When it comes to great customer experiences IKEA is unlikely to be a company that heads the list in anyone’s mind. And yet today IKEA is the largest furniture retailer in the world. Let’s take a look at some impressive numbers:
- IKEA has 316 stores in 36 countries,
- Sells approximately 12,000 products to over 626 million visitors annually
- Has 197 million catalogues are printed every year in 29 languages
- The IKEA website has 712 million visits annually
Personally I’m a big fan of IKEA. I like their products, but let’s be honest, anyone who has shopped at IKEA will know their business model is not designed to delight customers at every moment of truth. In fact, many of the moments of truth are nothing short of inconvenient. But this is the genius in IKEA’s business model.
Consider the average IKEA shopping experience. Typically you have to drive out of your way to a semi-industrialised business park to go shopping. You enter an enormous, dusty warehouse and get corralled like sheep around a labyrinth of furniture. You have to contend with screaming kids and tired mothers. Importantly there is the quintessential stop for Swedish meatballs or fish and chips in a hostel styled canteen. You finally make your way out of the maze and have to go and find your flat packs, heavy boxes using a confusing codified system that tells you where your items can be located. Many a time you are frustrated to discover that at least one or two of the items you hunted down in the labyrinth have already been sold out. Too tired to head back into the maze to find a replacement item, you collect what boxes of furniture you can find and, horror of horrors, you have to queue up for a minimum of 45 minutes to pay. You then have to squeeze the boxes into your car, which seems to have shrunk or the van you specifically hired, at great expense, for this shopping spree, so that you can take the boxes home and build the furniture yourself!
What is satisfying about that experience? Very little, and yet IKEA is now the world’s largest furniture retailer.
And it’s not because of price either, because there are cheaper ready-made alternatives. IKEA understands intimately the emotional connection they have with their customers and have ingeniously recognized that one crucial moment of truth – the one moment that matters more than all the other moments of truth put together – This moment is when the customer steps back aftre building their unit of furniture and calls in the family and go “See, I am the MAN or WOMAN who built this”.
IKEA furniture represents the pinnacle of engineering. Once you get the logic of the build, every piece fits together perfectly, easily and it looks great. IKEA is brilliant. Time and time again, they deliver consistently when it matters most and recognize that at almost every other interaction with customers they have leeway to build cost saving “inconveniences” into the customer experience because the product delivers at the most critical moment of truth.
IKEA has identified a business model that goes against most conventional customer experience wisdom and yet still delivers happy customers because they deliver where and when it matters most.
Do you and your staff know what the critical moments of truth are for your business and are they empowered to make the difference at that moment?
Well I would like to add what makes Ikea a success and that is they never stop expanding their products. Almost everytime
I visit, 3 or 4 times a year, the bathroom range has expanded or now they also do more kitchen products etc. So it has become
the one stop shop to complete your house makeover for any room. And of course they have everything on show in those cosy
little rooms so you do not have to have that magic imagination that most of us (especially me) does not possess.
I think you are being hard on their restaurant facilities, yes choice is limited but it is still tasteful, cheap and I like it that they try
and cherish their swedish identity (meatballs and jelly sauce). In the restaurant is a play area for children and there is the
creche at the entrance which parents jump at the chance to drop there cute sweet monsters off so the parents can have some
serious shopping time alone for those all important decisions instead of your children screaming the place down (although
some parents when late and the creche is full shows what happens if you are late which encourages not to do that again!!)
The fact that other shops try and copy their ideas, the cheap early breakfast to get people in early to their stores for example,
is a clear sign IKEA is very thoughtful of the customer experience. The fact that IKEA is still a private company
also says alot about the fact the owners take full responsibility and steer with passion. So if anybody thinks I am writing this
response as a shareholder, I would love to be but that is not possible today!!