We delivered a prioritised list of recommendations and debriefed the senior management team. For example, we determined that the Multichannel Team was growing quickly and had ambitious growth targets, making its previous role as a standalone business unsustainable.
One of our core recommendations was to create a Chief Customer Officer role, which House of Fraser did in mid-2015, bringing together all Head Office functions responsible for creating the customer experience under one team.
In total Project Gold has seen 15 new roles created, 30 roles fundamentally changed and customer insight delivered to all departments through a unified customer insight team.
To support the changes made we followed up by delivering a programme of training to executives from across the business to improve both their strategic understanding of multichannel retailing, and enhance skills and knowledge for specific digital roles.
Since then House of Fraser has seen online sales growth running at circa 30% year on year, moving it ever closer to the 50% online sales target. Its online sales rose a staggering 62% year on year in the seven days to Christmas Day in 2015, now the new structure is bedded-in, and it’s been ranked 5th among UK retailers for its customer satisfaction score according to Foresee.