What does a lead customer experience manager do? What does your day to day look like? I basically cover anything that our customers come into contact with. So that’s all of the front end, as well as things like cash, advertising and tickets. I also manage two petrol stations off site, so it’s quite a big role. There are four lead managers here and we take it in turns to cover the store manager, Ali Khan, when he’s away. I’m the chosen one this week.
How does your location impact trade? This store was built on the site of Fletchers Bakery. Our online operation goes out as far as Leeds, so we have a massive range of customers. Sheffield has two universities, plus two football grounds, including Hillsborough, which is just down the road, so trade is big on home games. Throw Easter in there and we’ve had a whole new range of customers come in over the past week.
Was Easter weekend busy for you? Easter dinner is the new Christmas dinner in terms of how people are prepping. We sold the most hot cross buns and legs of lamb we’ve ever sold. Part of that was definitely down to our stock control as a business being brilliant this year, which allowed us to keep availability high. But we’ve also had a massive Nectar price deal on the lamb legs – they were selling out left, right and centre.
Your score of 95 is impressive given the rush, how did you prepare? Easter is Easter, so we know when it’s going to come around. It wasn’t just a matter of having products on the shelf and making sure they look nice – we really delved down bay by bay, product by product at what we thought were going to be the best sellers. It was a full team effort, and this score has been the icing on the cake of all our hard work.
Our shopper described the store as in “excellent condition”, have you had a refit? No, but the store opened 13 years ago, so it’s very modern, light and airy on the shop floor. We work hard to stay on top of the simple things. You have to take your manager glasses off and look at things through a customer’s eyes, and we do walks every single day.
Were you impacted by Storm Dave? The store was closed on the Sunday, and we weren’t expecting any deliveries, so it didn’t really impact us. I did however make sure that I drove a few of our colleagues home rather than them walking in the horrible weather!
What’s your next big focus as a store team? Everything is focused on outdoors and getting ready for summer. We’ve got the World Cup coming up as well. As a store, and as a city, we get really involved in events like Pride, too.
What other community work do you do as a store? We work really closely with a local care home. The residents come to our in-store Starbucks every Monday for a ‘knit and natter’ after they’ve done their shop.
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