As readers know from the excellent article this week by Will Jones, the current Chairman of the John Lewis partnership, Dame Sharon White, will be stepping down. This makes her five-year term (by the time she leaves) the shortest in John Lewis’s history with her predecessors each serving between 13 and 26 years.
I sensed that all was not well when, in June, I purchased a mattress from its central London store. Today, five months later, I am still awaiting delivery and the story is every bit as telling as Tracy Emin’s iconic bed, shortlisted for the Tate Modern prize in 1998 – an emblem of Bridget Jones-style singlehood, with stained sheets in disarray, empty vodka bottles, cigarette packets and condoms on the ground.
So, why the delay in the delivery of the mattress?
A brief foray into the world of mattresses. The John Lewis mattress is available in two tensions, one regular and one firm and is displayed as part of a double mattress, with only the labels distinguishing the two tensions of ‘regular’ and ‘firm’. When I made a return visit to the store to affirm the correctness of my purchase (the mattress was far more expensive than previous ones I’d had but was intended to support a rickety back) it made sense to check the correctness of the labels. The shop floor was quick to assert that they were ‘correct’ but there was no attempt to check this with reference to the feel of the bed. So, I had no way of knowing if the labelling was correct or not.
One salesperson suggested that I visit another store that stocked the same mattress and so I travelled across London to check it out. It felt exactly the same as the other one and yet the labels were presented in the reverse order. I reported back to the first store and asked which of the two sets of labels were correct. I would say that asking this question was by no means easy since it is impossible to contact departments by telephone, and all contact is through a call centre in Tunisia. I had explained the story five times to the person at the other end of the phone but gave up when I realised that the issues were conceptually or linguistically (I don’t know which) beyond her comprehension.
It was chance that led the salesperson from the shop floor to phone me so that I could communicate the discrepancy in labelling between the two beds. I said that I hoped an investigation could be made to sort out which was correct. When the weeks rolled by, I reached out to the manufacturer who eventually sent experts out to the two stores, confirming that there was a labelling error in one. This conclusion left the door open to my arranging a date for the delivery of the long-awaited mattress, all done by email with the team leader of the beds department.
On the appointed day, handyman by my side (to move out the old mattress), I awaited the John Lewis van. It never turned up. Why? I later learned that the contents of my email had been opened by a colleague of the addressee who forgot to reveal its contents to the team leader.
This degree of chaos is unusual and so I was interested when a friendly Customer Services operative did not answer my question: “Is leadership at John Lewis good?” I was intrigued when a salesman in the central London branch told me that even the call centre operative earned more than he did. And my worst suspicions were confirmed when the handyman told me that a former John Lewis manager in my road had told him that things in the group were “the pits”.
The rest is history. In 2022, the John Lewis Partnership suffered a loss of £234m and in March this year it scrapped the annual staff bonus for the second time in three years. Dame Sharon blamed inflation and the shift towards online shopping but a competitor, Marks and Spencer, bounced back with results beyond expectations in May this year.
It seems that the current Chairman made the fatal mistake committed by M&S CEO Sir Richard Greenbury in the late 1990s when he encouraged the departure of experienced staff in order, so he thought, to boost profits. Yes, these reached a peak of £1 billion in 1998 but nose-dived in 2001 to £0.14 billion. Dame Sharon made a commitment to customer service but with a background in economics, she may not have realised that delivering a premium product depends on the loyalty and skill of staff.
There are lessons to be learned and maybe the mattress at John Lewis could be a contender for the next Tate Modern prize. Its title? Perhaps: ‘The power to think beyond the label.’ All suggestions on a postcard please.
Gloria Moss PhD FCIPD is an experienced HR professional who has served as Head of Training in a number of blue chip companies and as a Professor of Management and Marketing. She is the author of around 80 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and her eight books include Inclusive Leadership. She can be contacted by email.
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Tunisia? Are Indian call centres not sufficiently useless?
They have a better chance of being exposed to the English language than the legacy French heritage Tunisians, so they would be much better at nor understanding JL customers (QED by the article).
I find the language used in Indian call centres to be far easier to understand than that used by Glaswegian call centres. I guess the accent is Received Indian Civil Service Pronunciation, which to me sound like 1950s BBC with a whiff of curry rather than a smell of Tennants 😉
All of India’s cheap available capacity is currently engaged with BT and TalkTalk.
