2. The Introduction and Development of ‘Delivering Great Service’
Over a period of years Sainsbury’s lost the dominant market share of the food retail sector to it’s main competitors. To try and rectify this situation and attempt to once again become the U.K’s top supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has commissioned research into what their problems were and how to overcome them. The research concentrated on the identification of the ‘wants’ of Sainsbury’s customers and how Sainsbury’s can deliver these wants. With the results collated Sainsbury’s head office Human Resources staff developed the ‘‘Delivering Great Service’’ package. The idea behind strategy is to regain the once strong market share Sainsbury’s enjoyed over Tesco, Asda, Safeway, Waitrose and Morrisons, the company’s main competitors through the strategy objective, Service Promise.
The commissioned research uncovered Sainsbury’s customers want ‘Great Service’, ‘outstanding quality’ and ‘competitive prices’, all of which are contained within the objectives of ‘Delivering Great Service’ known as ‘Service Promise’.
(The Importance of Service – ‘Delivering Great Service’, Store Managers Toolkit 2001)
3. The Service Promise
The Service Promise is used as a tool within the Sainsbury’s Management Team, this is company wide, to improve colleague skills, store knowledge and
confidence within the company name. It is through these improved skills that the Sainsbury’s Management Team and colleagues can work together to improve the customers shopping experience with Sainsbury’s and successfully deliver great service.
3.1 Sainsbury’s Mission Statement
To clearly demonstrate the aspects of the ‘Service Promise’ the following diagram is applied:
(‘Delivering Great Service’, Colleague Briefing Leaflet, 2001)
I have devised the following diagram to demonstrate how the aspects of the ‘Service Promise’ relate to ‘‘Delivering Great Service’’
3.2 Easy, Enjoyable and Inspiring
The three categories contained within the Service Promise (outstanding quality, great service and competitive prices) contain guidelines for Sainsbury’s employees to adopt collectively, thus enabling the delivery of great service.
The guidelines are as follows:
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Easy - Make shopping easier by;
- Speeding up customer transactions
- Acknowledging their problems and accepting responsibility
- Actively seeking out customers who need extra help
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Enjoyable - Make shopping more enjoyable by;
- Increasing personal efficiency, politeness and friendliness
- Treating customers as individuals
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Inspiring - Present inspiring products and ideas to meet customer needs by;
- Presenting quality ranges of products that meet and succeed customer needs and expectations
- Interacting with customers to advise them of new products, encouraging them to ‘try before they buy’
(The Importance of Service, ‘Delivering Great Service’ – Store Managers Tool Kit 2001)
4. Impact on Company Employees
The company strategy, ‘Delivering Great Service’ has massive implications on all Sainsbury’s employees; it requires everyone to take on new responsibilities and new daily working practices if it is to be successful. I’m going to focus specifically on the implications ‘Delivering Great Service’ has on Sainsbury's Departmental Managers and how the topic of mentoring can help achieve the strategy (‘Delivering Great Service’) objectives (service promise).
4.1 Store Structures
Before I do this I have designed and included a very basic store structure diagram to illustrate the structure of a typical Sainsbury’s Store’s.
As you can see from the diagram the Store Manager is responsible for the entire store with a team of Duty Mangers and Department Managers on hand to share responsibilities and the running of the store filtering down to the Store Colleagues.
4.2 Departmental Management
I have already discussed the implications ‘Delivering Great Service’ has on all colleagues in respect of what it’s objectives require from everyone to be successful (making shopping easier, making shopping more enjoyable and presenting inspiring products), but I haven’t discussed the implications the Department Manager faces.
4.2.1 Department Managers Role
The Department Manager’s role within the company is to communicate the importance and relevance of all business decisions and strategies to his or her Department Store Colleagues. Thus the Department Manager is responsible when explaining the ‘Delivering Great Service’ strategy to his or her Department Store Colleagues and ensuring that they all have a full understanding and appreciation of the importance and the implementation of the Service Promise targets (previously outlined) and what they have to do. Not only does the Department Managers have to do this, they have to achieve it with the support and co-operation of Department Store Colleagues. In essence the Department Manager has:
‘to motivate colleagues to want to deliver the Service Promise to our customers, equipping them with some of the skills to do this’
(‘Delivering Great Service’ Through Customer Obsession, Mission Statement, 2001)
But how are they supposed to do this? The Department Manager would need great leadership and motivation skills combined with skilful use of communication to initiate Department ‘team spirit’ to enable Service Promise targets to be met. They would need a keen eye to identify those within the Department that need extra help or indeed those who aren’t willing to work towards ‘Delivering Great Service’ objectives. Necessary skills would include the capacity to deal with targets being missed and the individual’s ability to quickly set more achievable targets. But with no formal training how could Department Managers achieve these skills and successfully achieve ‘Delivering Great Service’ objectives with the full support of their Department? I believe that Department Managers could achieve these skills by turning to mentoring.
The mission statement below accurately sums up what Department Managers are expected to achieve in respect to ‘Delivering Great Service’:
‘To inspire our people to continually exceed our customers expectations, to deliver business improvement’
(‘Delivering Great Service’ Through Customer Obsession, Mission Statement, 2001)
4.3 Mentoring
How could mentoring assist Department Managers to achieve the requirements expected?
