Retailers and occupiers
The relationship with our retailers and other occupiers is a prime focus of our business. We work at all levels to engage with them to ensure that we are providing the high quality service they need for the success of their business.Our property and centre management teams have refined their structured communication programmes this year and the responses from the dialogues have made a valuable input to our business strategy and those of our occupiers.
The design and production of retailer handbooks has been completed with a hard copy distributed to all retailers in our directly managed UK shopping centres early 2008. A secure website has been created to hold the up to date version for each shopping centre handbook to provide retailers with instant access to the appropriate current document.
This outcome followed on from direct engagement with our retailers to establish what would benefit them in the way we operate our centres. Having a common format setting out technical information and procedures across the portfolio, regardless of the type of construction, was identified as an area in which improvements could be made.
This exercise entailed a significant input from both the property management and operational centre management teams to produce documents that worked for all centres.
Job creation
A centre’s sphere of influence results indirectly in many thousands of other jobs in businesses that support and provide services to it and its retailers. This ensures that the local economy grows in parallel with the success of the shopping centre. As entities that continually evolve to satisfy changing expectations of their customers, shopping centres are a catalyst for job creation.Shoppers
We recognise the importance of providing first class facilities and customer service to our shoppers and our focus on attracting and retaining the loyalty of our customers has continued throughout 2008. Customer service desks are a focal point for communicating with our shoppers and customer forums continue to be held at the centres, harvesting customer opinion and suggestions for improvement. A standardised complaints procedure at all our shopping centres enables us to respond promptly and appropriately to all complaints and comments received from our customers. Investigation procedures are in place to prevent reoccurrences.In 2008, three of our shopping centres conducted detailed mystery shopping programmes. These programmes focus on evaluating every retailer within each centre and, in some cases, also the Centre’s Customer Service and Security teams. The key objective for our mystery shopping programmes is to examine the levels and quality of customer service that are offered to our shoppers across each centre.
Results and findings from these exercises are fed back to all tenants by our Centre Management Teams to help improve standards across the centres and also to commend those offering exceptionally high standards to our shoppers. The research framework adopted for the mystery shopping programme also enables the results to be tracked and benchmarked each year to analyse ongoing performance in customer service.
Six of our directly managed centres conducted a total of 26 focus group sessions to which a representative cross-section of the demographic make up of the appropriate centre is invited. The focus group objectives are set according to the requirements of the particular centre, but will typically evaluate customer experiences taking feedback on positive or negative points and assess proposed marketing campaigns.
Each of our centres also undertakes peak and off-peak shopper interviews in the malls. Less detailed than the focus groups, they concentrate on gathering information on frequency of visits, spend, use of catering and mode of transport.
To complete the scope of research, more wide ranging postcode surveys were conducted at all ten directly managed centres. These are more general surveys of who are our shoppers and from where they come.
We continue to invest in research and build upon the powerful databases we have on customer demographics which allow marketing to be tailored to our visitors’ needs. After an unforeseen delay in 2007, our centres’ websites were re-launched in 2008, providing customers with the highest standards of information, competitions and special offers.