Tesco's Talking Shop Blog

I recently discovered the Tesco Talking Shop Blog thanks to an article of French magazine Linéaires. Tesco is one of the leading retailer in the world, thanks to its leadership in England and different other countries. Tesco has also been rewarded thanks to its customer centric approach, and the usage they make from their loyalty reward program data.

In this blog, top executives of the company discusses about their job, they're philosophy, and what the innovations are at Tesco. It is a great source of information in order to know what the company is at.

As a professional of retail, it is a great opportunity to understand better what makes Tesco so unique. I invite you to have a look if you have the change.

How Strikes May Impact Customer Relationship Management: Air France Case Study

Customer relationship management is a science which is at the crossroad of the different functions of one company. Of course, most of it is managed by the marketing staff, as it has a lot to do with researches, and communication with customers.

But it is also a focus which th whole company must take care of. This is the reason why a lot of the time we talk about "Customer centric companies", meaning that CRM takes a core part of how a company deal with its business. But most of the time, real 100% customer centric companies does not exist, and therefore it is sometimes hard to get all the pieces together.

Air France is one of the leading airline company in the world. It secured its position thanks to its image of a premium service company. This image has been built throughout the time, thanks to a lot of details, those small details which creates the big things... One of the very good example: A lot of my American friends know Air France because they serve Champagne on board.

Air France is taking customer relationship management seriously, and they have always been a trail blazer in terms of loyalty reward program. They also make their best to respond to customer complaints as fast as they can.

But sometimes, Air France's customer relationship management is experiencing damages, due to unusual circumstances.

For this November hollidays season, Air France personnel was on strike, protesting to job cuts speculations. Due to these protests, Air France's planes had to take off with 50% of their planes empty, due to lack of staff on board. 

Air France knows how to deal with those kind of issues:

First, because they have a very competent risk management department, which has been used to deal with different kinds of problems (the Icelandish volcano crisis this year, other strikes, political issues in some countries)...

Secondly, because strikes are quite frequent at Air France. I could quote French show "Les Guignols", which mention that strikes for November hollidays season at Air France are sort of a "tradition"...

And this is a real issue: You could be as good as you can be analyzing customer data, providing high quality communication material, being responsive in crisis time, sometimes, those social events can impact big time the image of one company.

So what can Air France do?

To be honest, Air France is far from being the worst of the airlines company to work for. But the way they deal with their employees (which are by the way the first ambassador one brand can have) is very important in order to maintain a  high customer service at all time.

In overall, strikes may be prevented by having strong relationship with unions, but sometimes, they are very difficult to avoid, especially in some specific industries. 

But human resources management, and social crisis inside a company can have a large impact on one company CRM Strategy.

Best Buy Lands In Europe

Best Buy is obviously the leader of the electronic goods retail in the United States. It owned in 2009 22.2% of marketshares, and sold for about $50 billions.

Here are some of the key factors of success of Best Buy:

• A customer centric company: This is for sure one of the best CRM case study ever. They have implemented a strategy allowing them to leverage their salesforce insights, and to create different store concepts to suit the most the zone where they have picked to settle.
  Their store concepts: Best Buy doesn’t stop to try new store concepts, to be on top of the competition.

Customer service: Once again, they have created with the Geek squad a service which provides them with a legitimacy in the high tech world.

Best Buy To Face A Great Challenge
Now the biggest challenge is that Best Buy is entering new markets where the competition is already pretty tough with large companies. Also, the market is actually plummeting in Europe. Nevertheless, Best Buy has strong arguments to establish a strong presence in Europe.
Also, Best Buy has become strong thanks to its centralized approach. They control everything, and everything is standard. But in Europe, you have great differences from a country to another, in terms of culture, customer decision making process, or even product range. This implies to have more flexibility to adapt to the local demand.

Especially, I believe they should focus a lot on creating a great ecommerce website as they have in the US to make sure to have a competitive advantage. Indeed, not so much electronic goods retailers have been able to make the best of both their online and retail presence.

I believe that thanks to their customer centricity strategy they will be able to face the competition. Let’s not forget that in 2003 when they have set this new strategy, Best Buy was struggling against Wall Mart which was cutting the prices. In order to get out of this negative spiral, they have decided to focus on customer service, providing essential extras Wall Mart would not.

Best Buy To Make Acquisitions In Europe?
It is probable to move fast in the market that Best Buy will be eager to make an acquisition, or at least a partnership.

• We have already discussed on this blog that Carrefour is looking for a partner to boost its ecommerce strategy.
• PPR’s retails Fnac and Conforama are in the market.
• Even Darty would be a potential acquisition, as Best Buy is way bigger than them.
• We have seen that Best Buy was thinking about buying Pixmania...
  

I am glad as a customer that Best Buy is coming into Europe. Now the task is tough, and it will be interesting how they’ll be able to breakout while the market is already so tough. What do you think about it?