UK giant Retailer, John Lewis have announced a £4 million digital initiative which will see 8,000 shop-floor staff equipped with an iPhone and pre-loaded app designed to enable them to quickly help customers with information about products, stock availability and placing orders.

The Apple iPhones will come installed with a ‘Partner App’, which aims to help put an end to customers waiting for store staff – or partners as they are known at John Lewis – to check information at tills or go to stock rooms to see whether a product is in stock. The project will be rolled out across 20 John Lewis stores following a training program this summer.

The app gives partners visibility of stock availability in all shops and at John Lewis’s warehouse in Milton Keynes, where online orders are fulfilled, as well as product information, customer reviews, and the ability to email customers product information and to place orders. During the busiest week in the trial, half of all online purchases done in the shop assisted by a partner were made using the app.

This major mobile based integration proves how valuable mobile / app based technology is in the business market in 2017 – especially using iOS, an operating system that through years of being a leader in the consumer market, is now a interface that much of today’s work force can relate too in task oriented environments.

Craig Inglis, John Lewis’s customer director, said: “As online and physical worlds increasingly come together, this initiative, which forms the foundation of our digital strategy for shops, will support our partners in offering great customer service in a digital world.”

“During the trial in our Cambridge store, customer feedback was overwhelmingly positive. It consistently sped up response times to customer queries as partners didn’t need to leave the customer to find answers, or complete a purchase. This is just the beginning. We will keep adding to the partner app in the future with new, innovative ways to help our customers.”