Marks & Spencer embraces the future of retail with Microsoft Teams for frontline workers

The Windsor location where Williams works, just a few minutes away from the royal residence of Windsor Castle, is one of more than 600 Marks & Spencer owned stores around the United Kingdom, and each one is at the forefront of a digital-first reimagining of retail. For Sacha Berendji, Group Property, Store Development and Technology Director at Marks & Spencer, pairing the organization’s digital-first mindset with innovations on the shop floor is what the future of retail is all about. “We have seen our customers’ shopping habits constantly change and evolve,” he says. “At M&S, we have built a culture around serving our customers how they want to be served. Today, a huge part of that is developing digital capabilities in our physical stores.” Williams’ experience using Teams on the shop floor to work more efficiently and spend more time with customers is one example of how Marks & Spencer is using Microsoft tools to modernize all aspects of the shopping experience.

Supporting great service with powerful collaboration tools

To serve customers in the new, modernized Marks & Spencer, communication between frontline workers is essential. “In the past, the vast majority of colleagues were not connected at all,” says Berendji. “One of the key elements of our transformation program was to give our management colleagues Surface Go; we’ve distributed 5,000 in total. Surface devices combined with Teams have created a way for colleagues to quickly reach each other and get the information they need instantly.” Using personal mobile phones or any of the store-issued Surface and Honeywell devices, frontline workers now access Teams as the single collaboration hub where they do everything from checking stock to sharing product insights with colleagues, all in an effort to serve customers better. “With Teams, I'm much closer to the customer because all the information I need is at my fingertips,” says Williams.

Managers also use Teams to access Power BI to help plan for the future, reviewing upcoming promotions and seasonal changeovers and making informed decisions about how to distribute resources. “Power BI in Teams supports managers delivering great customer service by making it easy to access vital information relating to individual stores,” says Berendji. Power BI has also emerged as a powerful way to monitor customer Net Promoter Scores and gauge the effects of store initiatives on customer satisfaction.

When managers need to reach out quickly with important information for every store employee, Teams is the most expedient and reliable way to communicate. When the COVID-19 lockdown was first announced, Williams used Teams to communicate updates to the entire workforce of the location he manages. “We had a huge number of colleagues due to attend work, and I was trying to think of the quickest and easiest way to contact everyone directly and put their mind at ease,” he recalls. “ It was so helpful to be able to reach every store associate through such a simple function in Teams.”

As a store manager, Williams also turned to Teams when he had to share information with colleagues about the organization’s approach to furlough throughout the pandemic. “I had only been store manager for two weeks when the UK Government introduced a furlough scheme in response to the pandemic,” says Williams. “It was a very serious message to share, and it felt more personal and engaging to do a video. I uploaded a Microsoft Stream video to Teams so everyone could watch the announcement on their own time.” Williams also attached FAQ documentation to the video, making it easy for employees to get more information without having to leave the Teams interface. “It felt appropriate to share updates in my own words with a video rather than just uploading a document,” says Williams.

Throughout the pandemic, Teams was used by furloughed employees to stay connected with their colleagues and the business at large. “Teams played a really crucial role in helping everyone keep in touch with each other throughout the pandemic,” says Mahoney. “It was very reassuring to have one place where everyone could get the information they needed and also touch base with their colleagues.”

Empowering colleagues to serve customers from anywhere

To provide a modern work experience for frontline retail employees, Marks & Spencer has focused on bringing the power of Teams directly to the store floor via handheld devices and tablets. “We have deployed Surface Go 2 devices to all 5,000 of our store management teams as well as 21,000 handheld Honeywell Devices to frontline retail employees across our 600 stores,” says Berendji. “Our colleagues use these devices to take customer payments, check inventory, and access Microsoft Teams to find everything they need to do their jobs. Putting Microsoft Teams in the hands of our colleagues has allowed us to execute our digital transformation in a powerful way.”

Before deploying Surface and Honeywell devices loaded with Teams, store managers and frontline workers had to answer customer queries and reach out to colleagues from fixed workstations on the shop floor. “Answering customer questions and tracking down inventory used to take considerably longer,” says Berendji. “Today, we have hundreds of Surface and Honeywell devices  on the store floor that empower colleagues to assist customers from anywhere—it’s a seamless experience.”

For managers, the combination of Teams and Surface Go devices is helping them spend more time on the store floor and less time confined to offices “backstage.” “Because they can access all the information they need via Teams on their Surface Go devices, store managers are enabled to spend more time interacting with customers and colleagues on the store floor,” says Scott Townend, Programme Manager at Marks & Spencer. “We have almost eliminated the need for offices. It’s been liberating.” Using to Teams, colleagues can get in touch with each other, no matter where they are in store. “As retailers, the best place we can be is on the shop floor,” says Julia Palmer Bennett, Store Manager at Marks & Spencer, Hedge End. “With Surface Go devices and Teams, employees have the information they need at their fingertips to help customers and work more efficiently.”

Keeping work and life separate with applications that adapt to employees needs

Teams has also helped the organization reduce the use of shadow IT among frontline workers. “When colleagues needed to get in touch with one another, they would often use applications like WhatsApp to reach out to their colleagues,” says Berendji. “We had a lot of feedback from across the business that people found it hard to switch off at the end of the day because work related communications were still coming through to their mobile phones. Teams has since replaced most of those extraneous apps and empowered employees to improve their work/life balance.” Williams found the app intuitive to use, as did many of his colleagues. And the ability to mute notifications in Teams helps employees keep their work and personal lives separate; “When colleagues used WhatsApp and Facebook to communicate, personal life and work life merged together. Teams allows us to separate the two much more easily,” he says.

