David Jones shapes store design, lease negotiations with customer feedback

David Jones is using customer feedback to influence everything from store leasing conversations to store refreshes and product selection, through an expansive ‘voice of customer’ program.

The department store operator set up a program called ‘The Collective’ in November last year, quickly amassing 10,500 customers that it surveys regularly.

The surveys aren’t limited to transactions and in-store or online experiences, but also cover support, aspirations, and favoured brands, and all of this is fed back to different parts of the David Jones business to support decision-making.

“We have a 30 percent response rate within the first 12 hours of sending our surveys, so this gives us access to really quick and really meaningful data,” customer insights advisor Chontelle Cananzi told a Qualtrics X4 experience management summit.

Cananzi said the intent was to set up a ‘voice of customer’ program that “told us way more than just [about the] customer experience.”

“What if our customer voice program could have a place in way more meeting rooms - imagine marketing, content, buying, and even finance, talking about truly what the customer is asking for, helping us to make better investments moving forward,” she said.

Only six months later, this is already taking shape.

The retailer is using customer voice to shape the content around products in its app and on its website.

“Our marketing team uses our customer voice program to catch the eye of more of our customers or potential customers,” head of customer insights Melissa Pellegrini said.

This included writing content to strike the right tone, and also to offer enough information - such as styling advice - to invite a purchase, especially online.

Pellegrini said that customer feedback is also informing store design and navigation signage.

The results of this would be apparent to customers of the retailer’s Chatswood store on Sydney’s north shore in October.

“We've used so much customer data, not only from our voice program, but also from our deep analytics program to shape a store that will respond to that store catchment in a way that is exactly what they want from us,” she said.

Pellegrini said customers are being surveyed “to describe in three words what a store environment is like now.”

“In some of our stores, I can share with you, those words are dull, boring, old, outdated etc, and maybe you've been into a David Jones store that looks like that,” she said.

“What is wonderful about feedback like that is it gets snipped straight out of the dashboard and goes straight into the business case to request capital expenditure for that store. 

“Nothing is more compelling than words from customers about why that store is not visited with the frequency that we would like.”

The retailer also used customer feedback to make its payment areas more apparent to shoppers, and to make its stores feel more welcoming.

It is now using customer voice to influence operations occurring outside its stores.

“We have a bank of questions around the shopping centre. Some shopping centres are easier to shop at than others; some have terrible car parks, some are a bit of a rabbit warren, and some need, frankly, an update,” Pellegrini said.

“We're always having conversations with our landlords about leasing. Our lease costs are one of the biggest costs in retail, and so having these customer voices present, even in conversations with our landlords, allows us to have compelling conversations with them about what we need from them as our landlord for David Jones to show up as its best.”

Pellegrini said customer voice could also influence what business cases were approved, against other competing priorities.

“A capex committee meeting is often facing four or five projects that all have return on investment,” she said.

“Being able to put the customer voice in the room and being able to demonstrate that all of the customers who shop at a store believe it to be cold, dark, tired, and depressing is that little bit of something [extra] that can get a project approved.”

Finally, voice of customer is also being brought to bear in buying rooms globally.

“Our buyers can source from the world, but they need to make the selection that is absolutely right, so making sure that those customer voices are present in the buying rooms is crucial,” Pellegrini said.

There is still some work to do in integrating Qualtrics, which underpins the program, with other customer-related systems at David Jones such as Salesforce, but this work is progressing.

Edited, 1.12pm: The article stated that David Jones did not have a 'voice of employee' program, quoting from the presentation. A spokesperson has since clarified that the retailer does, and uses Culture Amp.