John Lewis Partnership enriches the customer experience with data.

The John Lewis Partnership used Salesforce to centralise data across all its department stores and food shops. Now, the company can make precise customer demand predictions and better meet customer expectations.

What you need to know

Owned and operated by over 74,000 employees, which it calls Partners, the John Lewis Partnership is the U.K.’s largest employee-owned business. It consists of John Lewis department stores, Waitrose food shops and John Lewis Financial Services. 

For such a complex and diverse operation, simply having data is not enough — it must be accessible, user friendly, and up to date. Self-service dashboards built on Tableau allow Partners to make decisions on their own to better manage inventory, automate tasks, and predict customer needs.

Why it matters

Efficiency matters more than ever to meet consumers’ high expectations for personalised experiences and immediate customer service. With its data centralised in a single source for users across the company to easily access, the John Lewis Partnership can make faster decisions for each store location. Now, Partners spend their time where it matters most: providing the high level of customer service that today’s consumers demand.

How they did it

Working closely with the John Lewis Partnership, Tableau Professional Services developed a comprehensive strategy, set measurable goals, and trained its staff. In the first phase of implementation, the company successfully onboarded and trained 8,000 users, resulting in substantial business value amounting to millions of pounds.

What the difference looks like

John Lewis Partnership swapped manual spreadsheets for real-time data visualisations. Now, this centralised data enables partners to self-serve and focus on customer interactions. Here’s how:

• Ten thousand Partners can independently explore their real-time sales and inventory data, and act on insights from a single source. They can then easily collaborate by sharing these visualisations in Slack, enabling teams across the business to make data-driven decisions from a shared view of their data.
• Waitrose food shops are empowered with real-time, actionable insights to manage their floor inventory and better meet their customers’ expectations. Stores can anticipate the needs of their customers and ensure the right products are available at each location, contributing to the perfect order rate.
• Data-science models built on Tableau predict what and how much Waitrose bakeries should produce, saving partners time, reducing waste, and maximising profits.
• The company also uses Service Cloud to support both online and in-store shoppers. Users can create, review, or edit existing cases, which helps deflect calls to the contact centre. Einstein Bots provide fast, convenient answers for website users and those who write in from WhatsApp.
  • Virtual Remote Assistant provides clear and timely video communication between customers and agents. If a furniture delivery is damaged, John Lewis agents can determine how the damage was caused, resolving the matter faster for customers and eliminating the need to dispatch a field rep.
  • Together, both solutions have helped the company save an average of £1 million in call centre costs per year.
• The John Lewis Partnership has also improved its marketing efficiency and engagement with automation from Marketing Cloud. With help from Salesforce Professional Services, the company migrated its marketing in-house from a managed services partner for greater self-sufficiency.
  • Now, the team can create and deploy email and SMS campaigns themselves with templated content and creative assets, leading to 75% faster production time. The John Lewis Partnership can even produce marketing campaigns in a single day, enabling much faster reactions to changing trade, market, and customer requirements.