Business Marketing At It’s Best

The John Lewis Partnership does just that, and it bases its legendary performance on just four principles:

1. Ensuring the happiness of Partners is at the centre of everything they do.
2. Building a sustainable business through profit and growth.
3. Serving their customers to the very best of their ability.
4. Caring about their communities and their environment.

The “Partners” in principle #1 are the staff – all 69,000 of them.

Charlie Mayfield, their Chairman says, “Performance doesn’t just mean making the most profit. It is as much about the happiness of our Partners. They power our business and that’s what makes us successful, and profitable.”

So, what is it that enables them to ‘delight customers time after time’?

Jurek Leon (Retail Service Trainer extraordinaire), went to the UK recently to see for himself, and came back to share these six points with us:

1. Recruit for Culture. Be rigorous with the interview process. Put more time and resource into the interview process. Recruit on personality and attitude to create a culture in which people can be themselves. (Reminds me of another service legend, Nordstroms’ rule of “Hire the smile and train the skill.” Ed).

2. Lose Control and Let People Deliver the Brand. “We have an identifiable, definable John Lewis experience for people and customers, but within that, people have the space to express themselves. You need to find that middle ground. Make the day customer-focussed not task-focussed. Constantly piling up ‘things to do’ focuses people on the tasks rather than interacting with the customer.”

3. Create a Service Culture for Managers. The emphasis is placed on managers seeing themselves as serving employees, their Direct Reports. People leave bad bosses, not bad organisations, so work on creating a service culture within managers, where they serve their Direct Reports.

4. Make Time for Your Important People. Set the standards by coaching, example and encouragement. An ‘I have time for you’ leadership culture creates an ‘I have time for you’ service culture for Customers. Put the focus on catching people doing things right.

5. Use Measurement to Change Habits. The power of habit is enormous but once people are aware of their subconscious habits, they can change them. Measurement helps highlight changes in behaviour and habit.

John Lewis mystery shops every store 40 times a month, then the stores pair up and mystery shop each other (could you make this work with one of your business associates?)

Introduce a KPI targeting a specific change, give six months advance notice, then start measuring and providing feedback – you’re setting the willing ones up for a win!

6. Create Legendary Stories Then Share Them. Each John Lewis Partnership store must identify at least one ‘random act of kindness’ by its team each month. It’s a most unusual KPI that helps differentiate them from their competitors and create legendary service stories. These stories are then shared thus reinforcing the service culture.

If you follow these rules (you can find the full version here on Jurek’s site) you can expect a change in Customer experience, though we can’t guarantee that it will be as dramatic as the lady who wrote on a Comment Card, “John Lewis is my spiritual home. I’ve asked my husband to scatter my ashes there.”