Our customers
Understanding our customers better than anyone else will give us real competitive edge.
Customer focus
Customer focus is about understanding our customers. It is about targeting specific customer segments and providing the products and services that people want at a price they are prepared to pay.
We learn about our customers from talking to them directly and from listening to our people who serve them every day. We also look at our competitors to understand what they offer to their customers and what we might learn from them. Once we have that information we aim to get as much insight on our customers as we can and then use that to find ways in which to serve them even better.
This is all part of what we call our relentless focus on the customer.
Customer segmentation
During 2009/10 we embarked on customer segmentation projects across Whitbread. The initial phases of the segmentation work have been completed for Premier Inn and Costa, while the project for the pub restaurants is in progress. The aim was to define customer segments, establish the size of the opportunity and Whitbread's share of each segment. This deep insight allows us to develop strategies to build on successes and to win new customers.
In Premier Inn we will give greater focus to new parts of the leisure and business markets. For example we will look at ways of attracting more 'retired sightseers' and 'short break travellers' to stay with us. In Costa we will be looking for ways to meet the needs of the different customer groups identified - from the 'grab and go commuters' to those looking to spend more time relaxing with a coffee. By understanding our customers in this way we will be able to look after them better than ever before.
Committed to listening to customers
We hold regular customer focus groups to explore the thoughts and feelings of customers. We consider customer feedback in all decision making.
Premier Inn guest satisfaction programme
Key to delivering the Whitbread vision of being the most customer-focused hospitality company in the world is ensuring that we accurately and robustly measure customer feedback. It is important that we always focus on what's important to the customer at both a brand and outlet level.
The Premier Inn guest satisfaction programme e-mails approximately 1.5 million customers within 24 hours of their stay to ask them for their feedback. We receive a massive 500,000 responses every year, making the Premier Inn guest satisfaction programme one of the biggest and most robust programmes in Europe.
Premier Offers - inspired by our customers
A clear example of how Whitbread has used customer feedback to inform strategic decision making is 'Premier Offers'.
Using the Premier Inn guest satisfaction survey we conducted a major research project to understand the needs of leisure users and price elasticity.
Since the launch of Premier Offers we have seen significant increases in weekend occupancy and a huge improvement on customer value for money scores.
Costa customer satisfaction
Costa uses independent market research agency, YouGov, to deliver robust feedback from our customers. In addition Costa obtains insight from key competitors in order to provide benchmarking data.
Costa has signifcantly improved its customer scores achieving a score of 73% for overall satisfaction. The results of this study help to inform strategic decisions and marketing campaigns such as the successful '7 out of 10' campaign.
Brand standards - Hotels and Restaurants
Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants use an independent audit company, 'Hospitality Now', to measure compliance to brand standards. Every site is audited at least twice per year using a 1,000 question audit to keep us delivering a consistent product to all our customers on every visit.
Brand standards - Costa
Costa uses customer satisfaction data to identify what is really important to the customer and, from this, has developed a robust set of standards which can be measured to track operational performance. This is achieved through a mystery customer programme which is conducted by independent agency, Re Act, together with our brand standards audit, which is completed by our internal team of auditors. Over the past year Costa has completed over 9,000 mystery customer visits and brand standards audits, with stores receiving a minimum of one visit per quarter.
