Learn how this acclaimed franchise retail owner lifted employee retention.

Elite Wireless operates 33 exclusive Cricket stores throughout Florida. The company has grown rapidly since it launched 5 years ago and now employs over 150 staff statewide.

David Rengifo is the Owner and President at Elite Wireless - voted the best Cricket Wireless franchise of 2017. In order to gain an edge in the competitive wireless industry, David turned his focus on increasing the retention of his employees in order to keep hard-won skills and knowledge in the business and maintain a consistent customer experience across his stores.

To achieve David's goal of improved retention in a sustainable way, David knew he would need to give employees deeper reasons (than simply financial) to stay with the company long-term. Throwing money at the problem wasn't the answer.

Improved employee retention would also help David avoid the significant costs required to screen, train and onboard replacement employees, which according to a study by Employee Benefit News, comes with a price-tag of up to $8,000 per person.

Turn Employee Retention Into a Competitive Advantage

David knew that the quality of customer experience depends on one thing: the quality of the sales associate. Sales associates become better over time, developing deep experience with your products, offerings, and customer base. By improving employee retention, Elite Wireless would be able to provide a leading level of customer experience through a tenured, experienced, and motivated workforce.

Sustainably Motivate Sales Associates

Commissions, bonuses and salaries are the most common motivators in the wireless industry. Their biggest weakness? If staff are only motivated by money, a competitor can entice them away by offering slightly bigger financial incentives. This is one reason why the industry suffers from high turnover rates. David was determined to give sales associates a much stronger reason to stay with the company, a reason built on a foundation of loyalty, engagement, fun, camaraderie, reward for effort, and purpose at work.

David knew that employees motivated for these reasons would stay with the business for the long-term, becoming exponentially more effective and productive as they gained experience.

Save Thousands on Hiring Costs

Nothing slows down a rapidly growing business like the need to find, screen, interview, train, and onboard sales associates to replace those who’ve left to work for a competitor. Hiring replacement staff also pulls store managers away from high-impact projects that add value to the business.

This is a double-negative, as it poses a major risk that customers who are loyal to the departing employee will also leave for the competitor. When a replacement is hired it can take many months for the new sales associate to match the productivity of the person who left. David knew that less time spent on this would save the business time, money, and energy that could be much better spent elsewhere.

David believed that Arcade offered the right tools to help him significantly improve employee retention and build a more motivated, loyal, and empowered workforce. He decided to roll out Arcade in his stores.

Arcade succeeded in improving retention by making work more fun and meaningful. Employees looked forward to coming to work, where they could take part in daily goals, sales contests, and pursue micro-incentives offered on the Arcade platform. These incentives connected the employees’ role to the overall aims of the business, giving employees a stronger sense of purpose at work.

Arcade’s automated fulfillment of rewards significantly decreased the lead time on delivering rewards, as well as the amount of administration involved for managers. Sales associates loved the much faster turnaround time on reward delivery.

By allowing employees to visualize and achieve their goals, as well as providing a platform for positive interaction and appreciation between staff, employees gained a stronger sense of their contribution and importance in the workplace. In today’s purpose-driven work culture this has been a key ingredient in improving employee retention.

David says he’s impressed with the level of support he’s received from the Arcade team. “The support has been A1. I’ve been very, very happy with that,” he says. Arcade’s support team has driven the onboarding process for David’s stores, allowing David to focus on growing his business.

Since launch, a dedicated account manager has been on-hand at all times to give suggestions and advice, and to assist with every aspect of building an engaged workforce using Arcade. David’s account manager ensures he and his staff are always getting full value from the platform and its features.

“Arcade has worked very well for us," David says.

Employee retention has measurably improved. A more engaged and motivated workforce has led to a 10% increase in same-store sales revenue since the rollout of Arcade.