To begin with the definition of mentoring needs to be identified and questions need to be asked as to how Sainsbury’s can fulfil the Service Promise by achieving the strategic objectives of ‘‘Delivering Great Service’’
The Little Oxford Dictionary defines Mentor as “Mentor advisor, counsellor”
(The Little Oxford Dictionary, 1971, 4thEd)
A separate textbook definition of Mentor is to “…help by one person to another in making significant transitions in knowledge, work or thinking”
(Mentoring in Action - Megginson, D. and D. Clutterbuck, (Kogan Page Limited, UK (1999)))
4.4 Store and Duty Managers
Store Managers and Duty Managers within Sainsbury’s receive a wide array of continual training sessions and personal development ran by both internal and external bodies. They are constantly assessed by their Manager who is the Regional Business Manager with regards to their Store’s performance and satisfaction of their staff, a survey is conducted every six months – talkback – to check on staff satisfaction levels in all stores. As Managers they are required to posses leadership, motivational and coaching skills and the ability and confidence to use them as well as the privilege of constant feedback from the Regional Business Manager and constant people skill training.
Store Managers and Duty Managers are massively invested in within the company resulting in a large value added resource offering an indispensable skill base, the senior store management team is essential to the company’s success. Through such investment they hold the essential, crucial skills that Department Managers need to develop if they are to successfully motivate Department Store Colleagues to implement the ‘Delivering Great Service’ strategy and Service Promise objectives in their daily working practise.
To mentor someone is to advise and council a person whilst developing the learners skills to meet business objectives. The mentor is there to listen and suggest ways in which to tackle a situation promoting a culture where the learner isn’t being spoon-fed but independently identifying ways in which to personally improve upon current skill base and achieve targets.
4.5 The relationship between Duty Managers and Department Managers
But how will Sainsbury’s Duty Managers by mentoring Department Managers enable them to contribute to the achievement of ‘Delivering Great Service’ through Service Promise?
Sainsbury’s Duty Managers are high performers able to implement business objectives and strategies into the daily running of a store in a responsible fashion whilst observing the company’s values (which are as follows):
- We will be HONEST
- We will demonstrate INTEGRITY
- We will show our COMMITMENT to each other
- We will be LOYAL
- We will take PRIDE in everything we do
(Region 35 Business Plan June 2001)
Point 3 and 5 are important. When mentoring a Department Manager the company’s values would easily ensure the mentor and learner success, by committing to the learner and taking pride in the learner’s achievement
The leadership and motivational skills along with strong communication and a focused approach that are necessary to implement the ‘Delivering Great Service’ strategy, through mentoring an individual Department Manager could be successfully developed as the Duty Manager already possess and uses the skills the Department Manager needs. Through a series of on the job observations and one on one coaching sessions the Duty Manager can exchange ways of better practice to reflect better results (in Service Promise targets) and encourage the Department Manager to have confidence when communicating with their staff.
4.6 How Service Promise is developed through mentoring.
Through the improved skill base the Department Manager will have developed through mentoring and will be able through the Service Promise (objectives if the ‘Delivering Great Service’ strategy) to achieve stated objectives through actions completed, as seen below:
1)
2)
3)
5.Implamentation of Timescales
But what time scale are we looking at? ‘Delivering Great Service’ is a strategy that is in Stores NOW and Department Managers fully understands its implications NOW, it’s not planned to reach a Store in 6 months, results are expected to show in 6 months. With such a constraint on time I propose the following timescale strategy:
5.1 Store Implementation Time Scales
6. Conclusion
In conclusion it can be seen that the implementation of ‘‘Delivering Great Service’’ has allowed Duty and Departmental Managers to grow in their
roles. The mentoring skills of the store management are developed therefore allowing them to implement the strategy outlined and provide the highest level of customer service on the shop floor. As this is what 70% of customers require in order to have a satisfied shopping experience that is easy, enjoyable and inspiring. This will allow them to compete with their market competitors to the highest advantage and regain the market share, which they have lost.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
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Torrington,D and Hall,L and Taylor,S (2002), Human Resource Management, Prentice Hall Europe, UK
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Marchington,M, Managing the Team
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Megginson, D. and D. Clutterbuck, (1999), Mentoring in Action, Kogan Page Limited, UK.
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Parsloe, E. (1999), The Manager as Coach and Mentor, (2nd Ed), The Guernsey Press, Channel Islands.
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Norton, B. and J. Tivey. (1995), Management Directions, The Institute of Management, UK.
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Parsloe, E. and M. Wray, (2000), Coaching and Mentoring, Kogan Page Limited, UK.
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Pegg, M. (1999), The Art of Mentoring, Biddles, UK.
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Murrell, A, J. Crosby, F, J. and E, J, Robin, (1999), Mentoring Dilemmas, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, UK
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Clarke, D, (1996), Mentoring, Fenman Limited, UK
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Ried, M, A. and H, Barrington, (2000), Training Interventions, (6th Ed), The Cromwell Press, UK.
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Harrison, H, (2000), Employee Development, (2nd Ed) The Cromwell Press, UK.
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Marchington, M. and A, Wilkinson, (2000), Core Personnel and Development, (2nd Ed), The Cromwell Press, UK.
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Foot, M. and C, Hook, (1999), Introducing Human Resource Management, (2nd Ed), Longman, Malaysia.
SAINSBURY’S SOURCES
- ‘Delivering Great Service’, Colleague Briefing Leaflet, 2001
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Business Update, Sainsbury’s Intranet, 28th January 2002
- The Importance of Service, ‘Delivering Great Service’ – Store Managers Tool Kit 2001
Region 35 Business Plan June 2001
