online supermarket laurence hene gold awards

Star order: Ocado

Name: Lawrence Hene

Job title: Marketing and commercial director

You must be pleased with this win, what with Amazon finally launching its grocery service. What’s your response to fresh competition? Our number one focus is offering the shopper the best experience and we keep evolving and improving it. In Amazon we have a new competitor who has proven a fantastic retailer but we will continue to look after the shopper and make their experience better in things like availability, range and user experience. The online grocery market is 5% to 10% of all food sales in the UK so there’s a huge opportunity for all of us.

What have you done to improve your website? There’s always lots going on at Ocado, whether it’s obvious changes or tweaks no one really notices. We’ve recently tested a new system where the search box gives you suggested items based on shopper data, and we’ve also launched new online coupons that can be added straight away, so you don’t need to enter a code.

Does that have the potential to drive sales? Absolutely, but really we’re just looking at making the shopper’s life better. Every click we can save them is a great thing. We want them to spend less time doing the boring bits of the shopping and more time discovering new products.

We’ve come to expect great availability and the interface is well-known but talk us through the driver service? For a long time we’ve been making sure our drivers are hired for their aptitude in dealing with customers. They’re the face of our business and we trust them and empower them to do a wonderful job. I’m really glad to see that’s being reflected in the panel this week. It’s really important because that’s the only interaction with us beyond the pixels on the screen so we really invest a lot of time and effort in making sure that’s as good as it can be.