Ikea Tripping

IKEA MK - The Eco store where Customer Service is a priority?

The August monsoons had hit Buckinghamshire (Hey, It’s summer in England, did you expect sun?) and so in a moment of weakness I uttered the immortal words “let’s go to IKEA” as the West Wing required some new furnishings. Our nearest Ikea is Milton Keynes which is their 14th UK Store and with the new Linsdale bypass now open it is a quick trip from Castle Caldwell. Went to have a look at their MK store before and whilst slightly manic not long after its opening we came away with a favourable impression, it is certainly better designed than the older stores such as the dump near Brent Cross. It started to build in May 2005 opening just after Christmas the same year, in 31 weeks it was Ikea’s fastest build ever. It was predicted to get 50,000 customers per week - approximately 2 million a year, cost £88M to build and requires 150 trucks to fill the store and has created 400 jobs. The store is actually in Denbigh near Bletchley and you follow the signs off the A5 for Milton Keynes East. This is another advantage as with the bypass the store is actually 2 miles shy of MK Central and easier to access from our direction.

Milton Keynes is also Ikea UK’s flagship eco-store, a large bio mass unit helps the company reduce its carbon footprint and a waste-to-energy unit burns damaged wooden products and pallets. And, rainwater harvesting will soon be built into all new stores. It was also the store where Ikea promised to lay to rest the ghost of the major reason people avoid Ikea – its notoriously cruddy Customer service or “Customer Abuse” as many commentators have called it.

We were not alone in going to Ikea - Forty-five million customers will enter a British Ikea this year, close on a million a week, more than go to church, more than go to football. One-size-fits-all is the essence of the Ikea business model. To benefit from economies of scale, you can’t be tweaking products to suit local tastes. Many bemoan this homogeneity: “Products should have national characteristics, that’s what people love.” But is it? Peter Högsted, Ikea UK’s 39 year old Danish MD from his functional HQ in Wembley, thinks not. “There is this thesis that we are all so different,” he says, “but we are not.” And so the whole world has learnt to love Billy and many other Ikea products with even stranger names.


The billionaire founder of Ikea has admitted the Swedish furniture chain needs to increase prices and invest in more staff to improve its appalling image among consumers. Sir Terence Conran, who sold his Habitat chain to Ikea in 1992, revealed in an interview with The Daily Telegraph that Ingvar Kamprad, who founded Ikea 60 years ago, made the admission in correspondence between the two. Sir Terence said Ikea had an image problem because some people suffered "horrible experiences" when they shopped there. An Ikea spokesperson said; "We know there is much room for improvement when it comes to the shopping experience at Ikea. Here in the UK customer service remains one of our biggest priorities and we will continue to invest in this area, significantly moving forward."

However the opposite view is that Ikea’s poor customer service is deliberate and actually designed into the way they manage. One of the reasons products are so cheap is that they don't have that many staff on the shop floor. It is about the customers doing all the work, schlepping around the store and hauling a sofa on to the car roof.

Ikea Floor Plan
With thanks to Adam Roe

So what was our experience last Saturday on our quick trip to buy a coffee table, rug and a window blind? Firstly access and parking to MK Ikea is good. It is situated next to the MK Dons Football Stadium and a giant ASDA store but there were no undue delays in and out and both the Ikea indoor and outdoor car park were coping well. I was glad to see there were plenty of disabled spaces and unlike the increasingly arrogant Tesco, Ikea (and ASDA next door) actively police disabled spaces to ensure they are not being abused. The entrance is roomy even if it is clustered with people illegally smoking in the covered area in front (What is the law? £80 fine for them and £1,000 fine for Ikea) and there are travelators, escalators and lifts to take you to the top where your Ikea journey begins. As it was lunch hour we decided to use the “450 seater family restaurant” and I went up and organised the lunch, the Swedish Meatballs (Kottbuller) and the pasta dish. The pasta came with a choice of 4 sauces, pomodora, Bolognese, ratatouille and tuna. The problem was they were all tomato based and all looked the same, they were unlabeled and it was self service. I eventually attracted the attention of a “chef” and asked which was the Bolognese and he showed me. As I poured it onto the pasta I thought it was bit thin and sure enough it was the pomodora when it was tasted by the victim.

I then went up to the till to pay on my Ikea Homecard on which I constantly receive special offers for the restaurant only to be told “we don’t accept them anymore!” They don’t accept their own card, not a notice in sight and certainly no notice to me as a Card Holder and customer. Considering Ikea claim to have 450,000 Ikea Card holders this seems to be a sure far way of destroying customer loyalty. If you pay with any other credit card they charge you a 70p transaction fee so no doubt some Ikea Barrow Boy in their HQ Portacabin in Wembley thinks, for reasons which escape me, that alienating 450,000 of their best customers is a clever wheeze and you only find out when you get to the check out just to maximise the wind up. No notice in sight and Polish person on till can only tell you they stopped taking it a month ago, can’t give you any reason and can’t tell you if they still take the IKEA CARD in the Swedish shop at IKEA (They don’t). I wish I could tell you why there is this unannounced change of policy but during my transit through the Ikea factory I asked 3 other, what I hesitate to describe as, managerial types why this change and they couldn’t tell me. In fairness one of them told me he had only been there two days and knew nothing but he did look smart in his Ikea uniform, radio mike and headphones and has his name on the “Checkout Supervisor” badge!

