February 28, 2008
Retail TouchPoints: New Study Reveals Sales Staff Driving Shopper Defections
By
Amanda Ferrante, Assistant Editor
Through
a special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of a current article from
the Retail TouchPoints website, presented here for discussion.
A recent study by The Verde Group and the Baker Retail Initiative at the University
of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School shows that sales staffs are the single biggest
detriment to the shopping experience, resulting in more lost business and negative
word of mouth than any other shopping problem. The Retail Customer Dissatisfaction
Study also estimated that the defections caused by a lack of sales help or
a poor associate experience ultimately results in a six percent loss of business
for retailers.
Compiled from 1,000 American consumers surveyed by phone in March 2007, the research found that one in four Americans who experience problems when they shop are ignored by sales staff, receiving not so much as a smile, greeting, or even eye contact. Of those experiencing problems, 33 percent said they were unable to find a salesperson for assistance. Poor experiences turn three percent of consumers away from the retailer permanently and is the number one problem customers are likely to share with others — increasing detrimental viral impact.
Other
key findings of the study:
- 50 percent of shoppers said they have chosen not
to visit a particular business because of someone else’s poor experience; - 25
percent of those experiencing problems said they found sales people, but
it made little difference since the store employee ignored them; - 22 percent reported
aggravation with product stock-outs.
“It’s odd that retailers are hiring associates who avoid customer contact,” said Paula Courtney, president of the Verde Group. She suggests that part of the problem could be that associates are charged with too many distracting tasks, such as restocking shelves. “Are you asking too many tasks of them? Where’s the priority? Are you rewarding for A but hoping for B?”
Ms. Courtney suggests retailers look to other industries for examples on strategies for dealing with dissatisfied customers. For example she pointed to the telecommunications industry, where customers that call into a call center for service are often routed to a “save desk” if they are threatening to leave due to a problem or are reporting a problem that puts them at risk for defection. For retailers, the comparable strategy might be for in-store reps to ask customers, “Did you experience any difficulty?” or, “What could we have done differently to improve your experience today?” at the end of the purchase transaction.
Discussion Question: Are overburdened store associates a primary driver of
poor customer service at retail? What can store managers do at the store level
to engender friendly and helpful sales associates? Should more safeguards such
as a “save desk” be set up to minimize these apparently widespread poor sales
experiences?
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I have one client that is known for its customer service, especially compared to the competition. And even though “the top” has seen the research and understands the customer service role in the value proposition, corporate’s cry for margins has required cutbacks in size, quality (pay), training, and specialization of associates. I’ve also seen a decline in the experience and quality of store managers. And this client claims to be “customer centric.” It’s all about the margins now…I suppose they think everything else will fix itself somewhere down the road.
Two thoughts on this:
(1) If you want staff in the store to spend less time doing ‘stuff’ and more time engaging with customers, it’s useful to not keep adding to the ‘stuff’ that you expect the staff to do.
(2) It’s all about an exceptionally well-defined business model and consistency of purpose in EVERYTHING the organization does to set, and then consistently meet or exceed expectations. As a previous poster noted, both COSTCO and Nordstrom are widely admired retailers. The two business models couldn’t be farther apart. Yet, where I live, it’s not at all uncommon to see the same shoppers in Nordstrom in the morning and in COSTCO in the afternoon and delighting in both experiences.
Today’s comments are fantastic! It’s like listening to a recording of my comments for the past 30 years.
It all started when the major sales corporations started hiring executives from outside because of growing pressure from Wall Street for higher returns. The outsider had no knowledge of the corporate fabric or ethics. The stock man could no longer work his way up to be the president of the company. Soon the bean counters had total control.
Is there a solution? Only if the control is given back to President/CEOs who are not previous CFOs and they take back control of the corporations. I don’t think it will ever happen.
The focus in recent years on short-term financial results has created an industry full of over-burdened store associates and front-line managers. These people are not happy and this attitude translates to the customer in countless negative ways.
The only surprise is that these studies continue to be a surprise. Retailers like The Container Store and Apple understand that the customer experience is always defined by the sales associate so they invest in compensation, initial and ongoing training, and make all decisions congruent with the brand vision.
Let’s hope retailers are serious when they say that 2008 is the year they put employees and customer experience first on the investment priority list.
I have worked in retail for years and the work load gets heavier every day, while companies cut staff. We don’t just stand around all day.
Customers have become very hard to please, and have no regard for how they shop. Everyone should work “retail” for 1 day.
