30% Fewer Inquiries: How LUSH Japan Built Internal Knowledge for 1,000 Staff

LUSH Japan LLC

Retail / E-Commerce·1,001+ employees·Internal Helpdesk

30% Fewer Inquiries: How LUSH Japan Built Internal Knowledge for 1,000 Staff

At a glance

• 77 stores and ~1,000 shop staff using the internal FAQ
• No-hit rate reduced to 8%, below the 10% target
• Register inquiries cut 30% (from ~200/month to ~80/month)

The Challenge

LUSH Japan operates 77 stores and spa locations across Japan with around 1,000 staff. In May 2022, the company rolled out a new point-of-sale system called Lushpay across all stores. Inquiries to the 3-person IT service desk doubled overnight, jumping from ~150 per month to over 300 at peak.

The company had been managing documentation in spreadsheets, scattered and hard to search. Store staff in the middle of serving customers often resorted to digging through email history to find old responses. With no FAQ structure in place, every question landed on the service desk, regardless of complexity.

Why Helpfeel

Multiple tools were evaluated, including chatbots. Helpfeel won on two fronts:

Low implementation burden. The IT team wanted to extend the FAQ beyond their own department to Finance and Customer Care, which also maintained manuals in spreadsheets. Helpfeel's technical writers handle content creation based on materials provided by the client, making it feasible to roll out across multiple departments simultaneously.

Proactive, proposal-style build process. Niiyama was struck by the Helpfeel technical writers' careful reading of the submitted Q&A scripts. They asked clarifying questions like "does 'register' mean the Lushpay system?" and offered specific content structuring suggestions, demonstrating genuine understanding of LUSH's internal context. Inconsistent internal terminology was a concern going in, but Helpfeel's approach to resolving those ambiguities through dialogue made the process far smoother than expected.

What They Did

• Extended FAQ coverage across IT, Finance, and Customer Care departments, consolidating knowledge previously trapped in spreadsheets and email history
• Pinned frequently asked topics at the top of the FAQ for maximum visibility
• Handled naming variation automatically: the register system is called "Lushpay," "ラッシュペイ" (katakana), and "レジ" (register), all three expressions now correctly route to the same FAQ content
• Leveraged ongoing Customer Success support for periodic recommendations to remove or consolidate FAQ articles that are no longer being accessed or that duplicate other content

Results

The FAQ achieved an 8% no-hit rate, below the initial 10% target, indicating it successfully covers the majority of what staff search for. Register-related inquiries dropped from a peak of ~200 per month to ~80 per month, a reduction of approximately 30%.

Store staff with iPhones can already access the FAQ on mobile. The next improvement opportunity is reducing login friction on that flow to increase mobile adoption among floor staff.

Niiyama highlighted that the ongoing support has been more valuable than anticipated, particularly the external perspective prompting "spring cleaning" of the FAQ library.

"Companies with large workforces inevitably need a service desk or support desk, and those teams have to manage internal inquiries with limited staff. If you don't yet have an FAQ tool, it's worth thinking about how to build a system that accumulates knowledge over time."

Hiroki Niiyama, IT Supervisor

Looking Ahead

The broader vision is to evolve from team-level knowledge sharing to company-wide knowledge infrastructure. The 3-person service desk has no plans to expand headcount, so improving per-person efficiency through FAQ-based self-service is a strategic priority.

Current FAQ coverage spans IT, Finance, and Customer Care. Niiyama wants to extend this to HR, General Affairs, and any other departments where knowledge retention is critical. With approximately 2,000 total employees across the company, the potential scale of impact is significant.

A key motivation is knowledge preservation across staff turnover. Knowledge that currently lives in individuals' memories or email histories is lost when people leave. Systematically organizing and making that knowledge searchable in Helpfeel ensures it remains accessible to future staff, becoming part of the company's institutional memory.

“Companies with large workforces inevitably need a service desk or support desk, and those teams have to manage internal inquiries with limited staff. If you don't yet have an FAQ tool, it's worth thinking about how to build a system that accumulates knowledge over time.”

— Hiroki Niiyama, IT Supervisor