that the next battleground was going to be bringing the in-person services it offers into that omnichannel offering.

John Lewis offers a variety of in-store and at home services such as Nursery, Gift Lists, Beauty, Personal Styling and Home Design. However customer visibility of these services – and crucially booking for them – varied hugely between each department and each shop, and was a largely disjointed, informal mix of telephone or in-store appointment scheduling.

So the big question for John Lewis was: how do you bring the finding, booking and management of face-to-face retail services into an omnichannel strategy?

This is where BookingBug came in…

John Lewis is widely known across the tech sector for having some of the most stringent procurement processes out there. A potentially daunting prospect – especially giventeam worked closely with John Lewis to spec and execute the project. A phased pilot was rolled out towards the end of last year, and following the incredible results achieved in that pilot phase, the appointment platform is now live and taking bookings across John Lewis’s entire estate of shops.

Shortly after launch it was already running at 30% – 50% ahead of its projected targets in terms of traffic and bookings generated. This huge swell of customer demand has emerged organically, even before John Lewis has launched any associated marketing campaigns – customers are simply discovering the option is now available and making bookings.

So why are in store services so important at John Lewis?

Bricks-and-mortar stores can no longer compete on product offering and price alone – they must