People Power - The key to saving retail. Dummies.

I was recently in a ‘music’ retail outlet. A nice piece of music was playing so I approached the counter to enquire what cd it was. The Counter Assistant didn’t know, so she called the Music Department. The person on the other end of the line didn’t know either. Whoever put the cd on was now at lunch.

One potential sale = lost.

I’m no Branson or Blundy but I have had a reasonable amount of experience in retail – specifically music retail, and one of the fundamentals we knew as Sales Assistants when I was working in the industry was playing it sells it. That is why the major record labels made deals with the music retailers that involved torturing the floor staff with relentless repeats of the latest airbrushed Classical Crossover group in the mornings (“They make classical music hot!”) and then the latest Top 40 compilation in the afternoons – more often than not they shared distributor. And we, the tortured coal-faced minions of the retail giant, saw the results of this.


It’s a no brainer: Play it, customer enquires, a conversation pursues; that translates into a sale. A human interaction!

The particular retailer I had my recent lacklustre experience with is an endangered species, amongst thousands of peers currently crying out to the Australian masses to save their souls, because, the poor loves standing behind counters all over the nation are in fear of their jobs and the future of their industry. Bless.

Gerry Harvey is throwing his arms up in a tizzy over international on-line competition, Record companies are lighting cigars and nostalgically looking out from the wheelhouse just waiting for the water to rise, The depressing demise of the bookstore, and come to think of it, just about any store not owned by Coles or Wesfarmers; it's enough to mmake the tear ducts a little moist.

After decades of 400% mark ups and patronising marketing campaigns, the bricks and mortar retailers need the help of the people. They want us to feel sorry for the industry – for the people – the unemployment, and just forget about the convenience, the discounts, the speed and accessibility of everything via our on-line service providers, and just come back as loyal customers.

In my empirical shopping experience, with bemusing irony, an overwhelming majority of retailers just.don’t.get.it. Retailers still have an edge – a differentiation – and in these troubled times you would think they’d be appealing to any scrap of edge they can cling to – but they are not.

The differentiation I am talking about is the people.

The one and only reason people need be motivated to walk into any retail outlet in this era, is the fact that as a customer, we can enter a store with any assortment of needs, attitudes and questions, and have confidence in our retailers that they value us enough to give us brilliant, personalised service tailored specifically for us as individuals. There is nothing else. You can meet the on-line competitors’ price, I don’t care. If I remember my last experience in your store to be mediocre at best, and usually that is primarily the Sales Assistant’s responsibility, I am not returning. I do not patronise businesses or support brands that do not respect me when I am handing over my hard earned money.

Beyond the tiny oversight of detail of my music retailer mate, I can create a painfully long list of negative or luke-warm experiences I have had with retailers in the last twelve months. Pouty teenagers staring at their nails behind the counter not acknowledging you; Overzealous, contrived, scripted greetings like “Welcome to [insert underwear retailer name here], I’m [Mandy] , may I assist you with anything today?”; The sweaty, desperate “pounce” approach (That you usually get in tiny boutiques where the Sales Assistant has a “help me” smile so forced it looks like the sides of her mouth might start bleeding any minute, as you feel the controlling stare of the owner through the crack in the door of the backroom); and what has become my most common interaction lately; the burdened slow-mo swipe of the check-out people who have obviously been told to “make conversation” but been given zero training on how to make that a comfortable and pleasant experience for both customer and service person, because I have had the same conversation with the same check-out person at my local supermarket at least a dozen times this year. It goes:

Me: “Hey, how are you going?”
Him: “Oh, ok I guess”
Me: (trying to make light) “As good as you can be, hey!”
Him: “Well, I’ve been here for like, five hours and still have another three to go, plus they didn’t give me one of the coffee breaks I was supposed to have”
Me: (All in my head) Well, doesn’t that suck sweetheart. You have a job. That must be really awful for you, getting paid, in this time of economic uncertainty. And wow, eight whole hours? Love, are you ok? Can I get you a milk crate to sit on? We should speak to management about this travesty! Man up for Christ’s sake.

