Boots Opticians uses Microsoft Teams to keep frontline workforce seeing 20/20 for improved customer care

Clinicians: Trusted communication protects compliance

Boots Opticians deployed and adopted Teams in response to COVID-19. At first, the company provided remote consultations with customers by phone. It quickly became apparent that its business was essential care and needed to be delivered in stores within the prescribed safety guidelines.

The challenge was effective communication between the home office and remote staff trying to keep up to speed on COVID-19 compliance and respond to dynamic clinical policy. Boots Opticians turned to Teams to help support staff and the central operations team collaborate and communicate with retail stores and remote frontline staff while they provided a safe eye-care atmosphere for customers.

“Compliance is always key,” says Cahir Mullan, Franchise Partner and Optometrist at Widnes Boots Opticians. “For a franchise partner, there are policies and procedures required to represent the brand. Microsoft Teams provides that level of security to help ensure that my team has all the right information to create a safe and legal environment.”

For Mullan, using Teams to communicate across four franchise store locations provides an extra layer of confidence that is indispensable to protecting compliance and operating efficiently.

“With Teams, I can store and share information in one place so that I can communicate effectively with my team,” says Mullan. “There’s less duplication of effort. I can communicate vital information to four stores in one Teams channel or during a Teams meeting. That creates business efficiencies for a business that operates six days a week.”

Customers: Digitized workflows lead to retail readiness

A well-connected retail staff increases operational efficiency, which improves the customer experience.

Before Teams, communication between the central operations team and frontline stores was a challenge for Boots Opticians. Although there were multiple ways to receive in-store communications, including email and intranet announcements, the core challenge was making sure essential communications reached every team member every day and that actionable tasks were completed.

Frontline management and retail staff experienced challenges with siloed information caused by outdated in-store communication capabilities. The central operations team was limited by inefficient communication processes from legacy intranet workflows and lacked visibility for in-store task management and operational accountability.

One example is the daily What’s in Store Pack (WISP). The WISP is a large action plan sent from the Opticians Activity Hub every four weeks to each of the company’s core and franchise store locations to communicate essential actionable tasks and information. The WISP had to be printed and manually distributed to retail staff by store managers at each Boots Opticians location. Then managers would transfer the action items to some preferred calendar, sometimes manually delegating tasks to retail staff in person and passing out paper copies.

There wasn’t an efficient, sustainable way for store managers to check if tasks were completed or show the urgency of various tasks. Boots Opticians found success adding and distributing the WISP to stores using task publishing in Teams during the trial. With task publishing, the Opticians Activity Hub can assign prepopulated work tasks from the WISP and allocate the tasks to employees using a centralized task plan. 

“The WISP document is much simpler using Tasks in Teams,” says John Peterson, a Store Manager with Boots Opticians. “Using the Teams app on my phone, I’m able to assign tasks to different colleagues within the store, check when tasks are completed, and visualize how employees are progressing as new tasks come through.”

Franchise managers responsible for multiple locations appreciate the ability to track work in progress without needing to be physically present in a store. They also appreciate the subsequent time saved by eliminating extra travel between stores to manage manual workflows.

“Teams makes in-store communication more efficient, so I get to spend more time with my team and customers doing the job I love,” says Peterson. “I wouldn’t want to be without Teams now.” With Tasks, managers can create prioritized checklists and delegate specialized tasks to staff optometrists. Managers can add additional details to each task, attach pictures to clarify requests, and assign task priority, such as “Urgent.” For Boots Opticians, the more efficiency that stores can drive with digitized workflows, the more they can concentrate on the customer and employee experience.

“With Tasks in Teams, we can create a culture of relentless customer care and make sure that the right behaviors are in place in the pursuit of that goal,” says Mullan. “If we get the customer care element right, the business result will speak for itself.”

Team members: Anywhere-access to self-service tools improves frontline staff experiences

Tasks in Teams gives Boots Opticians frontline management and staff real-time access to critical information across any device with one highly secure platform. The retail staff appreciate Tasks because they receive automatic alerts on their phones through the Teams app. The notifications help them plan daily work and understand their teams’ workloads before the day gets busy. This feature helps unite staff around work in progress, making it easier to prioritize tasks.

“One of the key benefits of Tasks in Teams is the ability to receive a notification on any device, including my smartwatch,” says Daniel Prescott, a Store Manager with Boots Opticians. “The instant notifications save me a lot of time and allow me to make quick decisions.”

Prior to the trial of Tasks, Boots Opticians rolled out Shifts in Teams to help its managers plan work schedules at each retail location and help retail staff manage their time off. Before Shifts, requesting time off involved providing a request in writing to store managers and waiting for them to acknowledge and approve the request manually. “My colleagues love Shifts because they know their real-time schedule, and they do not have to react to inefficient, paper-driven processes,” says Peterson.

With Shifts, frontline staff can view their team members’ schedules and request to swap shifts within the app. Traditionally, this process had required each employee to inquire about availability by calling and messaging their manager or team. Now, store managers are automatically sent the swap request to approve, so they maintain complete scheduling oversight and visibility. Once a request is approved, all parties receive an automated notification.

“Shifts is a lot more convenient,” says Emma Bainbridge, an Optometrist with Boots Opticians. “I can check my rotation wherever I am just by looking at my phone. Teams has made me feel a lot more connected to my team. When we can’t communicate in person, we connect virtually on Teams.”

When frontline staff and management use intelligent technology that automates repetitive retail processes and provides immediate access to information across any device, employees are connected to the workplace. A connected workplace improves the overall employee experience, which improves customer care.