UK's top 10 companies for digital customer experience
In today’s competitive landscape, offering a seamless and end-to-end customer experience – enabled by a state-of-the-art digital backbone – is more important than ever. Meet the UK’s 10 companies that offer the best digital customer experience.
1. Ocado
Ocado is an ecommerce platform that provides solutions for online groceries to retailers across the globe. During the coronavirus pandemic, the firm has enjoyed heightened demand, and earlier in 2021 it reported that its delivery services in the UK were booked up for a solid month, as its easy-to-use website and consumers’ determination to avoid public contact saw them flock to Ocado’s services.
2. Currys PC World
Currys PC World is a British electrical retailer operating in the UK and Ireland, specialising in selling home electronics and household appliances. While the UK high street having come under intense pressure from the ecommerce scene in recent years, Currys PC World has managed to adapt to offer a hybridised service, which positioned it well not only to avoid losing business to online vendors, but for the lockdown months of 2020.
3. ASOS
ASOS is a British online fashion and cosmetic retailer, primarily aimed at young adults. The website sells over 850 brands as well as its own range of clothing and accessories, and ships to all 196 countries from fulfilment centres in the UK, US and Europe – and reported the addition of 3 million customers amid the pandemic thanks to consumers moving their fashion purchasing online.
4. Marks & Spencer
Major British multinational retailer Marks & Spencer specialises in selling clothing, home products and food products, mostly of its own label. While bricks and mortar stores suffered a sluggish Christmas thanks to the pandemic, M&S put in a creditable performance, buoyed by food sales and its online tie-up with Ocado – struck before the crisis – meaning it managed a 2.6% increase in like-for-like grocery takings.
5. Argos
Argos is a catalogue retailer operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland, acquired by Sainsbury's supermarket chain in 2016. Operating as a click-and-collect service primarily, Argos has long since adapted to allowing customers to reserve its warehoused goods via its website, as well as adapting for delivery in recent years – something which proved essential for lockdowns where it was not defined as an ‘essential service’.
6. John Lewis
John Lewis & Partners is a brand of high-end department stores operating throughout the UK, with concessions also located in the Republic of Ireland and Australia. Thanks to the support of its online presence, which maintained sales throughout the pandemic, John Lewis’ owner was able repay a £300 million Covid-19 loan it borrowed to help ride out the virus crisis – as it revealed better than expected festive trading.
7. Tesco
Tesco is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer; the third-largest retailer in the world measured by gross revenues and the ninth-largest in the world measured by revenues. In response to unprecedented demand for online groceries, Tesco said it completed seven million online orders over the Christmas season – with sales up by more than 80% over the 19 weeks at the end of 2020.
8. Boohoo
Founded in 2006, by 2019, Boohoo had sales of 2019 of £857 million. Specialising in own brand fashion clothing, with over 36,000 products, the company focuses primarily on digitally savvy shoppers aged between 16 and 30 – something which was clearly successful even before the lockdown months saw a huge influx of new customers, pushing it in September to broaden its full year revenue growth guidance from 25% to 23-32%.
9. EE
EE is the largest mobile network operator in the United Kingdom, with 27.5 million subscribers as of October 2020. With school students left to prepare for their exams at home in 2021, the telco is one over several firms to state that the BBC Bitesize service will be free to use on their network. The company offers a range of other services including 5G solutions, a call tracking platform, internet broadband services and more.
10. Zara
The Spanish apparel brand is the largest company in the Inditex group, the world's largest apparel retailer. In September 2010, Zara launched its online boutique, beginning in Spain, the UK, Portugal, Italy, Germany and France, before expanding to Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and the US, among others.
Behind the ranking
The top 10 comes from a study conducted by consulting firm BearingPoint. The report benchmarked the digital maturity of the sales and marketing operation of nearly 400 companies across seven markets: Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK. The researchers assessed performance on four main factors: digital marketing, digital product experience, ecommerce and e-CRM.
Commenting on the research, Stuart Higgins, Partner at BearingPoint, said, “Retailers lead the way on digital maturity in the study, dominating the top 10. However, this is no time for retailers to rest on their laurels with customer expectations evolving at pace, now is the time to double down on digital.”
