Carphone Warehouse 2015 Annual Report Download - page 14

Dixons Carphone plc Annual Report and Accounts 2014/15
Strategic report
Strategy and business model
12
Business model
Our business model, driven by customer insight, comprises
three pillars underpinned by a low cost operating model.
In order to ensure we understand what products and services
our customers want, how they use the products they buy from
us and what they think of the service they get from us, we use
extensive customer insight. This includes discussions at
customer panels, interviews, home visits and detailed surveys.
We use this information to build our ranges, improve our stores
and services and for other business decisions. This is
supported by mystery shoppers, exit surveys and customer
feedback. During the year our UK and Nordics businesses
made considerable progress in customer satisfaction metrics
as we continue to improve the business.
Taking each of the three pillars in turn, our model can be
described as follows:
Multi-channel
The shopping trip for customers is constantly evolving.
Our objective is to provide our customers with a seamless
and personalised experience where convenience, ease of
navigation and simplicity are key in attracting customers to
shop with us whether it is online, in-store or a combination
of both.
We constantly aim to develop and improve our customer
journey whether via our assisted sales tool Pin Point or by
improving stores, making them easier to shop in, with for
example, improved navigation, better signage, enabling
customers to interact with products before they buy, as well
as good advice on features and benefits from our colleagues.
Our websites are an integral part of the customer shopping
journey. In recognition of how customer trends are evolving we
have made it easier for our colleagues, in particular within our
CurrysPCWorld stores, to access products and extended
ranges in store.
Our training programmes combined with our product learning
centres and customer journeys provide our colleagues with the
right tools to understand customers’ needs and to provide
them with the complete solution to properly meet those needs.
We will continue to improve the training of our colleagues and
the ways in which we can make them experts in the products
we sell. For example they have recently undertaken a new
training programme focusing on selling multi-play.
Products
Combining our customer insight with our market strength we
can make sure we have the right range of products and
services in our stores to suit customers’ needs. Our scale and
relationships with suppliers means that we can work with them
to showcase the latest technology, connectivity and products
in our stores with areas dedicated to key suppliers.
In consumer electronics, own-brand products enable us to
offer customers greater choice and access to a range of
products at competitive prices. We have defined a clear
‘good, better, best’ brand range including: Currys and PC
World Essentials; Logik; iWantit; Advent; Goji; and Sandstrøm
brands. We see particular opportunities in the area of
accessories and essentials with, for example, our own range
of Sandstrøm cables.
After sales services and support
Our customers need help with their products, whether it be
delivery and installation, help keeping their products up and
running or repair should things go wrong. Our business in the
UK & Ireland sets the benchmark for our services infrastructure
under our Geek Squad and KNOWHOW brands, the latter of
which is also available across the Nordics.
We operate the largest network of two-man deliveries in the
UK with an average of 50,000 deliveries per week enabling us
to provide customers with the convenience of next day delivery
in a four hour time slot or the option of a free delivery at a later
date. We repair more than 1 million handsets per year and
provide over 11 million insurance or service agreements, carry
out approximately 500,000 computing set-ups per year and
take 125,000 technical support calls each week.
Our Geek Squad and KNOWHOW teams in stores, in our call
centres as well as field technicians, can provide set-up and
upgrade services and online fix and back up services. Our
market leading range of help and support services ensure a
customer has the backing of expertise and support that keeps
their technology up and running. Our state of the art repair
facility in Newark is able to repair and return a laptop in seven
days. Our network of field technicians offer ‘white goods’
repair in a market we estimate to be worth around £500 million
a year.
Through ownership of the service infrastructure we can ensure
the quality of service delivered to customers. This, we believe,
provides us with a significant competitive advantage in
meeting the needs of our customers, as well as a revenue
stream not readily available to single channel online and mass
market competitors.