The survey does point out a tremendous problem within the retail community. Yet the problem starts at the top with poor training, and then filters down to the store level. It isn’t simply a shortage of staff, nor is it a problem perpetuated by staff that wants to avoid contact. It seems to be bigger than this. It is a lack of proper training as to how to properly interact with customers, and provide great (not good) customer service!
Cashiers who feel that it is proper to speak on their mobile phone while waiting on customers, department managers who walk by you when you need to request help because they “are going on lunch,” these are all training issues. And the training problems start at the top. The corporate executives need to focus less on cutting staff, and less on boosting quarterly profits, and more on providing a “Wow” customer experience.
It’s not that the typical retail sales associate is overburdened. It’s that all too frequently they are carelessly selected, poorly trained, insufficiently motivated, and either overbearing or uninterested, lacking in a genuine concern for the customer and her needs.
This is rarely a store management issue. The problem starts at the very top, where store level payroll is thought of as an expense item needing to be minimized rather than an essential cost of acquiring sales.
In a retail era of consolidation and cost cutting, store level payroll has invariably been thought of as another expense item that can supplanted by technologically driven economies of scale. There is only one, huge, problem with that: Customers are human beings, who more often than not want to be engaged by other warm, helpful, knowledgeable, informative and genuine human beings.
This personal touch is something my smaller retail clients clearly understand, and it is a key point of differentiation that they focus on in building a compelling retail experience for their customers.
We don’t need a multi-figure survey to tell us what we already know (although if I was the author and payee, I wouldn’t complain!) This ‘new’ info reinforces the thought that retail cannot survive without front line people and it is time to start investing in training and knowledge for our front line associates. We cannot neglect this important part of the operations puzzle.
A pulse is no longer the minimum required for working in retail. We need top notch ‘customer service professionals’ who love dealing with people on the sales floor. They are not hard to find. We just need to get creative with our hiring and training processes.
Over burdened or not, reaction of the sales staff is the customer service! Has anyone noticed marked improvement in availability of sales associates and their willingness to help with smile at Home Depot lately? Now that Senior management at Home Depot has changed, shopping there is a pleasure.
Just yesterday, I was in Tom Thumb looking for a wine that was profiled in the Food section of the Dallas Morning News. I flagged down a sales associate who was briskly going somewhere in the store and asked for help. She smilingly hunted down the wine department manager and in no time he found what I was looking for. I never had such help at Wal-Mart.
Therefore, yes, the sales staff’s reaction is customer service to me and that will definitely influence if I will go back to a particular store or not. I think this is true of an average consumer. In my opinion it helps to focus on “value enhancing” rather than “cost cutting.”
Does retail management feel that the cost to educate and train employees will be reflected in sales? From this survey and topics we have discussed previously on RetailWire, the answer, with some exceptions, seems to be “No.”
Would consumers be willing to pay more for products if they received superior service in selecting and paying for those products? With some exception, I believe that the answer would be “No.”
In the world of grocery, drug and mass market stores employee turnover tends to be high, with little loyalty between employee and employer. Employees do not feel that they need to be knowledgeable and polite and employers to do not feel the need to pay them more to be so.
Who loses? The consumer.
Retailers who make customer service part of their culture, Nordstrom and Costco for example, will continue to shine, and will be rewarded with consumer loyalty.
Workload pressure? Are you kidding? I must be shopping in the wrong stores. If there’s a problem, it’s boredom not workload; though interestingly enough, both arouse the same level of stress. Most of the time I see sales people standing around talking to each other while customers fend for themselves. I’ve tried my own experiments of walking around looking frustrated just to see if any sales staff would approach me. Most of the time not.
Now I’ve gone at this before in this space…it is NOT a training, scheduling, or even a motivation problem. It may not even be a pay problem. At least not on the cognitive conscious level. This self-defeating, self-sabotaging behavior is coming from a deeper place–the subconscious beliefs and feelings that drive 96% of behavior. All of us perform to the level of our subconscious beliefs, no more and no less. Even top producing sales people limit themselves in this way. We all do.
It’s not possible to get into it here but we have developed ways to identify those self-sabotaging beliefs and to literally issue new success-oriented “instructions” to the subconscious which rules almost everything about how we engage our world. The results are phenomenal and immediate.
Some eyes will roll at this claim I know. I used to think ‘training’ was the answer to all performance problems and in the early days that’s how I built my career. The advances in our understanding of how our brain and nervous system actually works in determining things like engagement with customers has thrown those old models into disarray. If all it took was training we should have easily solved the problem by now.
