How Floor & Decor Ended the Retail “Telephone Game”

“Probably the biggest win is knowing that the information that our field teams are seeing, our store teams are seeing, and everybody at the corporate office is seeing, it’s all the same. The instructions are the same. Everybody is on the same page. That part is very beautiful.” - Kerry Gibson, Senior Manager of Strategic Operations and Communications, Floor & Decor

Key takeaways

• Floor & Decor created a central source of truth for communications and tasking, replacing scattered emails, PDFs, and disconnected messages with one consistent experience.

• Store teams can now find news, tasks, priorities, and supporting information in one place, helping increase readership and making important information easier to find when it matters.

• Photo verification gives field leaders greater visibility into execution, allowing teams to validate work, identify issues, and reinforce consistent standards across stores.

• Dashboards make overdue tasks and execution gaps immediately visible, helping managers spot patterns, identify where support is needed, and act faster.

• Floor & Decor piloted and rolled out StoreForce across the organization in approximately 9 to 12 weeks.

Background

Floor & Decor is a specialty retailer of hard-surface flooring and related accessories, serving customers through a growing network of warehouse-format stores.

As the company grew, so did the volume of information moving between its corporate office, field leadership, distribution centers, and stores. Communications were spread across emails, PDF attachments, tasks, and messages from different teams.

For store associates and leaders, that created a simple but costly problem: too much information coming from too many places.

Important messages were not always targeted to the people who needed them. Instructions could change as they moved between corporate teams, field leaders, and stores. Employees had to sort through large amounts of information to determine what actually required their attention.

Floor & Decor partnered with StoreForce to bring those moving pieces together and create a single destination for communication, tasking, and store execution.

One source of truth ended the retail “telephone game”

For Kerry Gibson, Senior Manager of Strategic Operations and Communications at Floor & Decor, one of the biggest changes was also one of the simplest: everyone could finally work from the same information.

Before StoreForce, communication could pass through multiple people and channels before reaching the store. With every handoff came another opportunity for context to be lost, instructions to change, or important information to get buried.

Kerry describes it as the retail version of the telephone game.

StoreForce gave Floor & Decor a central source of truth where corporate teams, field leaders, and stores could see the same message and the same instructions.

That consistency became especially important as the organization grew. Instead of relying on information to travel correctly through layers of the business, Floor & Decor could publish it once and give the right teams direct access to what they needed.

The goal now is to have communication to stores flow through this centralized process as much as possible, creating greater consistency across the organization.

“The telephone game that happens in between the field and the stores is awful, and it breaks down in so many places. So having a central source of truth has been huge.”

Goodbye PDF overload - hello communication people actually read…

Before StoreForce, Floor & Decor relied heavily on email to communicate with stores. Messages could arrive with multiple PDFs attached and large amounts of information for employees to sort through.

As Kerry put it, “Nobody read anything.”

The issue was not a lack of communication. It was too much communication without a clear, centralized experience.

With StoreForce, Floor & Decor brought news, tasks, campaigns, and other store information together in one place. Employees could log in, understand what required their attention, and access supporting information without digging through an inbox.

Floor & Decor saw readership increase as a result. While the company has not attached a specific percentage to that increase, Kerry saw more employees accessing information and finding what they needed when they needed it.

Just as importantly, centralization did not mean sacrificing Floor & Decor's personality.

Kerry and her team use dashboard imagery, graphics, animation, and campaign creative to make the experience feel distinctly Floor & Decor. Promotions can be highlighted visually as soon as employees log in, helping important initiatives stand out while maintaining a familiar internal voice.

That gives Floor & Decor a way to bring greater structure to communications without making them feel generic, an increasingly important balance as the store network continues to grow.

Photo verification turned “done” into “done right”

Completing a task is one thing. Knowing it was executed correctly is another.

Photo verification gave Floor & Decor a clearer way to close that gap.

Store teams can provide visual proof of execution, while field leaders can review the result and confirm whether it meets expectations. If something is incorrect, leaders have the information they need to identify the issue and have it corrected.

That creates a much stronger feedback loop between assigning work and confirming execution.

Instead of a completed checkbox being the end of the process, Floor & Decor can see what was actually completed and reinforce a consistent standard across locations.

For a growing retailer, that visibility helps protect consistency as more stores, employees, and leaders become part of the organization.

“Having validation in the field to be able to say, ‘Hey, this is the photo of what we did,’ and going, ‘Yes, that is correct,’ and then going back and saying, ‘Hey, that is what you did and it is incorrect. Let’s fix that.’ Really, just having that standardization across everyone is huge.”

Overdue tasks became problems managers could actually see and solve

StoreForce also gave Floor & Decor a clearer view into where execution was breaking down.

Kerry's team relies heavily on dashboard views for tasks due today, overdue work, and upcoming priorities. Rather than discovering an execution problem after the fact, managers can quickly see where tasks are accumulating and look for patterns.

During one dashboard demonstration, Kerry noticed a store with roughly 10 overdue tasks. Every overdue task belonged to the same role.

That immediately changed the conversation.

Instead of simply seeing that a store was behind, the dashboard exposed a specific pattern. Was the role unfilled? Did that employee need additional support? Was there a larger operational issue preventing the work from getting done?

The data did not just show that something was wrong. It gave leaders a clearer starting point for figuring out why.

For store managers, that same visibility can turn a long list of tasks into something actionable. They can see what is overdue, what is due now, and where accountability or additional support may be required.

From overwhelming to organization-wide in as little as 9 to 12 weeks

For a retailer operating at Floor & Decor's scale, introducing a new system across the organization could easily become a long and difficult project.

Kerry admits the process initially felt daunting.

Once the teams began putting the pieces together, however, the rollout moved quickly. Floor & Decor piloted StoreForce and expanded it across the organization in approximately 9 to 12 weeks.

What initially looked overwhelming became manageable as the system took shape and teams saw how communications, tasks, dashboards, and execution could work together.

The result was not another destination employees needed to remember. It became the place where Floor & Decor could bring the information employees needed together.

In Floor & Decor's own words...

“If you want someone to help you pull all of this together and put it in one place and actually tailor it to what your business does, this is the place to be. Easy, concise, and the team being helpful. I think that’s something that gets missed a lot.” - Kerry Gibson, Senior Manager of Strategic Operations and Communications, Floor & Decor

Connect with StoreForce today

If your stores are overwhelmed by emails, attachments, disconnected tasks, and messages coming from every direction, StoreForce can help bring it all together.

Floor & Decor created a central source of truth where store teams, field leaders, and corporate teams can work from the same information, see what needs attention, verify execution, and address issues faster.

As your store network grows, communication does not have to become harder to control. StoreForce gives retailers one place to connect communication with action and turn corporate priorities into consistent store execution.

Book a demo today and see what happens when every store gets the right message, the right task, and the right information in one place.