Consumer Forum

A quick blog-ette to share an example of great customer empowerment that we came across this week.

 

Waitrose is an important customer of ours and a couple of days ago we received an email from them telling us that one of their customers from their Lincoln store had asked if they could help with an idea that customer had had.  The customer has set up a local company called www.getmummyfit.com which gets mums in Lincoln out exercising in the fresh air with their little ones by their side – meaning that they don’t need to worry about childcare.  Now Waitrose is a pretty large organisation and I’m sure it get approaches from all sorts of people all the time, but this customer got the attention of the Duty Manager in Lincoln, who got hold of the Baby Buyer in HQ who liaised with her supply chain to identify a selection of their Baby product suppliers who may be interested in supporting their consumer.  This information was then passed back to the local store who contacted us directly.

 

It may not seem like rocket science, but I was impressed not only with the getmummyfit.com concept, but particularly the customer focused response of Waitrose.  It would have been so easy for the request to get lost on the Duty or Store managers desk, or then stay at the bottom of the pile for things to get done by the HQ buying and supply chain teams, never mind the 15 minutes or so each person will have dedicated to finding appropriate suppliers details and feeding back to the local starting point who then bothered to follow up.  In a culture where customers don’t come first this extra effort would have broken down along the chain somewhere, as Waitrose are very, very busy this close to Christmas.  I’m extremely impressed that a single customer of a large supermarket in Lincoln can be heard and get an idea communicated through 3 or 4 people to secure a result – as we have gladly given our support to www.getmummyfit.com’s Buggy Fun Run in Lincoln (Sunday 21^st March if you’re up for it!).

 

John Lewis and Waitrose often rank very highly in consumers’ perceptions of customer focused companies. I wanted to share this little simple but inspiring example of how if you set a culture,  individual consumers can then be heard.

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