I’ve written to you regularly over the past few weeks as we adapt the way we work to keep our shelves full while keeping you and our colleagues safe.
We continue to make changes in line with government guidelines and in response to feedback from you and our colleagues.
I am writing today to tell you about measures we are taking to protect our customers and colleagues and to update you on our product availability and on how we continue to support our elderly and vulnerable customers.
Keeping our customers and colleagues safe
Keeping you and our colleagues safe is our number one priority. This week we have brought in further measures to help you keep a safe distance from other customers and from our colleagues when you are visiting our stores.
We have queuing systems in place outside stores and ask you to please queue at a safe distance of two metres apart. Please also try to keep a safe distance from other customers and from our colleagues when you are doing your shop. We have placed clear markings on shop floors to help you know what a safe distance is.
From today, we are asking everyone to please only send one adult per household to our shops.
This helps us keep people a safe distance apart and also helps to reduce queues to get into stores. Our store teams will be asking groups with more than one adult to choose one adult to shop and will ask other adults to wait. Children are of course welcome if they are not able to stay at home.
To help keep our colleagues safe while serving customers, we now have screens at most manned checkouts. In the next few days we will have finished installing the screens across all manned checkouts in every supermarket, convenience store and Argos collection point.
Feeding the nation
We have been working hard with our suppliers to improve our product availability. Most people are now just buying what they need for themselves and their families. This means we now often have stock on the shelves all day and at the end of the day.
People have been queuing to get into our stores when they open in the mornings, but customers are now finding they can shop at any time of the day and feel confident in finding most of what they need.
As stock continues to build, we have been reviewing whether we still need to limit the number of items people buy. I am pleased to tell you that we will start to remove limits from Sunday. Limits will remain in place on the most popular items which include UHT milk, pasta and tinned tomatoes.
We have removed limits from Easter eggs immediately as we know families often want to buy more than three and we have plenty of these in all stores and online.
Supporting elderly and vulnerable customers
We are continuing to prioritise elderly and vulnerable customers for online delivery slots and our customer Careline has helped 170,000 customers, who will now get priority access to online delivery. In total, we have offered priority booking to more than 450,000 elderly or vulnerable customers.
I apologise to customers who have been struggling to get through to our online team. The team is working at full capacity and we are doing our very best to get to people as quickly as possible.
We are expanding our groceries online service as much and as quickly as we can. Two weeks ago we had 370,000 online grocery slots available. By the end of next week we will have increased this to 600,000 across home delivery and click and collect and we will continue to add more capacity over the coming weeks.
Supporting our colleagues
Our colleagues really are doing a remarkable job. I have been into a number of stores over the past few days and have been struck by their dedication and their determination to do the best job for our customers. These are very uncertain times and our colleagues really are on the frontline.
We are doing everything we can to keep our colleagues safe and this includes supporting them if they need to self-isolate. Where colleagues are considered vulnerable, we are paying them in full for the recommended 12 weeks self-isolation, including colleagues who live with extremely vulnerable family members who the government has asked to shield for 12 weeks.
I am personally committed to ensuring the safety of our colleagues and we will continue to do the right thing to protect them throughout this time.
I have been delighted to see that customers have told us they think colleague friendliness is at an all-time high at the moment. I think this is real testament both to the hard work of our colleagues and also the fantastic recognition they are getting for the vital role they are playing throughout this crisis.
Thank you for treating our colleagues with the respect and kindness they deserve. They really are doing their best to serve our customers well in these challenging times.
Best wishes
Mike
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