Behind every great store is great customer service. And, echoing US partner Best Buy, Carphone Warehouse is on a mission to become best at it by making life easier for store staff. Joanna Perry finds out how

Everyone in retail is talking about the arrival of Best Buy in the UK. But since Carphone Warehouse linked up with the electricals giant, a little of the US giant’s culture has already quietly permeated the UK high street.

Carphone has developed the ambitious aim of being the number one choice in town for customers. It has been well publicised that the retailer has scrapped sales commission as a way of improving customer service. But it has also put its money where its mouth is over the past year, investing heavily in training and infrastructure to support staff as it aims to change the culture in its stores.

Carphone Warehouse business operations director Ashley Cook explains: “The vision is all about an integrated world-class support system, so that the guys in stores can channel all their efforts into servicing customers, and making their lives easier.”

One primary reason for this, Cook says, is that research by the company has shown that customers are concerned about the mobile phone industry in general trying to sell them things they don’t need. He says that being able to articulately explain to customers the features and benefits of a product or service will help the company to overcome this preconception.

He admits great store managers don’t necessarily need all this infrastructure and head office support to make their store efficient and smooth-running, but this relies heavily on individuals. Putting more formalised systems and support mechanisms in place ensures the whole chain operates optimally.

All store managers have been put through a training programme called Customer First to assist them with the transition to the new culture, and a task management system called Customer First Companion was rolled out to stores in tandem, to improve communication on tasks that need to be completed in individual stores.

More general communication is channelled to store staff through the company’s intranet CPWTouch. And the company is poised to launch its How2 platform for standard operating procedures as a resource for all store staff to support them in their roles.

It will also act as an access point for some of the other systems that Carphone Warehouse has invested in as part of its commitment to differentiating itself through its customer service.

Cook says that How2 will give staff confidence to sell parts of the proposition that are more difficult, such as fixed-line home broadband contracts, and also combinations of products and services they don’t come across every day. He adds: “Selling phones is quite complex – at any one time there might be around 50,000 variations – with each handset, then choosing pre-pay or post-pay, the network and tariff and then any free gifts and promotions.”

For each area where there has been investment in infrastructure and support, there are also feedback mechanisms. Carphone is constantly measuring every aspect of its business to ensure that it is seeing results. For example, the retailer uses a balanced scorecard called Compass to measure a variety of aspects of its performance, and it runs a quarterly employee engagement initiative called Pulse.

And Cook explains: “As a result of learnings from Best Buy we also do Chalk Talk, a weekly update on how we are doing and everything that is going on in the business.”

The retailer has also developed what it calls its World Class Service Score, working with customer engagement specialist Fizzback, which provides a net promoter score for the overall business, and allows Carphone to track customer feedback down to store, and even individual employee, level.

Cook says: “Our direct competitors are using Fizzback, but we have adapted it for our needs, and in many ways we are ahead. Our staff are directly rewarded on customer feedback.”

So there has been a significant investment in systems to support the change in culture. Cook says the payback on this is at the point of reaching critical mass. “We do a lot of research on each individual company, through procurement processes, to make sure that any money we spend adds value. But we get big gains when it is all integrated.”

He explains that the power of the systems comes from using them together. For instance, if something new launches in stores, a message can be sent out on the CPWTouch intranet, and followed up with an activity on Customer First Companion to explain what the manager needs his staff to do. Lessons in how to support the activity can be provided by How2 and completion of the task can be validated in Customer First Companion.

This closed loop approach will work in other areas too. How2 has also been designed so it can be developed on an ongoing basis. Cook says: “Any dissatisfaction in a service score can be aligned to a process, and we can change the procedure because we have feedback and direct linkages.”

Cook has worked in retail for a long time, spending 18 years with Tesco before he joined Carphone Warehouse, and he is confident that what Carphone has put in place is “significantly better than anything I have seen there”.

It is still early days, but Cook says the results are positive. There is proof that store staff are finding it easier to do their jobs. “Calls from stores to the store support call centre are down 50 per cent compared with a year ago – they have fallen by 17,000 calls a week,” he explains. Pulse scores for staff engagement had also improved the last time they were measured because of the support being offered to staff.

And the ultimate test – what customers think and if they can see a culture change – is also yielding positive results. He adds: “The customer is noticing it now. In London, where we have rolled out a number of the elements, the World Class Service Score has moved by around 30 points in six months.” It now stands at about 60 per cent, and with the introduction of How2, this is expected to improve.

Cook concludes: “We want people to get what we are about, understand the vision and take it forward. The stores that are doing this are really improving their business.”

The store manager’s view

Carphone Warehouse’s Michael Moss is on a secondment as a retail process engineer, using the knowledge gained in his normal store management role to assist with the roll-out of the retailer’s standard operating procedures within the How2 system.

He says it is great the company has chosen to invest time and money in supporting store managers. He explains that the Customer First training programme had taken store managers out of their branch for a week and, aside from the training they were given, it was useful to be able to meet up with store managers from across the country.

To back this up, the Customer First Companion task management system was rolled out. Moss said that before it was introduced, store managers would waste time reading emails about things they didn’t need to do, whereas the new system only tells them about the actions they do need to take. When he speaks to stores, the general feeling is that customers are noticing a difference. The more scientific measurement of customer sentiment the retailer has deployed – its World Class Service Score – backs this up.

Moss says that with sales commissions having been withdrawn for managers, the score is “a fantastic opportunity for employees to really sell service”. He adds: “It is good to get positive and negative feedback. Customer service will be our number one priority”.

He believes the combination of management and people tools are all helping deliver the best customer service possible, and working towards each store’s goal of being the number one choice in town.

“People buy from people,” he concludes, noting that with all the support that is being put in place, it is now down to the staff to harness this and make a difference in stores.