Scott Culliven, Morrisons Livingston: Grocer 33 store of the week

Your store put in a tremendous performance. Is it always like that? This is a long-established store with a settled team. We’ve just been through a restructure, but have remained focused on availability, promotions, sales challenges and service.

How’s life been since David Potts took over as CEO? He’s been a refreshing change. There are loads of listening groups going on, looking at how we can improve the business and customer service. And without doubt, he’s listening. When customer service desk colleagues told him they were overloaded with paperwork, he cut it by 50%. That’s just one example.

Have you got any other examples? We’ve simplified our gondola ends. Instead of 10 lines in each gondola, there’s now a maximum of four. We’ve certainly not lost any sales by running fewer promotions, and obviously we’re selling more volume on the lines on offer. We’ve also decluttered the store by getting rid of a third of PoS over the past few weeks.

Which of Potts’ new initiatives have had the biggest impact in store? The price reductions on the 200 essential lines and the investment in shop floor hours.

What response are the price cuts getting? We’ve highlighted the price cuts very clearly with PoS. Customers are definitely noticing the price differences.

And what about the extra man-hours? Every store recruited an extra 10 shop floor colleagues to help with customer service, availability and hygiene. We’ve had our colleagues for about two months, and it’s made a huge difference. We are now driving sales through availability and customer service - shoppers can now actually speak to someone on the shop floor.

How has the move to scrap Intelligent Queue Management gone down? It was welcomed throughout the business. There’s no one better to manage queues than the people working the checkouts. They like having more autonomy and it’s given morale and service a boost.