As I’ve pointed out before on RetailWire, the definition of “customer service” depends on the type of retailer. Clearly the customer expectation (and experience) at Nordstrom is different from the expectation at Target.
The question is whether the delivery of appropriate customer service is consistent with the rest of the store’s strategic mix: The merchandise, the marketing, the pricing, the store design, and so on. If the expectation at a mass merchant (shelves filled, quick checkout) isn’t being met, management has a problem.
This supports what we all have known for years–it’s the people, stupid. Technology will not supplant a human being interested in serving another.
Since the economy started softening in 2006, business owners are getting leverage to change the way they do business. Let’s hope findings like these help re-prioritize the workload for retail staff: everything else can wait if a customer is within your eyesight.
But you have to couple that with hiring staff who genuinely like people. The girl who would rather do markdowns or fold pants than have to talk to someone will not be able to multi-task and sell the merchandise. Instead of a one-size fits all on the retail floor, we need to get back to hiring salespeople and stockroom help as they are two distinct personalities.
Here is another point of view. In a study we reviewed in this regard, we found that shoppers will also avoid stores where they perceive they will be “pestered” by employees to the point where they feel rushed and ill at ease.
You could pay and train sales staffs better of course but the real problem is cultural.
Most Americans seem to believe they are “too good” to be “waiting” on anybody. This translates in a variety of shopper-facing attitudes ranging from disdain or apathy at best to contempt and hostility at worst.
Of course, it’s unfair–and inaccurate–to label all sales staffers this way, but it’s the one terrible attitude that gets remembered and talked about long after all the examples of competent service have been forgotten. Somehow we have to get over the idea that buying (and therefore those who buy) are inherently better than selling (and therefore those who sell).
Customer service is a tricky metric to figure out in retail. Just by reading all the responses you can tell nobody has the answer. People say they want service but they do not want to pay for it. Do you think Pradip Mehta will continue to go to Tom Thumb if the price of wine is jacked up?
You can ask upper management in retail what great customer service means to them in their business and they will be hard pressed to tell you anything meaningful.
Here are some common sayings that mean nothing to the retail associates. “Exceeding the customer expectations.” Ok, what happens when the customer expectations are out of line with reality or better yet, the retail associate is not given the power to do anything without getting something signed off or approved by upper management?
Or, you hear this in retail, “the customer is number 1.” What does this mean to the retail associate? The loud mouth at the return counter without a receipt wanting to return something is number 1?
How about this one? Giving the customer the “total solution.”
Upper Management does not have a good way to measure customer service. They try mystery shops, they count customer complaints, and they count customer compliments or some sort of call back survey number. If it is not an auditable number then management couldn’t care less. The so called smart executives have a difficult time of managing in the grey. Executives need some sort of score so they can “manage it.” Customer service is not scoreable.
It is as simple as Dan S at Big Lots says. Engagement. The indifference you see in retail is the indifference in management towards the rank and file retail $7.50/hour team member. The associates are treated as a number to hit as a percentage of payroll.
All people want to be recognized in some way. They are human beings having a human experience. Until management becomes engaged with the employee (show they care) then they will continue to get apathy towards the customer.
Every year the nation’s largest retailers spend hundreds of millions of dollars advertising their stores and merchandise. Maybe one day these same retailers will allocate some of those dollars to better pay for front-line associates and better training for those people.
The problem is not about assigning salespeople too many tasks. The problem is with accountants and numbers crunchers making decisions about every aspect of the business including how customers are served. When times get tough, many retailers cut back on the number of people working in their stores. They cut back on training and they cut back on benefits and bonuses. The lifeblood of a retail business is today and always will be having legions of happy, satisfied customers. The crucial connection between company management and the store’s customers is the front-line people serving those customers every day. Any investment in them will pay tremendous dividends.
This may be to fundamental. But, the simple fact is retailers lose more customers because front-line associates either cannot or won’t do the job they’ve been hired to do. While it’s not necessary to have a study that reflects this, it is something every retailer knows yet some continue to ignore the problem. The answer is: hire better people, pay them better and constantly invest in their training and development.
It’s all about the level of engagement. Engaged owners develop engaged managers. Engaged managers develop engaged employees. Engaged employees develop engaged customers.
I believe there are several issues involved with poor service.
1. Our trend toward self service has caused an attitude that todays consumer does not need or require much service.
2. Depending on what part of the county you are in the shortage of qualified people causes businesses to hire “what they can get,” based on the corporate pay guidelines.
