Two man deliveries Customer Journey Mapping

The Task 

With 29 million store customers and nearly a billion online visitors every year, Argos is one of the UK’s largest and most trusted multichannel retailers. Whilst most of its products are purchased and picked up same-day, many of its larger items such as furniture and some electricals are home delivered, often needing two people to physically carry the item.

Argos commissioned Customer Faithful to explore the experience of customers placing such orders, known in retail as a ‘2-man drop’. In particular Argos wanted to understand better what really mattered to customers in the delivery process and how input from the contact centre might improve their experience.

Customer Faithful used its Lifelines methodology to shadow a range of customers, using in-home ethnographic interviews and follow up telephone calls to uncover and track the context of their order, their expectations and actual experiences over time (across an 8-12 week period).

Customer-defined touch-points were identified, with findings presented back for each one, including illustrated examples (video, photo, audio recordings), high value ‘moments of truth’ and ‘showstopper’ failure issues.

Following the qualitative analysis, the results were validated across nearly a thousand Argos customers, using a quantitative telephone survey.

Key Impact

Argos adopted the findings in full, using the detail to improve its operations processes. It also implemented internal training, to improve its customer-centric culture.

 “It was a pleasure to work with Customer Faithful. They had really understood the business in a short timeline and the data we received clearly showed that understanding.

The recommendations and explanations were very practical (no consulting/ techie talk!) and therefore it was meaningful. The deliverable has already acted as a great communication tool to a wider audience about areas for us to focus improvement projects. The Lifelines™ process has been very effective in creating a common perspective of customer experience – it’s a great pictorial representation that makes it very clear where there are big gaps.