So, as you can see a really enjoyable five minutes at the check-out with grumpy. And he’s not the only one.

There are, of course, retailers who do service well. The recent exceptional experiences I have had have been at Suzanne Grae, (where I trained, and believe they still have one of the best customer service training programs in the country) Hyundai have wonderful after sales service, The Good Guys realy are...good guys, and Tamarind restaurant in Cairns.

They are the only service experiences I can think of that I have had inside twelve months that left me motivated to share my positive experience with other people.

In a dying industry, that just isn’t good enough. Retailers and those in the service industry need to shift their focus away from the bottom line and realise the importance and power of people: staff and customers.

A positive interaction with another person can really make someone’s day. What’s more, if the service is delivered, not with the redundant ideal that “the customer is always right” (an over and mis-used term that creates subservient, apologetic service people, not peers participating in a positive experience for both parties), rather the notion that “this must result in the customer’s best interest”, only a positive flow-through effect can occur.

It is simple, yet retailers are too busy clambering to shore and watching profits drop, to stick their head up for long enough to notice that hey, the people out on the battlefield – the people who put the cash in your registers, and put up with rude and sometime weird customers, are looking for leaders to guide them through this mire, to say to them that they are appreciated and believed in, that they are worth investing in, for the greater good of the company’s collective future success.

There seems to be a vast separation between the people at the top and the people on the shop floor. This filters down through the company culture where the end (Sell!) is not connected to the means (serve). Based on personal experience there are very few retail brands that are connected to what it is like to be a customer or they have lost total grip on the behaviours of their floor staff. Either way it is not good news. I say this because the amount of simple, common errors I see people making every time I walk into a store are conducive with staff that have given up, been forgotten about or been hypnotised into soulless grinning desperados that repel the casual shopper, not convert them into manic consumer beasts swiping their credit card at your POS with vigour, as they seem to expect. Let alone loyal repeat customers.

All you have to do is offer your staff training, support and incentive to convert them into champions of your brand. For someone who can experience the worst in human interactions through whinging customers, feeling the varicose veins growing in the backs of their knees as they stand on hard concrete all day and takes home a pitiful wage for the privilege “We must make budget!” just doesn’t cut it. If people selling the product believe not only in the product, but the brand, that enthusiasm spills out into the customer base, and makes it far more pleasant for everyone involved.

Staff need to be empowered. There is nothing more aggravating than attempting to return an item and have a poor young girl apologise that she’ll have to wait for the Manager to return from lunch as she is not authorised to do returns. Service delivery fail and a public way of telling your staff and customers that you have.zero.faith.in.your.staff. What kind of return do you think that investment is going to give you?

Another example is rigid return policies. Using Suzanne Grae as an example again, I remember having the most flexible returns policy to work with. If a customer wasn’t happy, they could bring it back; “No problem!” Some retailers put all sorts of restrictions on their returns policies to avoid losing money, but all it is does is take away the power of closing a sale from your staff. There were countless amounts of times a sale was about to walk out the door, when we were able to say confidently “If you get it home and change your mind, just hold onto your receipt and bring it back…No problems!”, almost every single time the customer bought the item because they had peace of mind about the purchase. And how many returns did that equate to? Nowhere near enough for the company to want to change that policy.

This of course reduces the opportunity for customers to be disgruntled before the sale has even taken place, and reduces the likelihood of complaints and the need for your staff to go into conflict resolution mode – another skill that staff need to be empowered with to execute effectively.

An investment in your people will equal happier customers. Happier customers equals return customers. Return customer equals a better chance at survival. It must make sense that what is best for the customer is also best for the brand. It is so obvious - Yet hardly anyone is doing it!!!

I for one, do not want to see bricks and mortar shops crumble. I want to try clothes on before I buy them. I want to browse, roam, stumble upon the tangible, feel, see, smell, hear the shopping experience. I am a human that wants human interaction. And I know I’m not the only one. But if the human interaction has been reduced to one of indignation, desperation or even hostility, then give me one other reason, why I should you give you, the service provider, my money?