3. Even though we are becoming a service economy, too many people do not want to see this as their desired job.
4. Corporations have in the recent past treated their employees as a disposable asset rather than a fixed asset and therefore the employees see no reason to trust and or support the company. It’s much like the union vs. management mentality.
5. Company culture has vanished as the turnover of management and longtime employees leave the company and the replacements don’t have the same attitude. I worked for a grocery company for 15 years and as a store manager I was expected to be at the front door almost all the time to greet the customers and help the employees as needed to take care of the business. Everyone was required to speak to a customer when they saw one, and if they had a question about where a product was located, you didn’t tell them, you took them to it. What happened to that type of service? When was the last time you saw a manager of a business on the floor making sure business and customers were being taken care of?
6. Expectations and training, you can go to pretty much any store now days and if you can find and employee they won’t be able to answer your question let alone tell you where the item might be. I even have run across employees that can’t speak the English language.
A fish rots from the head first. Top management has to focus on the basics of business, not get so caught up in all the other “wouldn’t it be great if we did this stuff” and their short term mentality to make Wall Street happy.
Great observations about those on the front line of retail sales. There are a few comments that snuggle up close to the real problem, but blaming poor performance on the retail sales people is like blaming a kitten for playing with a ball of twine when there’s work to be done.
The difficulty in this whole scenario remains with the leadership. When we compliment Nordstrom or Costco, we’re recognizing top-notch leadership. They know how to hire the right people, train them for the job, supervise daily activities, and reward successes.
If you’re a retailer having problems with sales people, look at the ways successful leaders get past all of these problems. They start out with the same raw materials you do, and we don’t see a lot of complaints here about their end products ignoring customers or arguing in the aisles.
When you find a retail store with the kinds of problems described here, you can ask management about the kind of leadership training they get–you’ll find out why you get bad service, why the store has high turnover, and why many of the managers jump ship along with their employees.
This looks like one of those items that everyone of the thought leaders wants to write about and all of them are making great comments.
If you are taking the time to get to this posting then you have a great sense that there is a lot of agreement that 1. Customers expect better customer service then they are getting and 2. That level of customer service expectation in some ways depends on the store the customer is shopping at. (But even in the case where customer expect lower levels of customer service they are complaining that they are not getting it.)
A couple of different points. This is not really research, this is a survey of what people say they will do because they got poor customer service. But if the the savings are enough or the convenience is there for a lot of other reasons, customers keep coming back even after they get bad customer service.
Now for the solution: 1. Quit hiring people where the only requirement is having a pulse and start hiring people who at least have a customer service attitude. 2. Once you hire them give them the training they need. 3. Support a culture that truly believes in customer service. 4. Reward great customer service. 5. Create a fun place to work. 6. Recognize that it cost a lot of money to get a customer in the door and the easy way to keep them and get them to come back is to make they feel like they are wanted and appreciated. (The same goes for employees.)
Last week I had to ask two retail associates who were arguing with one another to step aside so I could get a cart at the entrance of a mass merchant store. The response I got from them made me want to walk away and never visit that store again. I counted to ten and continued, focusing on the savings I was about to get on the big stock up trip. (just returned from vacation and had spent a lot of $$ on golf and travel) For me, the trade off was worth it that day.
But I don’t think retail employees are overworked, I think they are under-trained and not incentivized to be aware of or respond to shopper feedback. Retail service employees in many locations are so ambivalent, so disengaged, so uninvolved…many acting like the shoppers are the problem they have to put up with as they work.
Service economy jobs can be rewarding and even fun, given strong management and attention to corporate culture. That’s where the investment is needed in the future. There are success stories all over the world that prove it can be done well.
Yes, but the kind of person attracted to a job at a high-end retailer such as Nordstrom is very different from the “chicky” with the gum at Circuit City who insisted I couldn’t read the sales sign correctly because it wasn’t there until I had to drag her butt over and prove it to her.
Please add into this equation the major mistake that has been made by most Baby Boomer parents–we grew up with very little; we give our kids everything they ask for–and spoiled children make lousy sales associates. Add in the guilt many women feel for working, and the two-income family becomes a feeding ground for bad retail representatives.
“I’ll choose D, all of the above.” I think everyone has well articulated what the problem is.
– It starts at the top.
– Customer service needs to be embedded in to the culture.
– We need to hire better.
– We need to train better.
But most of all, I think executives have to believe that their people truly make a difference in their customers’ experience. I think a lot of people say it, but do they really believe it? If they did they would invest the resources in ensuring every customer has a fabulous and memorable experience. But they don’t.
