‘Under new management, customer complaints are music to the ears at Morrisons’

The grocer, which has endured a torrid time, this week posted its best like-for-like growth in three years – up 4.6% and the seventh quarter in a row of growth.

It’s a great start for new chief executive Rami Baitiéh, the former Carrefour director who joined Morrisons last November. From the outset, Baitiéh has been clear in his aim to get shoppers making their trolley dash at Morrisons again after the business lost ground to rivals such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s and the discounters.

The retailer reported this week, alongside the sales uplift, that customer complaints – described by Baitiéh as “the canaries in the retail coalmine” – have fallen 60% in the last 20 weeks.

“Since landing at Morrisons, Baitiéh has made his – and his senior executives’ – email publicly available on the website so any customer can contact them”

That’s an impressive statistic, especially when it includes the all-important Christmas peak period when customers are at their least forgiving if they feel let down at such an important time for family get-togethers and the like.

Since landing at Morrisons, Baitiéh has devoted much energy to ensuring the voice of the customer is heard.

He has made his email – and those of the other senior executives – publicly available on the Morrisons website so any customer can contact him. He’s mandated every store to hold two customer round tables a month – one a week in “challenged” branches – and he’s made action and follow-through a priority, injecting urgency by holding a daily call with the top 100 people in the business, six days a week.

It sounds demanding, and exhausting – and no doubt it is. But if today’s numbers give a taste of things to come then the radical approach looks as if it is working.

“The grocer has recently taken the fight to both Aldi and Lidl, matching it on the prices of 200 staples, such as cornflakes, bread and loo roll”

Batiéh is building a stronger Morrisons on three foundations: “commercial excellence, operations optimisation and new value creation”. A host of associated “small improvements” in areas such as availability, waste, newness, and accuracy are also expected to result in a “significantly enhanced shopping experience for customers”.

Signs of improvement at Morrisons are corroborated by reliable third-party evidence. The latest Kantar grocery data, for instance, showed that Morrisons has been “in consistent growth for over one year”.

In the most recent 12 weeks covered by Kantar, Morrisons achieved a 3.6% sales uplift. That far exceeded Asda’s 0.2%, and was even above perennial growth powerhouse Aldi’s 3.1% during the period – the same Aldi to which Morrisons lost its ‘big four’ grocer crown two years ago.

However, it was still behind Tesco and Sainsbury’s, where sales rose 5.8% and 6.7%, respectively, and its market share of 8.7% has barely changed. So, Baitiéh and his team will know there is lots still to do.

Other changes at Morrisons should make a difference. The grocer has recently taken the fight to both Aldi and Lidl, matching it on the prices of 200 staples, such as cornflakes, bread and loo roll.

There is likely to be more action on that front, following the return of grocery retail veteran Darren Blackhurst as interim chief customer and marketing officer, with his priorities including pricing strategy.

In the longer term, under data services director Peter Laflin, Morrisons will also focus “on being a data-driven and increasingly digital company” as it taps into new ways of understanding customers better.

“In many ways, it’s a back-to-basics approach, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Complaints create the chance to turn shopper dissatisfaction into contentment”

The fact that Morrisons has achieved growth for so many successive quarters – including, it should be said, under Baitiéh’s predecessor David Potts – indicates that it is regaining some momentum; and Baitiéh looks as if he can take it to another level.

In many ways, it’s a back-to-basics approach, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It was losing sight of some basics, such as value, or perhaps having to put them on the back burner as it shouldered a mountain of debt which set Morrisons back.

Now it seems that the customer is front of mind. The fall in the volume of complaints will be sweet music to the ears at Morrisons in its own right, but the very fact of their existence also creates the chance to turn shopper dissatisfaction into contentment. If shoppers’ gripes can continue to be “a source of learning”, nobody will complain about that.