To be fair I have been routed to call centres in the UK that are bad, there was one in Newcastle that was indecipherable, I forget who that was. My favourite had to be Scottish Power whose call handlers had a lovely East Lothian lilt that I could listen to all day.
It’s just another sign that all is not well in the state of Britain. I would say that the gradual destruction, maybe that’s too strong a word, of the high street is planned. John Lewis’ fortunes are just collateral damage to what is already in full flow. If you join up all the dots, there is a clear trend towards online shopping with maybe just Amazon dominating it all at some point in the not-too-distant future. Further down the line, if you own nothing, then you’re probably not going to be doing much shopping anyway! Whether you’re happy about that depends on your mindset but I’m sure the WEF is thinking about how to do that via some sort of mind control involving one or more aspects of transhumanism/AI/neuralink/5G/mRNA etc. Although their plans will come to naught, whatever they have planned for us ain’t going to be good!
“I would say that the gradual destruction, maybe that’s too strong a word, of the high street is planned.”
Use of the word “destruction” is not too strong Aethelred. The destruction of high streets everywhere is self-evident and it is deliberate.
Near me we have Rochdale, Ashton, Oldham, Huddersfield, all hollowed out market towns that are dismal even to walk through.
Oldham is demolishing its market hall and replacing it with flats. These flats will be slums before they have even been occupied.
Let’s not forget that Civic Pride has to be eliminated. We cannot be allowed any jingoistic nonsense.
It’s not yet that bad in the market towns near me – Market Harborough, Oakham, Stamford – but I can see the decline beginning.
Point taken, HP. Down in the south here it is more gradual but still in progress.
Bolton going the same way Hux. I lived there for 16 years up until June this year and the decline has been sad to see. Bury is easily the best of the lot, hopefully the council don’t start ‘making plans’ which normally equates to ruining everything.
Bury is indeed a small piece of cut glass amongst a desert of collapse in the North.
I’ve gone the other way wrt Amazon. Stopped shopping with them a few years back. Everything on there these days just seems to be cheap Chinese tat. I am going back to waiting until I need a few things and going to a retail park to buy things from an brick and mortar store so that I can check what I am getting for my cash.
I knew something was wrong when JL decided boys and girls genders were the same.
We shopped there regularly but cancelled them for wokism.
Don’t give your money to people/organisations that hate you.
I couldn’t be doing with all that. Why did the writer not just go elsewhere?
She is a well connected box-ticking exercise – she shouldn’t be allowed to lead a pig by the nose.
https://off-guardian.org/2023/10/05/no-jab-no-education-big-pharmas-influence-on-irish-and-british-schools/
A dump but a worthy one.
They are coming after the children , again. No jab, no education.
Alternatively: no jab, no indoctrination.
That’s what happens when you put a Civil Servant mandarin in charge of anything. History shows us that as clear as clear can be.
Especially a civil servant mandarin who has achieved that exalted status through ticking the DIE boxes
The thing that stands out to me from this story is the level of motivation and determination to purchase a John Lewis mattress.
I would have given up on them the moment they couldn’t clarify which mattress was on show, and gone to get one elsewhere.
But perhaps I don’t have the same level of commitment to John Leeis products.
Having moved house this year (and shock horror, to a new build as well – which I am finding very comfortable so far by the way) I was shopping around for a TV stand and a coffee table. Comparing JL to Next there where very similar looking products at both, except at JL they where £300 each dearer.
I can’t help but think that JL have been relying on name recognition to generate sales because there’s no way their coffee table that looks exactly like the Next one justifies the extra £300 cost (note – granted I am comparing online and have only seen the Next product in store not the JL one).
I did end up buying a set of light shades from them (online), using a voucher I had. I bought a couple of others from M&S at the same time, and again not much difference in quality, their home delivery service was fine but I can’t shake the conclusion that, other than name recognition they have no other USP.
Has the DS decided to have a consumer and business news section? What next? A crossword?
I’ve seen many cross words here. I’ve posted quite a few myself.
Diversity box ticking at its finest. Congratulations John Lewis. It was nice to know you.