This survey along with our own shopping experiences proves over and over that people want more than to just go into a store and buy something and leave. They would actually like it to be an enjoyable experience. It’s easier said than done, but there are retailers who prove day in and day out it can be done.
A friend of mine always says, “This retail would be a lot easier if it wasn’t for people and product.” Every day he’s proved right.
Paula Courtney’s suggestions of looking to the telecommunication industry as a customer service model and using a “save desk” strategy seem bizarre. The telecommunications industry is legendary for abusing its customers. And a “save desk” doesn’t prevent problems. It’s like adding more quality control inspectors to a factory instead of designing the work process properly in the first place.
The root cause of poor customer service: retail executives who don’t think customer service pays. If they thought it would increase profits, it would be measured and nurtured obsessively. Look at the hotel business: those guest comment cards and surveys are often directly tied to the management’s compensation. How many retailers tie executive compensation to customer satisfaction? Generally retail executive compensation is tied to sales, margins, return on investment and profits. Customer satisfaction is usually unmeasured and unrewarded.
This points to huge pet peeve of mine lately. I am beginning to notice this at many large mass merchants and grocery stores. Especially those retailers who use the motorized cart pushing vehicles. The people operating them can now wait until they have 30+ carts to move from the parking lot to the store. It never fails that I see these carts blocking intersections, pedestrian walk-ways, and parking spots. I’ve seen people stuck in their parking spot for 10-15 minutes waiting for some parking lot attendant to finish their conversation with another employee before they move begin to move the carts, only to see them stop the carts again after only moving 10 feet. I’ve sent emails to the retailers through their websites about this and never once received a reply.
I’m all for easing up on the task driven sales associates.
It is my experience that burdening the sales force with stock work such as preparing new-coming merchandise for the sales floor, merchandising it properly, taking markdowns, setting up promotions, hanging signage, returning try-ons to the sales floor, watching for shoplifters, ringing up the sales, pushing credit cards, obtaining shopper information, as well as the housekeeping aspects of keeping hangers organized, trash controlled, fixtures dusted, floor mopped, etc., only accomplishes one thing–giving the salesperson jobs to do rather than finding a sense of accomplishment in having a good sale and developing good customer loyalty.
Most store employees feel it’s a “job well done” when the store looks properly merchandised, they’re caught up on freight, and markdowns are done. Generally only management really cares if they made their daily sales goals.
If employees are properly trained to sell (which too few are today) and offer good sound customer service and hire other employees to handle tasks, you’ll come out ahead. It really is the employee who is the most important person in the store. They can make it or break it for retailers.
Oh, and just a general note–the Target in my area offers superior service in comparison to Nordstrom. It isn’t the level of service that is expected that matters, but rather the level of service employees are expected to offer.
There is a real, palpable, difference between the charming, if overbearing, “professional” salesperson of not that long ago, and the crop of “stand-arounders” and “cell phone chatters” that currently double as sales help in so many stores. This is perfectly obvious to any one who has managed, or even shopped in retail establishments over the past decade.
While I hate to bring up poor Macy’s again, I must, by way of example. In the Chicago area many of Marshall Field’s most outstanding, beloved and effective sales people were immediately wooed and snapped up by other stores such as Neiman’s and Nordstrom’s which knew exactly what they were getting–both competence AND a trailing customer base!
Along with their other issues during a difficult transition, Macy’s was forced to hire new sales and customer service people and get them out on the floor in a hurry. Complaints by shoppers about finding adequate and helpful service on the sales floors of Macy’s in Chicago continue to be an ongoing theme in discussion boards, and appears to be at least a contributing factor towards the less than stellar debut of Macy’s in the windy city.
Not that long ago, creative and educated women flocked to sales and teaching as professions, and those professions were the better for it. Today, happily, their educated younger sisters are designing buildings, flying planes, and running companies. The pool for hiring and developing young salespeople is smaller, less educated, and so many of the ones who do sign on are just coasting until something better comes along. As others have mentioned, sales is considered neither a prestigious nor well paying job.
“Overburdened” sales staffs are not the real problem. Unfortunately, it is a problem much larger and more difficult to solve than hiring a few more associates.
Our research has shown the core problem is not really workload, it’s the fundamentally adversarial relationship between retailers and their employees:
– retailers are convinced their employees will steal from them at the first opportunity (they are probably not wrong)
– retailers have no particular retention program, or even career path for the average store associate.
– when economic times are good, store associates can just leave and get another job elsewhere if they’re not happy with their workloads
– when economic times are rough, store associates are just quietly resentful.
