Page 31 Improving the customer experience


As a co-owned business, we take particular pride in serving our customers well and passing on our knowledge about our products. All our Partners are carefully trained, our products honestly labelled and information made accessible to customers both instore and online. This dedication and expertise has deservedly earned external recognition in several prestigious customer satisfaction surveys (see page 40).


Improving the customer experience


Ambition
To provide the best possible choice, value and service to our customers.


Priorities
>Divide our focus equally between managing the shop floor and interacting with customers over the telephone
>Measure the quality of our interaction, setting ourselves stretching targets to ensure we stay ahead of the competition
>Ensure we are answering customers' calls within 20 seconds


Nurturing our passion for selling
We want to give customers great service so that they become loyal advocates of our business. Partners want to serve customers knowledgeably, politely, with consistency and flair, and always treat them fairly. We treat all our customers as individuals, responding to their particular needs and taking all reasonable steps to make sure each one receives the same high level of service. We also challenge ourselves to raise our retail standards, create new products and services, and to try out new ideas.

Our plans to recruit at least 90,000 new Partners over the next five years will require significant investment in training. We acknowledge that doubling the size of our business, without compromising on customer service, is a major challenge, so developing the skills of both new and existing Partners will be critical.

All new Partners currently receive an induction and lots of on-the-job training. This year, we are investing more in training Partners on areas such as product knowledge and specialist skills such as call handling, so that we can support our selling Partners as much as possible to achieve our performance targets consistently.

The appointment of Partnership Chairman Charlie Mayfield to the UK Commission on Employment and Skills (UKCES), launched in April 2008 to encourage employers to invest in workforce skills, can only aid our ambitions further.


More detailed data can be found on www.johnlewis.com
More information and detailed data can be found on www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk

See the Waitrose CSR report for more information on our sister company