Rami Baitiéh (CEO de Morrisons) : “Le patron, c’est le client.” – Echange avec Sébastien Couasnon

Good evening everyone. Thank you for having me tonight. Thank you, Nicolas. To answer your question simply, I drive the turnaround through the first line. In a dashboard, the first line is revenue, the second is margin, the third is costs, and at the bottom you have what's called EBITDA or EBIT. I always drive the turnaround through the first line. Revenue comes through customer relationships. So my first operation, my first secret, is the customer. To know the customer, you might say you need to change the assortment. Yes, but if I want to modify the assortment, based on what? Based on customer desires. You might say change the store size. But if I decide to change the store size or do online commerce, it's based on customer needs. So I know one thing, but everything I know is only 5% of what the customer wants because there's such a gap between people at the top of the pyramid and customers. The customer is really at the heart of my strategy. How do I do it? The first thing, as you mentioned, is the inverted pyramid. I take the CEO who's at the top, keep the exact same pyramid but invert it. The CEO becomes the person at the bottom who supports the pyramid on their shoulders. Then you find senior management. Above that, middle management. Above that, the collaborators who are now at the top of the pyramid. And above everyone, you find the customer — this customer who pays our salaries and bonuses. We invert this pyramid and every level has one mission: to respond to the needs and wishes of the customer. The famous 555 method with 15 commitments, always keeping the customer in mind. Once we've inverted the pyramid, everyone focuses on the customer and we give more empowerment at each level. The checkout operator can make decisions because they're closest to the customer. Instead of going to see some department director or marketing director, every person in the company becomes responsible for the customer relationship and is empowered through this inverted pyramid culture. Now since we've put the customer on top, we listen to the customer. Through NPS — the Net Promoter Score — I track NPS daily by department, sector, store, region. I also track customer complaints, Mystery Shopper visits, Google comments. We hold roundtables — each store does two per month. Once we've listened to the customer, we understand their demands. These might be twenty demands, a hundred, a thousand. So that my 110,000-person company can pivot in the right direction, instead of coming with a 50-page customer complaint document, I come with five points to build trust, five points for service, and five points for experience. Even basic things — if I'm restocking and I don't greet customers, and a customer complaint says your staff isn't friendly, I implement 'hello.' Often people don't complain even though they think it — 90% of dissatisfied people don't say so. So we take the five most important points for the customer and make commitments. We tell customers, if you find a single expired product from now on, here's how we'll compensate you. This becomes a constitution. When I finish the first five, I move to the next five. The 555 method is based on listening to the customer — we narrow down dozens of customer comments into five points we can hold on one hand. Five for trust, five for service, five to guarantee the experience. This works — it worked in Argentina, Taiwan, France, and now in the UK. The content differs because the demands differ, but the method is the same. It's like asking if 1+1 in Polish is the same as 1+1 in French — it's mathematics.

My week, like today, starts at 8 a.m. with a meeting called Customer Relationship. I have a dashboard with the first line being the number of complaints from the previous week by department. The second line is granular NPS. The third line is Trustpilot — an app in England where customers leave reviews when they're unhappy. Then Google — what negative comments did we receive last week? How many comments went unanswered? Checkout staff and others also give their input, and it all feeds into this dashboard. On Monday morning I see a clear picture of my customer relationship. For example, this morning — a weak signal that came up: last week we ran a loyalty collector offer — buy this product and get five pounds off future purchases. But we didn't mention there was a minimum basket requirement. The customer got to the checkout, didn't understand the message, said 'I have to go back and buy something else, I'm losing face.' The message wasn't clear. Writing it down isn't enough — you have to ensure the customer understands it. Just an example of something that needs to be fixed immediately.

I put my email address on the website saying: 'Dear customers, if my company — which is supposed to respond to you and satisfy you — doesn't do it, well someone has to. And that someone will be me. Write to me and I'll respond.' Out of 110,000 people, you might ask why not find someone else. I don't want to become a help desk or customer service, but if no one in my 110,000-person company responds, what can I do? So I respond. And when I respond, I don't have the answer — I CC the person responsible and say 'Please find a positive solution for this customer.' We remember negative feedback more often than people saying 'I love Morrisons, I go every morning, you're the best in the world.' That feels nice in the moment but then you move on.

For example, last week a customer filled her trolley and while leaving the store, the security agent thought he was very clever and asked her five times for her receipt. She showed the receipt. He wanted to check in detail to find something wrong for no reason. But the way he treated and approached the customer was really far from ideal. I don't like this kind of thing at all because our business is incredibly difficult. The customer has had a long, hard day — they need to have a pleasant experience, whether online or in store. And what I say for the customer, I also say for the employee. My email is also available to all collaborators. When HR doesn't respond, someone has to — and that's me. The employee, by the way, is number two in your pyramid. The client is number one, but the employee is right there.

The application itself is under discussion, but using technology for customer relationships — I believe in it 100%. You can automate your research and customer feedback collection compared to a manual or unproven method. I'm absolutely for equipping ourselves with technology, especially AI-based, that improves customer relationships. I use many applications. For instance, I use Gemini. I ask all my checkout teams to send me the most repeated customer comments from the previous week. I receive thousands of comments. Instead of reading them one by one, I give them to Gemini and say 'Give me the five most important points.' In two seconds, Gemini gives me the top five and I know what customers expect. Simple things, but you need to equip yourself with tools that help you collect information, choose direction, and prioritize — because customers ask for enormously many things and nobody can do everything. You need to prioritize and standardize.

No, because it's very simple. And we have a partnership with Google. I feel they've made up for their early lag. But yes, we have a partnership with Google and they've promised us that all the data we put in stays with us — there's no machine learning on it.

That's exactly the discussion I had with Google, which today provides exclusivity over the data.

I think it's a disruptive application. I saw it working in the US at the expo in New York. I went to give a conference and Nicolas showed it to me. I was amazed. I connected Nicolas with my teams. When you equip yourself with a modern, simple-to-use technological tool, it's a huge plus if you believe in customer relationships. But beyond that, technology or the application is only part of the solution. The main solution is the company culture. Does the company culture put the customer above the pyramid? That's 60% of the solution. Then, do the processes allow the company to work as a chain instead of in silos? And finally, you get the best application and it helps. But if you have the application without the company alignment beforehand, you have a beautiful application, but culture and good processes are still necessary.