I recently spent 3 days in our Bengaluru store for what in IKEA we call as Front Days. Basically, stepping into the real world of our business and interacting with our customers.

It started with me joining the Customer Relations team thinking I will observe. However, I found myself guiding first time visitors on how to navigate the store, helping someone figure out how the locker works, helping the customer with their shipment and furniture assembly queries, answering the students having questions on internships and even taking group selfies of customers and their families. Also had a couple of interesting conversations where someone walked up saying he runs a nursery and wants to supply plants to IKEA. I did not expect business pitches at the entrance, but that is the kind of curiosity and intent you see.

You realise very quickly that every question is different, but the expectation is the same. Help me. NOW!

Also I spent time in the kitchen during Sunday lunch hours serving food to our customers. We had super long queues and continuous orders. No time to pause and no time to check. You just keep serving. In between all that, hearing the feedback like “your food is amazing” and “IKEA restaurants are the best” stayed with me from those busy kitchen hours. That feedback comes when things are at peak, not when it is easy.

Also, an amazing reflection of one of our IKEA values #Togetherness when we had huge Sunday crowd to manage and other co-workers from other functions also stepping up to make sure the customer experience does not break.

In the Market Hall I found the conversations change. Customers were asking about materials, what works better, what should they buy, what do you use at your home and so on. They come with clarity in mind and expect the same in return.

Somewhere in between all this, one thing is very clear that technology, processes, systems… all of it matters but only if it can keep up with this pace and clarity with the business, with our customers!

Because in the end, customers are always one step ahead of what we think is “ready”.

Also… Sunday kitchen rush is a better stress test than most war rooms. 😉