Think about Circuit City. The company worked with its associates. Got them to really care. Then, because of a really bad pricing decision around flat screen TVs, the company lost money and fired 3400 of its best employees. Six months later, it tried to hire them back. Does this breed trust?
My friend Greg Girard always used to say: pick a roomful of executives in any industry…the higher level the better. Ask them how many had their first job in retail. You’ll always get hands raised by 90% of the room. Greg’s question (and it remains totally relevant): Retailers get first crack at the best talent in the world. How and why do they let this talent slip through their fingers?
The industry has to do some real soul-searching, I think.
The irony of this discussion coming directly on the heels of our conversation yesterday about the prospects for L.L.Bean being able to successfully clone their service experience into 32 retail locations is too much to pass. To reiterate our opinion on that one–no way in….
The cause of that caustic assessment is my opinion that we have largely lost the concept of a “service culture” in America. Service in viewed as beneath us. And as David Bierbaum pointed out, we are so skeptical that anyone might be truly interested in “serving us” (as opposed to just trying to earn a commission check) that we actually complain about being approached in some retail outlets.
In general, we reject arguments blaming ‘society’ for what are really abdications of personal responsibility. But it is getting hard to find examples of our society honoring service, rewarding service, in ways that go much beyond ‘lip service’.
The retail service (or lack of it) is a deeper cultural issue.
I often hear of employees complaining of being overburdened, while the reality is that only a small percentage are overburdened–and never complain, while the rest slide through their day and claim to be overburdened and underpaid.
Hiring practices and training can solve the issue, but only if done consistently. The “save desk” is simply another means to dismiss customer service and leave the problem to someone else.
Management is key. Employees take their cues from supervisors; if the management attitude is poor don’t expect the subordinates to act better.
Jack Welch used to cull the bottom performers of his company….
My suggestion on improvement would be to look at the customer service system from the top to bottom. The clerk dealing with the customer is only the symptom of a bigger problem.
The keys to the whole thing is balance and attitude. As one contributor noted, some people are turned off by associates that are too aggresive or hovering.
An associate can be working on a task (stocking, etc) can still be cognizant of the customers in the store. A casual greeting from someone who is performing a task may let the customer know that while (s)he is busy, they are still available to help if needed. And if needed, the associate must be able to immediately drop the task in favor of helping the customer versus acting annoyed at the interruption. The culture that encourages this comes from the top down.
I don’t think most customers find hardworking associates frustrating. I think they find disinterested, uncaring and uninformed associates frustrating.
I’m actually in a different kind of “retail”–a library. My observation is that customer service suffers when managers are pulled away from direct service to more administrative tasks. We managers set the tone for everyone else. I can model behavior that I expect the “associates” to follow, and they do.
They also have someone immediately at hand to observe and answer questions. Too often, if they don’t know the answer to a question, they make something up to not look stupid. Having someone nearby to ask can make a big difference, because a lot of training happens on the spot.
Is is not the work load, but the lack of direction they get. In fact, in a study done several years ago, it was shown that associates that worked hard all day, were happier and did a better job serving their customers.
To much help leads to idle time–and hands–and that is when employees get into trouble and ignore their customers.
A company needs to create a culture of valuing customers and treating them right. Of course, this starts from the top down. It baffles me as to why there aren’t more retailers whose management teams live and walk the stores and engage with real customers, as well as store associates.
I agree with Mark that retailers who are serious about customer service need to measure it, reward it and tie executive and store manager compensation to it.
At my independent store, we initiated sales associates having only sales and customer service as their job description several years ago to marvelous sales increases that still continue to this day. It has also contributed to higher than average wages and associate longevity which in itself increases our ability to service our customer better than average.
Suggesting the problem with poor customer service is overburdening salespeople with too many non-selling tasks like stocking, taking inventory, sales reports is setting the bar too low. Poor customer service is created by poor salespeople often managed by poor managers. A company with chronic bad service has either hired poorly or incorrectly set priorities for salespeople. Get the right people on the bus, train them thoroughly, and demand they put customers first and there will be time for other less important activities.
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I have one client that is known for its customer service, especially compared to the competition. And even though “the top” has seen the research and understands the customer service role in the value proposition, corporate’s cry for margins has required cutbacks in size, quality (pay), training, and specialization of associates. I’ve also seen a decline in the experience and quality of store managers. And this client claims to be “customer centric.” It’s all about the margins now…I suppose they think everything else will fix itself somewhere down the road.
