Lack of customer service letting down Morrisons supermarket - Yorkshire Post Letters

A fairly regular shopper of Morrisons supermarket, until before the pandemic, when I could see that many store managers had taken their 'eyes off the ball' at this once great store, with its market stall theme around the perimeter of the shop.

One of the two new discounter supermarkets Aldi has rightly gained more of the lucrative market share of food shopping in Britain, and taken over from Morrisons.

If the managing director, David Potts, needs to do weekly early morning visits to supermarkets to see that goods are displayed, it is a poor reflection on the standard of his highly salaried store managers who you rarely see on the shop floor.

If you have empty shelves and the goods are in the store warehouse, you will never sell them to shoppers.

When the new owner, Clayton, Dubilier and Rice (CD&R), private investment company, under the guidance of former Tesco boss, Terry Leahy, decided to cut cost by reducing staff numbers this meant that customers are not going to receive the same level of service, compared to when the 'towering' Sir Ken Morrison was captain of the successful ship.

I have heard several stories about how Sir Ken Morrison would go to staff filling shelves and talk to them before talking to the store about local problems.

Especially in the Yorkshire stores, staff would give honest blunt answers to Ken Morrison's back to basics questions about how the store is trading through their eyes.

The only Morrisons supermarket where I have actively seen a store manager on the shop floor was in Camden in North London. This is the norm in Aldi and Lidl.

I purchased a cheese and onion sandwich, which had the standard egg mayo in it. I approached the manager who was on the shop floor, and said that my son didn't like the egg mayo with his cheese and onion, and he personally organised a replacement one.

That is what I call customer service.

Every time after that I went to Morrisons in Camden for my weekly fish and chips in the cafe, and the manager was around, he would come over to me and ask how I was and offer a free coffee. This is what I call real after sales service as he almost became a friend.

I was jointly organising an Halloween event in St James's park in London and we needed 200 pumpkins for school children to carve out faces, and we went to see this store manager, and as expected he helped us out with our request.