Morrisons has delivered its strongest like-for-like growth in a three years as sales rose 4.6% in the 13 weeks to 28 January.
Sales at the supermarket hit £3.9bn, up by 3.9% as it notched up its seventh consecutive quarters of sales improvement.
Much of this growth has been attributed to improving customer relations, which new CEO Rami Baitiéh described as the “canaries in the retail coalmine”.
Baitiéh said: “Across the business we have identified many areas where we can raise our game and make small improvements which collectively will result in a significantly enhanced shopping experience for our customers.
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“Availability, waste, newness, innovation, speed and accuracy are all on an improving trend and our customers are beginning to notice. Our key customer metrics are improving and complaints – which in many ways are the canaries in the retail coalmine – are down almost 60% in the last 20 weeks.”
Last month it emerged that Baitiéh planned to invite customers to joint Morrisons’ management meetings as the supermarket attempted to “start a new chapter” and return to “peak form”.
The chief executive, who joined the grocer last November, flagged that Morrisons had developed and implemented plans across the business, including wholesale, convenience, franchise, export markets and global sourcing.
Baitiéh added: “In our franchise business, for example, we have built a new team specifically to accelerate new customer acquisition and recently we have opened, on average, three franchise convenience stores a week and we intend to open many more in the coming months.”
Earlier this year, Morrisons revealed it had sold its petrol forecourt business business to Motor Fuel Group in a £2.5bn deal with the funds understood to be ploughed into paying down its debt.