Supporting sustainability by encouraging a paperless approach

Sustainability is a major factor in how leaders at Marks & Spencer envision the future of the business. “The use of handheld devices and Teams helps support the organization’s ‘Plan A’ initiative for a sustainable future,” says Townend. “We wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing and empowering our managers to go paperless.” Today, managers use Microsoft Shifts in Teams to distribute schedules to frontline workers—and eliminate paper schedules. “In the past, schedules were printed and posted on the wall,” says Miles Mahoney, Foods Customer Assistant and In-Store Digital Champion at Marks & Spencer, Eastleigh. “Before Shifts in Teams, managing your schedule was difficult,” says Emma Frost, Sales Assistant at Marks & Spencer, Hedge End. “If your shift changed, you would have to contact your manager and confirm, but today I just get a notification on my phone.”

The integration of Shifts in Teams is further supported by Blue Yonder, a workforce management platform that provides labor forecasts to help optimize staff schedules. “Blue Yonder works behind the scenes to align our colleague resources to trade patterns and make sure that we are best equipped to serve our customers,” explains Stephen Bolton, Product Owner, Communication and Collaboration at Marks & Spencer. “Using the Microsoft Graph API for Shifts, we have created an integration that enables employees to surface their schedules directly in Teams in the Shifts interface. One of the key advantages of Graph API for Shifts is the ability to customize self-service functions that work best for our workforce, such as enabling Shift swap and disabling Shift Offer. ”

“Managers also use OneNote to consolidate information like sales numbers in one place rather than printing physical copies,” says Townend. “We have reduced paper use by one third annually by switching to Surface devices and using Teams for store communications, and we expect to see that impact grow as we deploy more digital tools to the frontline workforce.”

Williams, who has seen nearly 100 percent engagement with Teams at the Marks & Spencer location he manages, also uses Teams to share digital “launch packs” with employees. “Everything we used to print, whether it’s a policy, a launch pack, a trade update, you name it, we now share in Teams,” he says. “The positive impact on sustainability is a huge benefit.”

Bridging the gap between headquarters and the frontline of retail

Marks & Spencer locations equipped with Surface Go 2 devices and Teams, all 600 of them, enjoy a more direct line of communication from corporate headquarters to the shop floor, and vice versa. In the past, store managers relied on email to receive weekly “store actions”—a document containing business priorities and tasks to be completed—information they would print from fixed workstations or offices away from the shop floor and pass on to frontline workers. Today, updates arrive via Tasks in Teams, which brings together tasks from To Do and Planner. “Delegating store actions and making sure that all the items are completed was time-consuming and took me away from the customer,” says Williams. “Now, using Tasks in Teams, I can quickly identify business-critical actions and assign them to the appropriate team member. It’s a huge time-saver.” Williams has also noticed that frontline workers are empowered by the use of Tasks in Teams. “There is a sense of empowerment that was lacking before when all the tasks were assigned by a manager,” he says. “Today, colleagues take ownership of tasks and assign themselves to actions that land within their area of expertise. The sense of agency employees gain from assigning and completing tasks proactively contributes to a positive team culture.”

Task publishing also helps create more visibility into how individual store locations are performing, something that was hard to gauge when communication happened predominantly via email. “Not only was a lot of time wasted searching for communications and following up with managers, but there was no feedback loop between areas of the business,” remembers Townend. “The use of Teams and Surface devices democratizes information and ensures that every employee is connected to the business, which helps drive outcomes more effectively.” Some Marks & Spencer locations have even reduced their number of weekly meetings now that everyone uses Teams to stay in the loop.

According to Nicole Edwards, Retail Communications and Engagement Manager, Task publishing has already had tangible benefits for individual stores, reducing the volume of communications by as much as 80 percent. “In the past, we sent PDF documents containing information and promotions to all the stores, and people felt overwhelmed by the amount of communication,” she says. “With Tasks in Teams, we target individual stores with only the information they need, freeing up more time for them to focus on the customer.”

Already, Teams has been used to help insights flow more easily from the store floor to corporate headquarters. Today, an app called “Suggest to Steve,” is embedded in Teams, where employees can easily suggest business improvements to the company’s CEO, Steve Rowe. “Having Teams as our one communication platform that is easily accessible from personal and store-issued devices has revolutionized communication between areas of the business,” says Townend. “For instance, we have connected our trading team with frontline workers who are closest to our customers for insights on how certain products land in store.” Regional managers also use Teams to improve their connection with the stores they oversee. Using Teams meetings with store managers, they leverage the video capabilities to conduct digital walk-throughs. “During the pandemic, Teams meetings became an important tool for staying connected while minimizing in-person contact,” says Townend.

Mahoney, who is the chair of the Business Improvement Group in addition to being an in-store digital champion, finds Teams helps him interact with colleagues at Marks & Spencer locations across the United Kingdom, something that would have been difficult to manage in the past. “Teams helps me network much more easily with the regional teams and across the whole country as well,” he says. “It’s helped create a really useful community where we can post questions and offer support.”

Delivering exceptional customer experiences with digital tools

“From the very top of the business, we use Teams to communicate to specific groups, individual departments, and even single employees,” says Berendji. “It’s a big step forward and it helps us provide better customer service.” Customers are increasingly demanding a more unified, omnichannel retail experience, notes Berendji. Creating a seamless flow of information across locations and business units is a big part of how Marks & Spencer plans to address evolving customer demand. “By emphasizing digital tools that make it easier for customer assistants to do their jobs, we are helping create exceptional customer experiences,” agrees Williams. “That’s how we use Teams to support our digital journey.”