John Lewis was neatly laid out into clear departments with sufficient signing to ensure we could navigate ourselves around the store. We did notice that there were certain areas of the store that were quite compact and this means in busy times there is little space to walk freely.
When we walked into John Lewis there was a security guard on the door however we weren’t welcomed. Laurelle and I both feel that it should be common practice to be greeted upon entering a store so that you feel welcomed and free to browse.
One of the biggest things we noticed was that we were rarely ever approached even though at times we showed interest in some products.
Laurelle asked to see a watch, a member of the sales team was more than happy to let her. She tried it on and I asked him questions about the construction and quality of the watch, he answered well. The price was also clearly labelled. Overall we were happy with how he treated us however we felt that he could have tried to sell the watch to us a little more, perhaps by explaining its features and benefits further.
Later we saw a nail varnish without a price label, so I thought it would be good opportunity to test another member of staff’s knowledge. When I asked the price of the nail polish she replied ‘I’m only covering today, I will check’, however she couldn’t find the price and implied that I should Google the price. Yet she could have easily done this herself or scanned the nail varnish.
When leaving the store we were thanked and the security guard said goodbye to us.
At BooHoo our website clearly shows the different products we offer under simple bold tabs, this makes navigation easier. We have aimed to make our website clear by always having a blank white background, this keeps our design simple yet effective. One issue we did find was that our images are slightly pixelated and may perhaps be off putting to customers.
We also have clear links to our ‘contact us’ page. This leads on to all our contact methods; we offer email and a twitter service and aim to reply to any queries as soon as possible. This service could be improved if we were to establish a call centre. However we do have clear information pages displaying the returns, exchanges and delivery process.
All in all both BooHoo and John Lewis thrive off producing excellent customer service, as it’s essential to ensure profits are kept high. We both agreed we would be happy to shop with both retailers again.