How businesses with a strong internal culture thrived during Covid
Companies with a strong internal culture shone the light on their employees during the darkest days of Covid. With non-essential retail businesses closing their stores for most of the last year, we’ve seen a surge in the number of employees taking on new marketing and customer service roles to talk to customers online and provide an improved customer experience in highly innovative ways. These types of services are springing up across retail as more businesses embrace a new approach to marketing – one that feels more human, more personalised, more localised.
Post Office
The Post Office empowered their Postmasters to share content directly to their local communities – Together Stronger was about connecting postmasters to their community, sharing information to support people to access key services and when/where to buy produce in their local neighbourhood shops.
John Lewis & Partners
John Lewis & Partners mobilised personal stylists to engage customers via video chat. During lockdown John Lewis started offering virtual appointments on Instagram using video calls to run styling appointments with personal stylists and customers. Following a trial they ran earlier in 2020, pre lockdown, as part of their #WeArePartners employee ambassador programme, they were able to respond to the Covid situation by scaling up the service across multiple teams with hundreds of customers signing up.
Liberty
London department store Liberty generated “hundreds of thousands” of pounds in sales during lockdown. The successful trial has led to Liberty rolling out their own virtual shopping experience. Employees in the London flagship store give product recommendations, sharing photos and videos, connecting online shoppers anywhere in the world through chat and video consultations.
Dixons Carphone
Dixons Carphone launched their ShopLive service in March 2020 allowing customers to speak to staff via video links to browse products and get recommendations. Mike Carslake, Retail Director, told Retail Week ‘ShopLive saw the emergence of a new way for customers to shop and a new way for our retail colleagues to provide and share their expert advice.’
The result was more than 56,000 sales between March-October 2020.
Read more about how to turn your employees into your best brand asset, with our free Go and Find Your Customers guide.