore already have an excellent knowledge of customers and products, each being recruited for their favorite sport. When they arrive at the CRC, this base is complemented by in-depth training in relational skills: customer posture, emotional management, active listening, detection of intentions... “We reinforce them further on the experience and the customer relationship to make them a very good combination” explains Christophe. The aim is for them to be able to fully focus on empathy and the quality of advice, since everything else is already under control.
Customer relationship and commercial performance: a lever for business
Maxime Santilli (Sqwad): “And if we look at the customer service that you lead: how do you relate the cost and of course the associated revenues and how do you identify them?”
Christophe Leclerc (Decathlon): “Customer relationships and business are not opposed: no customers, no business, and no business, no customers.”
For Christophe, it is clear that we must first change the mindset: customer relationships are not a cost center disconnected from business, but an essential lever for building loyalty and creating sustainable value. In a context where businesses often seek to reduce expenses (in particular by automating or introducing AI), he recalls that the first business impact comes from a satisfied customer, especially when a problem is resolved quickly. He emphasizes that customer relationships and commercial performance are not opposed: the Decathlon CRC is proof of this, since it went from 0 euros generated to several million euros, while improving customer satisfaction and delight.
The key, according to him, is not to turn advisers into aggressive salespeople: “If we animate our advisers commercially, we lose active listening and that's the small death of the customer relationship.” On the other hand, a simple “magic” question like “Do you want us to place the order together?” is enough to trigger natural sales, while making it possible to better advise the customer on their real needs. Omnichannel (telephone, messaging, delivery, pick-up, etc.) further reinforces this value by simplifying the purchase and supporting all types of customers.
Visio Store: Decathlon's new hybrid channel
Maxime Santilli (Sqwad): “Can you tell us more about the Visio Store and explain the motivations?”
Christophe Leclerc (Decathlon): “Our goal is to make every customer interaction one more reason to love Decathlon.”
Christophe Leclerc explains to us: the Visio Store is a 430 m² space composed of several immersive rooms — bike, fitness, apartment, golf, camping, connected objects — allowing customers to discuss in video with Tech3 expert advisors. The idea was born from a very simple test: a single room equipped with iPhones and AirPods, dedicated to electric bikes, to measure customer appetite. The success was immediate, with more than one million euros generated in the first year.
The Visio Store meets a clear challenge: to offer the best of digital and store technology when customers do not always have access to the right seller, at the right time, or do not want to travel. Customers, who are often very well-informed, seek above all confirmation, expertise and technical reinsurance before buying: what video calls for.
Our expert also insists on the spirit of innovation specific to Decathlon: “to start an innovation, there is no need for a thousand and hundreds, just an idea and the audacity to try.” It is in this DNA (testing, learning, making mistakes and moving forward) that the initiative was born, first in small ways and then gradually structured to become an internationally scalable model.
Meeting the real needs of customers
Maxime Santilli (Sqwad): “Why did you want to create the Visio Store?”
Christophe wanted to create the Visio Store based on the fundamental mission of Decathlon: to be useful to people through sport. For him, any innovation must respond to a real need, not to a simple desire or intuition. Based on his experience and his knowledge of customer expectations, he identified several signals showing that remote support could really help users.
He therefore matured the project step by step: first by testing telephone appointments, then by validating each advance to ensure that the concept was based on solid meaning. This is how the Visio Store was born: a new hybrid channel, between physical and digital. Christophe summarizes this vision as follows: “We innovate by bringing customer advice directly into the living room of all French people”.
Visio Store: key figures and impact on the customer experience
Maxime Santilli (Sqwad): “Can you tell us about some figures and the results obtained?”
Christophe Leclerc (Decathlon): “One in two visits now leads to a purchase.”
The results of the Visio Store are very encouraging: the device now generates several million euros, combining sales made directly during the video and those made afterwards, in store or online, but clearly influenced by the exchange. The conversion rate reaches 50%, making it an extremely efficient channel.
Beyond turnover, the satisfaction indicators are excellent: the NPS peaked at 95.3, a rare level in the sector, and the CRC maintained between 93 and 95% satisfaction, with 75% delighted. Christophe insists on the fact that the priority remains the customer experience, even when the purchase is not made immediately: “We have done the job if the person leaves with the right advice, even if they buy later or elsewhere”.
He also points out that the Visio Store represents 15% of new customer acquisition, an impact that he did not anticipate, and recalls that technology (including AI) should be seen as an opportunity to strengthen humans, alleviate repetitive tasks and allow his teams to fully develop their talents.
What is the future for the Visio Store?
Maxime Santilli (Sqwad): “Can you tell us what the future of the Visio Store is in your opinion, and it seems to me that there is a bit of news on the subject.”
Christophe Leclerc (Decathlon): “The Visio Store is no longer mine: what it is today won't be what it will be tomorrow.”
For Christophe, the future of the Visio Store depends above all on its ability to evolve. Although he initiated the project, he insists on the decisive role of his team and in particular Ludovic, sales director, with whom he transformed the idea into a concrete service, without ever distorting the initial intention. For him, the concept must remain alive, adaptable and in the hands of those who make it live, because “the customer is constantly changing” and it would be dangerous to freeze the Visio Store in a too rigid model.
This dynamic of innovation was also recently recognized: the project has just won an Innovation Award in the customer experience category, an award awarded by a jury of international experts from Decathlon. This collective pride confirms that the company believes in this new channel and in its potential to embody, tomorrow even more than today, a customer experience model that is agile, scalable and focused on the real use of customers.
Tips for excelling in customer relationships
Maxime Santilli (Sqwad): “Decathlon is known and recognized, whether by end consumers or professionals, what advice could you give to other customer relationship managers?”
Christophe Leclerc (Decathlon): “To be a loved business, you already have to love your customers.”
According to Christophe, Decathlon's success in customer relationships is based above all on the sincere attention paid to customers and on the consistency of the “proofs of love” offered to them at each interaction. According to him, the French appreciate Decathlon not only for the products or the prices, but because the company knows how to be attentive and useful: “It is all this proof of love that makes it a pleasure to come to Decathlon.” He also emphasizes that in a context where the customer can easily switch to a competitor in one click, it is crucial to continue to demonstrate this commitment. The key, for him, is therefore less in the tools or concepts, than in the state of mind: putting the customer at the center and ensuring that each interaction reinforces preference and loyalty.
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