How XXL Sports & Outdoor supports top-quality customer service across 80+ stores with Docebo

The Challenge

Keeping product knowledge current and customer service consistent across 80+ stores

At XXL, product knowledge on the sales floor helps associates give customers a more informed and consistent shopping experience. That challenge becomes more complex before major retail seasons, when XXL hires many new employees and needs to train them quickly.

As part of onboarding, new hires had 14 days from their date of hire to complete the Code of Conduct course, making a reliable way to deliver and track training especially important.

For XXL, the challenge spanned 4,400 employees across more than 80 stores in the Nordic region. The L&D team needed to deliver role-relevant learning at scale, from product expertise and safety protocols to customer service best practices, while giving store managers clear visibility into completion.

Senior Vice President of Learning & Development Jon Harald Espolin Johnson and Learning & Development Manager Asle Røvik knew they could create and distribute training materials more effectively, but they lacked a platform flexible enough to support a workforce distributed across dozens of stores.

Previous learning platforms lacked the functionality needed to track employee progress. The L&D team and individual store managers had to monitor completion rates manually, taking time away from analyzing performance and developing more impactful programs. Their tools also required them to build separate courses for each country and language.

Together, these limitations left the L&D team with a time-consuming, fragmented process for tracking training across the store network.

“With earlier suppliers, we didn’t have reports and overviews, so we needed to do a lot of manual work to track progress and completion rates. Docebo has helped us create reports, follow up on mandatory trainings, and an easy way to structure everything.”

Asle Røvik
Learning & Development Manager, XXL Sports & Outdoor

The Solution

A customisable learning platform for training at scale

Of all the options available, Jon and Asle were most impressed by Docebo’s global presence, advanced AI capabilities, and flexibility to meet their diverse training needs. Docebo Learn offered tools to automate manual processes, deliver targeted content, and provide actionable insights, all of which were big boosts to a lean L&D team.

Docebo’s tech-forward approach, combined with its financial strength and continuous product development, gave Jon and Asle confidence that they were investing in a long-term solution that would grow with them.

With Docebo Learn, the XXL Sports & Outdoor L&D team gained the ability to create engaging content that extends beyond basic onboarding to include sales enablement, leadership development, compliance, and product expertise. Today, the team uses the platform to produce lessons more efficiently, create targeted content relevant to every learner, and deliver role-based product knowledge and customer-service training across its network, from sales staff and store managers to warehouse employees.

Automated tracking and reporting give the L&D team and store managers greater visibility into progress, completion rates, and performance. Now, it’s much easier to monitor engagement and ensure employees complete mandatory training on schedule. Docebo Learn also enables the team to create single courses with multiple language options, simplifying content management across different countries and improving company-wide consistency.

 

“By implementing Docebo, we have reached one of our major goals, which was to strengthen and modernize the online learning experience.”

Jon Harald Espolin Johnson
Senior Vice President of Learning & Development, XXL Sports & Outdoor

The Results

More training, higher completion rates and greater efficiency

XXL Sports & Outdoor has transitioned away from a fragmented, manual approach to training to a unified, data-driven learning ecosystem that supports top-quality customer service and operational excellence.

This move is especially critical for the L&D team, which has become more efficient by replacing manual tracking with automated reporting, freeing up time to redirect toward higher-priority strategic projects. With instant access to training, reporting, and insights, store managers find it easier than ever to monitor progress, ensure employee compliance, and catch any missed opportunities to provide employees with additional support.

After adopting Docebo, the L&D team accomplished a significant milestone: Within weeks of launching a new Code of Conduct course, XXL Sports & Outdoor achieved 100% completion on the training, a first in the company’s history. It’s a testament to the quality of the content and the team’s newfound ability to get that material to the people that need it.

For Asle, Jon, and the rest of the L&D team, these results have freed up time to focus on creating engaging, impactful learning experiences. And with Docebo’s commitment to continuous innovation and the exploration and expansion of AI, Asle and Jon are confident that the platform will keep evolving to meet the needs of their workforce.

 

​​“Docebo has helped us be more efficient. We can now focus on creating engaging lessons instead of spending time on manual work, and employees can easily find exactly the training they need.”

Asle Røvik
Learning & Development Manager, XXL Sports & Outdoor

Retail Impact

Better-trained sales staff, more consistent customer service across 80+ stores

At XXL, consistent store execution starts with consistent product and customer-service knowledge. Docebo helps the retailer deliver role-relevant training across 4,400 employees in 80+ stores while giving store managers clearer visibility into completion and compliance. This gives sales staff a shared foundation for more informed and consistent customer interactions on the retail floor.

• 4,400 employees trained across 80+ stores
• More training hours delivered with the same investment
• 100% completion of Code of Conduct training within weeks — a first in company history
• Clearer visibility for store managers into employee progress, completion, and compliance, making it easier to follow up on mandatory training and provide employees with additional support

Together, these capabilities support more informed and consistent customer interactions on the retail floor, as well as a more consistent customer-service experience across XXL’s store network.

​​“With earlier suppliers, we didn’t have reports and overviews, so we needed to do a lot of manual work to track progress and completion rates. Docebo has helped us create reports, follow up on mandatory trainings, and an easy way to structure everything.”

Asle Røvik
Learning & Development Manager, XXL Sports & Outdoor

Powered by AWS

As an AWS Partner, Docebo brings certified expertise in delivering secure, cloud-native learning solutions for retail organizations and has completed an AWS Foundational Technical Review (FTR). Docebo’s platform is deployed on AWS, supporting XXL Sports & Outdoor’s operations across 80+ Nordic locations and 4,400 employees across 80+ stores.

Docebo platform services supporting XXL Sports & Outdoor

AWS service	Function
Amazon EC2	Compute resources
Amazon S3	Secure content storage
Amazon RDS	Database management
AWS IAM	Identity and access control
AWS KMS	Encryption key management
Amazon CloudFront	Regional content delivery across Nordic retail operations

Docebo’s platform runs active-active across multiple Availability Zones, with a synchronized standby region available for failover. Amazon CloudFront distributes course content across the 80+ location footprint, while data is encrypted at rest using AWS KMS and in transit using TLS 1.2+, with automated backups and disaster recovery built in. Standard disaster-recovery targets are a 36-hour Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and an 8-hour Recovery Point Objective (RPO).

Using Docebo Learn, XXL builds a single course with multiple language options instead of separate courses per country. Automated tracking and reporting give the L&D team and store managers visibility into progress, completion, and mandatory-training compliance. Role-based content for sales staff, store managers, and warehouse employees is delivered through Docebo’s roles, branches, and learning plans.

Docebo supports GDPR-aligned regional hosting for its EU customers.

This use case aligns with Docebo’s Store Operations & Associate Enablement competency category within the AWS Retail Competency framework, with XXL’s compliance-tracking capability as a supporting strength.

Ready to modernize learning for your retail workforce?