Selfridges
Create a clear vision of the Selfridges in-store customer experience.
The brief
Selfridges, renowned for its luxury retail offerings, aimed to elevate its in-store experience to reflect the high standards and unique identity of the brand. Our task was to craft a clear, cohesive vision for the Selfridges in-store customer journey, ensuring that every touchpoint within the store embodied the brand’s commitment to quality, exclusivity, and exceptional service.
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Create a clear vision of the Selfridges in-store customer experience.
Provide an overview based on 2 key specific shopping services, as well as an analysis of services offered.text goes here -
Focussed qual & quant research across 2 key journeys;
1 - The purchase of a dress.
2 - The purchase of a gift.
Wider research across 14 key services.
Impact
🔍 Delivered a comprehensive 360° assessment of the Selfridges Customer Experience, mapping every touchpoint and uncovering key opportunities.
✅ Produced a scored and prioritised backlog of improvements, providing a clear roadmap for elevating customer satisfaction and efficiency.
📘 Developed a strategic playbook, empowering teams with actionable guidelines for seamless future service implementation.
💡 Enabled a complete digital overhaul and end-to-end redesign of the customer journey, setting a new standard for service excellence.
Phase 1 - Plan & Diagnose
The first stage of the Selfridges project was focused on planning and diagnosis — building a deep understanding of both customer and employee experiences across the store. Our goal was to uncover not just what people were doing, but also the emotions, motivations, and behaviours shaping those experiences.
Approach
We began by speaking directly to the people who matter most: customers. Through interviews, focus groups, and observational studies, we listened to their stories, set them tasks, and watched how they navigated different missions in-store. Rather than relying on simple yes/no answers, our research focused on behaviours and emotions, giving us insight into how experiences truly played out.
To complement this, we went undercover for two weeks inside the store, embedding ourselves in the day-to-day environment. This allowed us to hear the stories of employees first-hand while conducting our own observational research. Combining both customer and employee perspectives gave us a 360° view of the current experience.
Research Completed
Over the course of this phase, we explored:
Employee and customer interviews – to capture stories, frustrations, and moments of delight.
Customer focus groups – to test perceptions and gather collective feedback on experiences.
Shadowed customer missions – following real journeys end-to-end to see pain points and highlights in context.
Eye-tracking analysis – to understand attention and navigation patterns in-store.
Environmental analysis – reviewing the physical environment, layout, and sensory cues that shaped experience.
Regional store visits – to compare experiences beyond the flagship Oxford Street store and test consistency.
Data deep dive – layering quantitative insight on top of qualitative findings for a fuller picture.
In total, we covered 14 key services and 2 critical buying journeys, giving us a rich baseline of insight to inform the next phases of the project.
Phase 2 - Playback & Alignment
Playing research back to stakeholders can often be challenging. Many are deeply familiar with their area of responsibility and can be set in their ways — making it difficult to shift perceptions. Our approach was to make the insights impossible to ignore.
Approach
We deliberately overwhelmed stakeholders with the depth and breadth of research we had completed, while also distilling the findings into clear, top-line insights. This balance ensured that the voice of the customer was heard directly, while also giving leadership a simple, actionable view of what needed to change.
Impact
What was initially planned as a single playback session quickly evolved into multiple rounds of presentations, as the impact of the findings grew across the organisation.
The work culminated in a presentation to the Selfridges board, ensuring the insights reached the highest levels of decision-making.
Our research was synthesised into key, actionable insights and translated into a defined roadmap for improvement, giving teams a clear pathway from findings to action.
By aligning all stakeholders around a true representation of the customer and employee experience, this phase shifted the conversation from assumptions to evidence — laying the groundwork for meaningful change.
Phase 3 - Provide Focus
Opening up your customer experience to scrutiny can be daunting — especially when it means questioning work that has taken years to build. For Selfridges, the next stage was about making change as actionable and immediate as possible.
Approach
To bridge the gap between insight and action, we created a Service Blueprint that mapped out how new services could be implemented within the business. This provided a clear framework for change, showing where improvements could be made and how they would connect across the wider experience.
We also ran prioritisation sessions with stakeholders, helping them to focus on the most impactful changes and structure these into a realistic roadmap. Beyond planning, we supported stakeholders in selling these improvements into the wider business, ensuring momentum continued beyond our engagement.
Outcomes
A clear, actionable roadmap for improvements, grounded in customer and employee insight.
An improved in-store experience, with new services designed to address real pain points.
The work directly influenced the complete overhaul and redesign of the digital experience, leading to the creation of a retained digital team within Selfridges — a team I was also part of.
This phase ensured the project wasn’t just research for research’s sake, but a catalyst for lasting transformation across both the in-store and digital customer experience.
