How Waitrose is raising the bar on customer service

It’s not the done thing to feel self-satisfied in the fast-moving world of food retail. But I have to confess the recent customer satisfaction rankings from the Institute of Customer Service – which highlighted a meteoric rise by Waitrose – did raise a smile.

We’ve risen more than 60 places in the rankings this year and are now top of the food retail sector, which is a huge testament to the 47,000 partners across our business.

It’s no coincidence our market share has also returned to growth in the last fortnight, with Kantar Worldpanel showing we gained market share for the time since 2022. Great service is one thing that differentiates us and keeps customers coming back.

Over the last year, we have looked at what gold-standard customer service looks like for our shoppers. Yes, it means fabulous products, sourced with integrity while ensuring great value for money – but it means more, too, particularly to our food-loving customers.

They want expert partners around when they need them. They want great availability and minimal queues.

We’ve been hard at work on all of these. We have realigned working hours across our shops, meaning we have more partners in store when our shops are busiest. For example, partners are working 17,400 more hours on Saturdays and Sundays, when our stores are busiest. This means there is expertise at hand when our customers need it, as well as shorter checkout times.

We’re also improving the technology and processes that sit behind our end-to-end supply chain systems, with investment in ordering and replenishment, transport management, store inventory management, and AI-driven demand forecasting systems.

At the same time, we have reviewed our shop processes and introduced additional shelving in our shops to make the task of replenishment easier and speedier, as part of our Simpler Shops programme.  The result of all this investment is that our availability now stands at a record high.

Our job is far from done, and we have a lot more on our to-do list: investing in customer service training for all our partners; modernising our shops; and continuing the flow of inspiring new product development, which saw us launch the Ottolenghi range earlier this year.

But all of this, along with winning the customer service award at The Grocer Gold Awards 2024, gives us huge confidence that we are on the right track. 

To paraphrase our latest advertising campaign: things do feel good right now.