Customers
Customer satisfaction and innovation management
As a leading international specialist in the wholesale and food retail industry, METRO sees itself as a responsible partner along the entire value chain committed to its customers’ success and satisfaction every day. Our strategy aims to achieve long-term stable growth in like-for-like sales and earnings. To ensure that we remain relevant to our customers and successful in the long term, we have set ourselves the goal of taking the food retail and food service sector to a new level by continuously refining our business model and by increasing our customer focus. Hereby, we always observe our sustainability principles. We do not limit our actions to merely transactional customer satisfaction while they are shopping. In order to intensify our customer relationships within METRO Wholesale, we are also expanding our range of comprehensive services that support our customers in successfully carrying out their day-to-day business. For example, we offer our customers a free website as well as an online reservation tool. The opportunities arising from digitalisation play a key role in this context.
Customer focus and customer satisfaction are central elements of our strategy. In order to continuously assess and consistently improve the satisfaction of our customers, we have introduced the Net Promoter Score nationwide at METRO Wholesale. Besides the purely quantitative measurement of the current satisfaction values, suggestions from customers can be systematically recorded and evaluated. These data can be used to identify additional potentials for improving the shopping experience which are then reflected in, among other things, the design of our stores or assortments.
In order to exploit the opportunities derived from digitalisation and to realise synergies, we are bundling our digitalisation initiatives with the Hospitality Digital business unit and the service company METRO-NOM. Hospitality Digital develops customer- and user-oriented solutions, for example for improvements in the payment process, online ordering systems or other digital solutions especially for the catering sector. In addition, innovative start-up companies are supported by initiatives like METRO Accelerator powered by Techstars.
With our METRO-NOM business unit, we are accelerating the development and internal deployment of digital solutions in order to further increase the efficiency of our organisation.
Other cost-saving measures will be implemented. These include procurement cooperation projects with other international retailers which increase METRO’s competitiveness while creating added value for its customers. One example of this is the new procurement alliance Horizon International which includes METRO, Auchan Retail, Dia Group and Casino Group.
Protection of personal data
The protection of personal data of customers, employees and business partners is extremely important to METRO. This is particularly true considering the fact that corporate processes are increasingly being digitalised, requiring data collection, processing and storage. However, this can only work efficiently if the data-processing subjects can trust that their data will be handled with care and that their personal rights will be respected.
METRO therefore always undertakes to comply with the respective data protection laws of the countries in which METRO is active. In addition, METRO has created a group-wide privacy policy that contains uniform standards for the handling of personal data and is binding for all group companies. All employees of METRO must comply with the requirements of the internal privacy policy and national laws.
For companies operating in Europe, the European Union has already established Europe-wide uniform regulations on the handling of personal data by passing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which has been in force since 25 May 2018, which leads to more transparency in the processing of personal data. In order to be able to meet the special requirements of the GDPR, METRO has already started early to comprehensively review all procedures that dealt with the processing of personal data and, if necessary, to adapt them to the requirements of the GDPR.
METRO has also created a group-wide data protection organisation, consisting of local data protection officers and data privacy managers responsible for corporate data protection. It facilitates the pursuit of overarching and national data protection and digitalisation developments in order to continue to meet the statutory data protection requirements across the group.