from a desktop exercise to truly transformative
the challenge
Falling retail sales and new competitors were disrupting this pharmacy retailer’s business. They knew that they needed to make their stores more profitable, more competitive and more focused on their core customer if they were going to continue having a major presence in the market.
In short, they needed to create a new customer operating model. They had multiple initiatives already on the go and a tendency to operate in silos, so this piece of work focused on bringing together a cross-functional team with an open, developmental approach to input into a new customer-first operating model.
the results
Employee engagement increased by 16% in our pilot stores. This engagement was obvious to customers and in turn, improved their experience in stores, translating into revenue and customer loyalty. Pilot stores saw a 14.6% year-on-year improvement (vs flat across the chain) in retail sales. Loyalty memberships were purchased by over 60% of customers, demonstrating a 20% YoY growth rate.
This project was a finalist in the 2020 MCA performance improvement of the year category.
how we got there
The initiative started out as a desktop ‘hours-reduction’ exercise in one store to free-up team members from operational tasks to be customer facing. But our message to the client was simple: you can’t strike tasks off a list and expect team members to automatically focus on the customer. If you want sustainable, transformational change, you need to change what you offer, how you work, and ensure you look through the customer’s eyes.
The approach had to be bold, bringing together key stakeholders to strip the operating model back to its basics in order to build it up again. And so, the customer operating model pilot was launched in seventeen stores.
We focused on key objectives we believed would really add value to the company’s customers:
A fully connected digital to store customer experience including improving the client’s app and the way it linked to core services and customer needs.
An improved in-store retail experience encompassing everything from layout and self-service check-outs through to a product selection that reflected the client’s brand values and fewer physical barriers between customers and pharmacists for a more personal service.
New retail pharmacy and health-care services which focused on the health of the customer, allowed them to schedule time with an expert, as well as an enhanced subscription model.
An improved operating platform framework which reduced deliveries and admin tasks during customer hours to refocus on customer service. To support this there were new roles, team support and training structures as well as enhanced supporting IT.
It wasn’t just about developing solutions in head office. The secret sauce of delivery was in the store teams. We didn’t tell them what to do, we asked them how it would work for them. Using a learning framework of: Engage me, Let me try it and Support me, we put in a support structure to help stores bring the new operating model to life.
These pilot stores are now the innovation hub, where all new initiatives are trialled before being rolled out. We helped this pharmacy retailer find a way in which a behemoth can behave like a start-up and rapidly test and launch new ideas.
