You spend so much money driving customers into your store, you can't afford for them to be turned off and leave because the in-store experience didn't live up to their expectations. You need to make sure your front-line sales force has fully embraced both the culture of the store and the nature of the tools you've used to drive traffic into your store.
This was the gist of our number one tip in our last #RetailTuesday post "15 Tips To Improve Your Retail Business" and we're going to elaborate on that idea here. It's important whether you're creating a whole new culture of customer service or just getting the sales staff excited about this week's special offer.
Probably the best example of creating a corporate culture of outstanding customer service is internet retial shoe giant, Zappos! They decided to make their call center the lynch-pin of their company culture. Most phone center employees are trained to solve the problem and get the customer off the line as quickly as possible, so they can be as efficient as possible. Zappos decided that 15 to 20 minutes spent talking with their customers was probably more important to creating life-long customer loyalty and generating recommendations than money spent elsewhere.
So, Zappos spent all their money on attracting and training the right people for accomplishing this goal. And then they empowered those employees to do whatever it takes (within reason) to make the customer happy. The stories of the lengths employees have gone to in this regard are so legendary that the Zappos CEO wrote a best-selling book about it, Delivering Happiness.
We have a client that doesn't quite go to those extremes, but they have created a whole corporate culture around making sure the customer is treated well from the moment they walk in the door to long after the sale. They greet everyone at the door with a free beverage, just like when someone comes into your home. And you see the kind of feedback they get online about how helpful and friendly their sales staff and delivery folks are.
But even if you're not willing to go to those lengths, you still need to make sure your front-line is on the same page as your marketing, promotion and merchandising people. If they don't fully understand what you're offering, how to package it and what you're selling, they can't do their best to close a customer. If the customer comes in expecting something they saw in an ad or got a direct mail on and the salesperson doesn't know how to execute it, you're going to lose some of those sales and have frustrated customers walking away. Plus, when you do something different and your salespeople fully understand it is something different, it gets them excited about it. And that will translate into excitement in your customers.
The one thing to remember is good communications with your front line will always improve your bottom line.
Mike McClure, At Your Service!