Two thoughts on this:
(1) If you want staff in the store to spend less time doing ‘stuff’ and more time engaging with customers, it’s useful to not keep adding to the ‘stuff’ that you expect the staff to do.
(2) It’s all about an exceptionally well-defined business model and consistency of purpose in EVERYTHING the organization does to set, and then consistently meet or exceed expectations. As a previous poster noted, both COSTCO and Nordstrom are widely admired retailers. The two business models couldn’t be farther apart. Yet, where I live, it’s not at all uncommon to see the same shoppers in Nordstrom in the morning and in COSTCO in the afternoon and delighting in both experiences.
Today’s comments are fantastic! It’s like listening to a recording of my comments for the past 30 years.
It all started when the major sales corporations started hiring executives from outside because of growing pressure from Wall Street for higher returns. The outsider had no knowledge of the corporate fabric or ethics. The stock man could no longer work his way up to be the president of the company. Soon the bean counters had total control.
Is there a solution? Only if the control is given back to President/CEOs who are not previous CFOs and they take back control of the corporations. I don’t think it will ever happen.
The focus in recent years on short-term financial results has created an industry full of over-burdened store associates and front-line managers. These people are not happy and this attitude translates to the customer in countless negative ways.
The only surprise is that these studies continue to be a surprise. Retailers like The Container Store and Apple understand that the customer experience is always defined by the sales associate so they invest in compensation, initial and ongoing training, and make all decisions congruent with the brand vision.
Let’s hope retailers are serious when they say that 2008 is the year they put employees and customer experience first on the investment priority list.
I have worked in retail for years and the work load gets heavier every day, while companies cut staff. We don’t just stand around all day.
Customers have become very hard to please, and have no regard for how they shop. Everyone should work “retail” for 1 day.
The survey does point out a tremendous problem within the retail community. Yet the problem starts at the top with poor training, and then filters down to the store level. It isn’t simply a shortage of staff, nor is it a problem perpetuated by staff that wants to avoid contact. It seems to be bigger than this. It is a lack of proper training as to how to properly interact with customers, and provide great (not good) customer service!
Cashiers who feel that it is proper to speak on their mobile phone while waiting on customers, department managers who walk by you when you need to request help because they “are going on lunch,” these are all training issues. And the training problems start at the top. The corporate executives need to focus less on cutting staff, and less on boosting quarterly profits, and more on providing a “Wow” customer experience.
It’s not that the typical retail sales associate is overburdened. It’s that all too frequently they are carelessly selected, poorly trained, insufficiently motivated, and either overbearing or uninterested, lacking in a genuine concern for the customer and her needs.
This is rarely a store management issue. The problem starts at the very top, where store level payroll is thought of as an expense item needing to be minimized rather than an essential cost of acquiring sales.
In a retail era of consolidation and cost cutting, store level payroll has invariably been thought of as another expense item that can supplanted by technologically driven economies of scale. There is only one, huge, problem with that: Customers are human beings, who more often than not want to be engaged by other warm, helpful, knowledgeable, informative and genuine human beings.
This personal touch is something my smaller retail clients clearly understand, and it is a key point of differentiation that they focus on in building a compelling retail experience for their customers.
We don’t need a multi-figure survey to tell us what we already know (although if I was the author and payee, I wouldn’t complain!) This ‘new’ info reinforces the thought that retail cannot survive without front line people and it is time to start investing in training and knowledge for our front line associates. We cannot neglect this important part of the operations puzzle.
A pulse is no longer the minimum required for working in retail. We need top notch ‘customer service professionals’ who love dealing with people on the sales floor. They are not hard to find. We just need to get creative with our hiring and training processes.
Over burdened or not, reaction of the sales staff is the customer service! Has anyone noticed marked improvement in availability of sales associates and their willingness to help with smile at Home Depot lately? Now that Senior management at Home Depot has changed, shopping there is a pleasure.
Just yesterday, I was in Tom Thumb looking for a wine that was profiled in the Food section of the Dallas Morning News. I flagged down a sales associate who was briskly going somewhere in the store and asked for help. She smilingly hunted down the wine department manager and in no time he found what I was looking for. I never had such help at Wal-Mart.
Therefore, yes, the sales staff’s reaction is customer service to me and that will definitely influence if I will go back to a particular store or not. I think this is true of an average consumer. In my opinion it helps to focus on “value enhancing” rather than “cost cutting.”
Does retail management feel that the cost to educate and train employees will be reflected in sales? From this survey and topics we have discussed previously on RetailWire, the answer, with some exceptions, seems to be “No.”
