Listening to our customers
Delivering great service is about making our customers' shopping trips easy, enjoyable and inspiring. It also includes responding promptly and effectively to any customer concerns or complaints.
Customer Insights
Our Customer Insights team carries out research into consumer trends and customer needs. We survey over 2,000 customers each month. We also have trained auditors who act as 'mystery shoppers' to assess levels of availability, service and store performance. The store is unaware that the check is being made until it is told how well it has performed and which areas need improvement. We also participate in an independent industry-wide census which tracks the availability of 200 lines each month across 500 stores. Colleagues' bonuses are linked to scores in this census.
During 2004/05 we worked hard to improve levels of product availability in our stores, which had been unacceptably low and not consistent with our goal of providing great service.
We aim to get products on the shelves as soon as possible after they are delivered into the store. We have introduced several initiatives to improve availability so that customers can always find what they need. For example, deliveries of perishable products now arrive at stores earlier. We have also created 3,000 new jobs so stores can increase re-stocking on the shop floor throughout the day.
We began the introduction of new ways of working at the beginning of 2005. These included the turnaround of store orders within 24 hours (previously 48 hours), dedicated retail support teams based at depots to assist stores with queries, and manual interventions to improve the performance of our new depots. In stores that have completed the conversion, the number of products out of stock has been reduced by around 75 per cent.
Stock levels are still not back to the levels we want to achieve, but availability improved significantly during 2004/05.
Customer service
We are testing new approaches which can reduce queuing times at checkouts. Our ambition is to achieve no more than '1 in front' at all checkouts in our stores. We are also experimenting with alternative approaches: in 34 stores customers can use a hand-held scanner to scan items while they shop. We have also introduced self-service checkouts in 58 stores nationwide.
We aim to make it easy for all customers to use our stores, including disabled or elderly customers as well as shoppers with young children. See access to stores.
Complaints
Complaints are dealt with in the store where possible, through a refund or by providing a replacement product. The store Duty Manager also deals with complaints about the quality of service. If the complaint cannot be dealt with immediately to the customer's satisfaction, details are taken for a written response.
Serious complaints, about contamination or food poisoning, for example, are dealt with by our central Product Quality team.
Larger claims for compensation are handled by our Customer Management team. Customers receive a reply after full consideration of their claim. Group Legal Services or our Insurance Department deal with more serious complaints such as accidents in store.
We have introduced a new customer information system to log and track queries and complaints more effectively. We typically receive more than 40,000 contacts (letters, emails or phone calls) a month, about a quarter of which are regarded as complaints. We deal with phone calls on the same day, emails within two days and letters within five days.
