John Lewis to cut customer service jobs at outsourced firm

John Lewis Partnership is planning to cut the number of outsourced customer service workers as the retailer continues to reduce its losses.

The Partnership, which includes its signature department stores and the Waitrose supermarket chain, wants to cut around a fifth of the positions it contracts from customer service provider Foundever, reported The Telegraph.

Foundever handles the majority of John Lewis’s customer service and has been its partner for the past 17 years. The John Lewis-specific team currently stands at more than 1,000 workers. The retailer said it was trying to find jobs for affected staff but some will face redundancies.

The business also employs its own in-house customer service staff and the partnership said the overall customer service team would return to the same size as it was before Christmas following the changes.

It’s clearly bad news for the staff who will be affected. But it could also reflect badly on the retailer itself as its reputation for outstanding customer service has declined somewhat in recent years and it has admitted internally that it has lost some ground in this respect.

But the company insisted to the newspaper that customer service is incredibly important to it and it’s constantly reviewing its model.

The move comes as the company targets a return to profits growth and after having already cut costs and saving £300 million, it wants to find as much as £600 million in additional savings within two years.