During SuperLocal'22, a customer event organized by Goodays on the power of local, Rami Baitiéh, CEO of Carrefour France, took to the stage. He came to share his convictions on transformation by putting humans at the center of Carrefour’s strategy. His recipe for customer satisfaction? Deploying tools to help in-store teams better understand and satisfy customers.
A fervent advocate of the inverted pyramid, placing employees and customers above management, Rami Baitiéh, CEO of Carrefour France, advocates putting people at the center of the organization. "When I arrived two years ago, I was asked what my strategy was. I replied that I didn't know; that I would first listen to the customer. I didn't come in with ready-made methods, I came in with a culture that empowers the people closest to the customer. Putting employees at the top of the pyramid means giving them the autonomy and decision-making power they need to satisfy the customer, he said at the first edition of SuperLocal, an event organized by Goodays. The customer is the best strategist and the best consultant, so they're the ones I want to listen to on a daily basis, to decide what to do. And it works."
NPS collected on a daily basis at Carrefour France
After holding several positions in Romania, Poland, Taiwan, Argentina, and Spain, Rami is pleasantly surprised to discover that NPS at Carrefour France is daily, unlike at other entities.
“Rather than waiting for the results every month, we get the NPS as well as all the verbatims on a daily basis, which helps me a lot in my work," he explains. In fact, I use Goodays every day to find out what the customer is telling us. It allows me to understand what the customer is complaining about. Beyond solving and resolving a one-time problem, it also helps me understand the root causes and direct messages with the management team."
The entire company mobilised around customer listening
To put his convictions about listening to customers into practice, Rami Baitiéh has developed several initiatives. In addition to the Goodays platform which was implemented six years ago, he has deployed cash register books so that hosts and hostesses can record customer suggestions and feedback.
He has also instituted fortnightly roundtable discussions with customers. "Over a coffee or a drink, the customer tells us the truth, unfiltered and with love," adds Rami Baitiéh, who has also set up the display of the store manager's photo, as well as his phone number, inviting customers to exchange directly on WhatsApp. The CEO of Carrefour France is himself setting an example, responding to customers on the dedicated address - ramibaitiehvousrepond@carrefour.com.
Carrefour’s '555' methodology for customer satisfaction
Another initiative that Rami imagined ten years ago in Turkey: was the 555 methodology. This methodology, which is broken down into 15 promises that embody the desire to satisfy customers, has now been adopted throughout the group and relayed by Alexandre Bompard, CEO of Carrefour. "The story is simple: I went to meet a store manager in Istanbul who said to me, 'I can't stand your checkpoints in the audit book anymore. I left school, and joined Carrefour, thinking it would be easier!" I asked him how many points he could retain. He told me 5 points. I deleted some elements, but I kept 15 that I divided into three themes: Trust, Service, and Experience. The first point for the store manager is to say Hello. You can't ask a cashier to say hello and smile at the customer if you don't set an example," says Rami.
The first point of the Experience theme is quite revealing of the culture established by the CEO of Carrefour France: "The customer is the most important person in our day. Always say yes to them." This 555 methodology seems to be proving itself, as Carrefour France has gained 300,000 customers since the beginning of the year. "The key to success, in my opinion, is the proximity that our teams have established with the customer, which is our compass," he concludes.
