As the third highest ranking supermarket in The CXi Customer Experience Report 2022 from The CX Company, Lidl are seeing the benefits of a strategic investment and focus on Customer Experience. At the heart of their strategy is their vision “To make live better by providing quality food at market leading value, ensuring customer satisfaction is at the heart of everything we do”.
The Challenge
Lidl’s biggest challenge has been changing the perception that you can’t have low price, high quality and still deliver a great customer experience. With extremely successful growth since their launch in Ireland in 1999 Lidl firmly positioned themselves as the discount retailer of choice. This success is attributed to their commitment to delivering the best value and lowest prices to customer. However, one area that consumers felt needed more focus and attention was the Customer Experience.
Customer Experience within Lidl is about putting customer needs at the centre of everything they do. Their goal is to continuously improve customer service in stores and ultimately enhance the Customer Experience across all touchpoints, whilst staying true to the lean discounter model that their success is built on.
Lidl’s Strategy
They started their journey three years ago by creating a CX culture. Internal brainstorming and workshop sessions were held, getting feedback from employees at every level and in every area of the business. In addition, all departments carried out an audit to identify what could be improved, introduced or done differently to enhance CX. From this their CustomerFirst programme was born, which has become a vital tool to promote and develop CX Excellence within the company.
CustomerFirst is a company-wide initiative which reinforces the message that the entire organisation has a part to play in delivering CX Excellence, not just the store teams. It started with investment in specific CX training and staff development. This set very clear objectives and expectations of every staff member and continues to be at the core of the CustomerFirst programme. Best practice is highlighted and stories of staff who go the extra mile for customers are shared.
Lidl ensure that an exceptional CX is delivered at every interaction by improving performance standards and driving the CustomerFirst strategy through every touchpoint. Social media has become an increasingly important customer engagement channel for Lidl and they always ensure a swift and direct response to all queries.
The impact of the CustomerFirst programme is continuously measured through customer feedback, social media activity, an ongoing brand tracker of NPS and customer satisfaction and Happy or Not terminals in all stores nationwide.
The Result
By creating a CustomerFirst culture where the customer is at the heart of everything they do and engaging staff to understand that everyone has a role to play in delivering CX Excellence, they changed their customer’s perception. The success of the strategy speaks for itself with a market share high of 13.1%, increased NPS and Happy or Not scores and being Customer Champion in the Supermarket Sector in CXi survey in 2018.
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