One Retailer’s Answer to Enhancing the Customer Experience
The customer experience is driven by product availability, convenience, and service. The quality of employees, the way they are managed, and their ability to support the customer experience often means the difference between retail success and failure.
What’s one way to get there? The U.K.’s Somerfield grocery store chain is using advanced work force management technology across 920 stores to achieve improved customer service, lower labor costs and increased product availability. 
Somerfield focuses on smaller supermarkets that offer a neighborhood feel, averaging less that 9,000 square feet per store, and offers a more upscale, fresh food appeal, while sister store KwikSave serves the discount grocery market.
Somerfield began in Bristol, England in 1875. After many manifestations, including several name changes, the first Somerfield store opened in 1990, positioned as an upscale market, with a bright and cheery atmosphere that emphasized fresh foods. Somerfield merged with discount grocer KwikSave in 1998, acquiring 900 stores. Today, Somerfield is one of the biggest U.K. retail employers, with 60,000 employees and more than 1,300 stores that attract over 13 million customers weekly.
Work force management technology has helped fuel this growth and overall customer satisfaction with the Somerfield experience. This customized technology makes use of integrated budgeting, forecasting, scheduling and attendance management functions, allowing Somerfield to more accurately match staff schedules to customer traffic.
Adrian Peace, Somerfield’s head of simplification, claims this focused technology increases productivity, while at the same time improving customer and employee satisfaction. He stated, “Somerfield required a fully automated workforce management solution to support our mission of providing the best possible customer service in the most cost effective way possible.” Peace believe managers need “simple, easy-to-use tools to improve productivity and focus activities on delivering excellent customer service.”
Work force management technology software positions Somerfield to create optimal employee schedules based on store-specific data that includes business trends and customer demand, ensuring the ‘right employee is always in the right place at the right time.’
Tags: Customer Experience, customer satisfaction, icc client exchange