Ikea Tottenham - traditional opening riots

So off we went on the Ikea chicane through the store (Top floor), took a shortcut through the self serve area (second floor) and ended up in the Self Serve warehouse (Ground Floor). I wish I could tell you more but almost every inquiry point was unstaffed and there were very few of the helpful leaflets on the ranges. We did want to enquire about Sofas but that area was unattended and the next point we came to on our solitary progress through Ikea had one Ikea person but a queue of 12 people in front of them. The person at the top of the queue was obviously highly delusional as he was under the impression that as he was spending £1,400 he was entitled to some customer service. I would like to tell you how he got on but after 10 minutes queuing I had lost interest in life and left. In an insight into Ikea’s efficiency most of my fellow victims in the queue also walked, that’s the clever way Ikea ensures its staff only deal with serious hardcore enquiries. But this is the rub, throughout you felt you were meat in the Ikea sausage machine and their attitude to you, their customer, was fundamentally disrespectful – In Ikea not only can money not buy you love, it can’t even buy you attention!

Finally we arrive at the self service warehouse where we have to pick up the coffee table who we must now refer to as “Benno.” IKEA Milton Keynes makes great play of being the first purpose built 'back-fill' racking store which it claims offers considerable practical benefits for both its staff (who are called co-workers because they are soooo empowered!) and customers. It says “The back fill system requires less warehouse storage space therefore offering more display area in store. The system also allows the replenishment of stock without ever using equipment such as fork-lift trucks on the store floor without disrupting the customer experience and making it a safer shopping environment. This means there is no need for staff to work unsocial night shift hours, leaving more time to improve work life balance.”

All very stirring and exciting I’m sure. The practice was this. Our new friend Benno was not to be found where the label in the showroom said. There are “Find It” touchscreens which should guide you but of the four that should have been there two were dead, one was missing and the strangely luminous one had (you’ve guessed!) a long queue. Indeed (with some difficulty) we found that as Benno came in four different finishes he lived in four different places in the Warehouse! Am I missing something here? Eventually we lurched to the checkout (where, amazingly, IKEA still accept the IKEA card) the checkout we were queuing at closed and we were directed to another one which was opening by one of a dynamic duo of checkout supervisors. He looked like he was working here as he had failed the audition for “The Hairy Bikers” and she was selected as she was tall and had a face permanently like thunder.

We survived the checkout and then emotion took over from experience and even though they don’t take the IKEA card (why would they in IKEA?) I decided to get some stuff in the Swedish Shop as they had a good offer on Kopparberg Pear Cider. By the time I got to check out there was a queue of 15 people, one harassed operator and not much movement. After 5 minutes I gave up, dumped my purchases and walked out. I told the tall checkout supervisor with the practiced thunder face that there was a long queue and only one operator but she was not interested, hey ho, if she was interested we probably wouldn’t be having this unrequited one way conversation. Should I take a ticket and queue to tell “Customer Services and Returns” amongst a crowd of disgruntled customers who looked like they were auditioning for the “Land of the Living Dead”? No life is too short, for the immortal words of Jim Royle came to mind!

Would you lose your self respect for Benno?

So homeward bound then but not before going next door to the giant ASDA Superstore which looks like it is on steroids. Now ASDA is also part of an evil empire being owned by Wal-Mart and like Ikea also trades on value. But there is a difference to how they make the customer feel, indeed there is no suggestion, as there was next door, that the customer must accept ritual humiliation to receive good value. As we went into this huge store we were greeted by an Asda person who volunteered information about the store. When I enquired in store about an item which wasn’t available the staff member engaged with me, apologised and explained why they had a stock out. The check out operator greeted us and smiled, was helpful and thanked us for our custom. And as we left the clean, bright and well laid out store we could appreciate that they lived up to their customer service proposition emblazoned on the entrance “Always happy to help” and indeed their policy and store ambience is not an accident for it is detailed on their website “ASDA’s reputation for friendliness is as much a part of the ASDA brand as our famously low prices.”

Contrast this with the sterile anatomic misery of the atmosphere from beginning to end in Ikea Milton Keynes, the Eco-friendly store, where Ikea were going to show us “UK customer service remains one of our biggest priorities and we will continue to invest in this area, significantly moving forward." It is a factory which dehumanises those who shop there and the sad and demotivated “co-workers” who endure its sterility. Will I return for a Sofa? No! Will I return full stop? No! Will I pay off my increasingly useless and devalued Ikea Card and cut it up when I get the statement for Benno and friends? Yes! Is Benno worth losing your self-respect for? No! Will I write and tell them? No, not on your Nelly, why should I care about a company which doesn’t respect its customers?

Ikea Milton Keynes Store Manager Mats Kotka and Ikea UK Managing Director Peter Högsted you should be both deeply ashamed of the appalling customer service proposition at this “flagship” store. And as for the Barrow Boy who thought that not taking the IKEA CARD in IKEA was a good idea sack him now. A person with such a lack of appreciation of your customers and such arrogance can only go on to do greater damage. Indeed it may be too late, he may already be Ikea UK’s new Boy Wonder Managing Director!