Understanding your customer and responding to their needs I think is a fundamental part of running a business. Now the customer themselves might not always know their own needs (until you tell them) but generally a dialogue would be in order.
This post is about my local Morrisons (nee Safeways). It has always been a little down market - it tried to be upmarket but it never had the investment or IMHO the management to be truely engaging. I compare it to Tescos where I am always asked if I want help packing, or to Sainsburys where I am shown where something is if I ask, or the very low prices at Asda. But it has always been convenient and the prices have been low and it had the products we wanted to buy. Then Morrisons took it over.
The decor has changed. The product lines have changed. The staff grumble at the changes in pay and conditions or left.
So now its near Christmas and I want mincemeat for Mince pies. I get told its on some aisle over there (we've looked and it isn't) 'Oh, well then we haven't got any.' Are they going to get some in? 'No idea!' This has to be the last straw which started when they re-organised the product lines and decimated the vegetarian section, they have eliminated several other lines. They fail to even stock their own label goods and their staff are even more rude than before. Not to mention that prices have increased.
It is no wonder that the Safeways takeover has hurt Morrisons. They fundamentally change the demographic of their store footprint and fail to respond with anything other than 'Our new pie shop' - in the South East of england in one of the UKs most affluent areas?
Turning into a bit of a rant this but it beggars belief that a business as successful as Morrisons obviously was cannot come to grips with its new marketplace. That it cannot offer a decent level of customer service and that to top it all it cannot compete on price.
I feel I will need to twist my wife's arm and go back to Sainsburys!
Posted by Paul Goodison at December 19, 2005 11:11 AM | TrackBackTry Waitrose!
Posted by: The Wise One at December 20, 2005 11:39 PMI agree with you about the ineptness of Morrison's customer care and the apparent clash of cultures between what was a midlands and north operation, now trying to cope with how people elsewhere like to shop.
That there should be a problem in the first place is, of course, a sad reflection on how people vary over just a couple of hundred miles, but for someone like me who hates shopping in any manner or form, the only thing that makes it remotely bearable is something approaching a civilized attitude towards paying customers and not the bloody-minded obstruction to paying customers which prevails at Morrisons, the main UK supermarket which simply cannot afford to lose trade.
No doubt the backslapping and ballyhoo which went with the Safeway takeover will in due course be replaced with the blame and recriminations which go with sliding revenues.
Looks like you are not the only customer they lost to Sainsbury.
Happy Shopping! - John
PS Why do Tesco receive 1 pound (£) in every 8 spent in the UK in total and one in three of all grocery sales? Mainly because they do their job well and sell the stuff on their shelves. Not exactly rocket science, but something that shopkeepers obviously forget when they bite off more than they can chew.