Would consumers be willing to pay more for products if they received superior service in selecting and paying for those products? With some exception, I believe that the answer would be “No.”
In the world of grocery, drug and mass market stores employee turnover tends to be high, with little loyalty between employee and employer. Employees do not feel that they need to be knowledgeable and polite and employers to do not feel the need to pay them more to be so.
Who loses? The consumer.
Retailers who make customer service part of their culture, Nordstrom and Costco for example, will continue to shine, and will be rewarded with consumer loyalty.
Workload pressure? Are you kidding? I must be shopping in the wrong stores. If there’s a problem, it’s boredom not workload; though interestingly enough, both arouse the same level of stress. Most of the time I see sales people standing around talking to each other while customers fend for themselves. I’ve tried my own experiments of walking around looking frustrated just to see if any sales staff would approach me. Most of the time not.
Now I’ve gone at this before in this space…it is NOT a training, scheduling, or even a motivation problem. It may not even be a pay problem. At least not on the cognitive conscious level. This self-defeating, self-sabotaging behavior is coming from a deeper place–the subconscious beliefs and feelings that drive 96% of behavior. All of us perform to the level of our subconscious beliefs, no more and no less. Even top producing sales people limit themselves in this way. We all do.
It’s not possible to get into it here but we have developed ways to identify those self-sabotaging beliefs and to literally issue new success-oriented “instructions” to the subconscious which rules almost everything about how we engage our world. The results are phenomenal and immediate.
Some eyes will roll at this claim I know. I used to think ‘training’ was the answer to all performance problems and in the early days that’s how I built my career. The advances in our understanding of how our brain and nervous system actually works in determining things like engagement with customers has thrown those old models into disarray. If all it took was training we should have easily solved the problem by now.
As I’ve pointed out before on RetailWire, the definition of “customer service” depends on the type of retailer. Clearly the customer expectation (and experience) at Nordstrom is different from the expectation at Target.
The question is whether the delivery of appropriate customer service is consistent with the rest of the store’s strategic mix: The merchandise, the marketing, the pricing, the store design, and so on. If the expectation at a mass merchant (shelves filled, quick checkout) isn’t being met, management has a problem.
This supports what we all have known for years–it’s the people, stupid. Technology will not supplant a human being interested in serving another.
Since the economy started softening in 2006, business owners are getting leverage to change the way they do business. Let’s hope findings like these help re-prioritize the workload for retail staff: everything else can wait if a customer is within your eyesight.
But you have to couple that with hiring staff who genuinely like people. The girl who would rather do markdowns or fold pants than have to talk to someone will not be able to multi-task and sell the merchandise. Instead of a one-size fits all on the retail floor, we need to get back to hiring salespeople and stockroom help as they are two distinct personalities.
Here is another point of view. In a study we reviewed in this regard, we found that shoppers will also avoid stores where they perceive they will be “pestered” by employees to the point where they feel rushed and ill at ease.
You could pay and train sales staffs better of course but the real problem is cultural.
Most Americans seem to believe they are “too good” to be “waiting” on anybody. This translates in a variety of shopper-facing attitudes ranging from disdain or apathy at best to contempt and hostility at worst.
Of course, it’s unfair–and inaccurate–to label all sales staffers this way, but it’s the one terrible attitude that gets remembered and talked about long after all the examples of competent service have been forgotten. Somehow we have to get over the idea that buying (and therefore those who buy) are inherently better than selling (and therefore those who sell).
Customer service is a tricky metric to figure out in retail. Just by reading all the responses you can tell nobody has the answer. People say they want service but they do not want to pay for it. Do you think Pradip Mehta will continue to go to Tom Thumb if the price of wine is jacked up?
You can ask upper management in retail what great customer service means to them in their business and they will be hard pressed to tell you anything meaningful.
Here are some common sayings that mean nothing to the retail associates. “Exceeding the customer expectations.” Ok, what happens when the customer expectations are out of line with reality or better yet, the retail associate is not given the power to do anything without getting something signed off or approved by upper management?
Or, you hear this in retail, “the customer is number 1.” What does this mean to the retail associate? The loud mouth at the return counter without a receipt wanting to return something is number 1?
How about this one? Giving the customer the “total solution.”
Upper Management does not have a good way to measure customer service. They try mystery shops, they count customer complaints, and they count customer compliments or some sort of call back survey number. If it is not an auditable number then management couldn’t care less. The so called smart executives have a difficult time of managing in the grey. Executives need some sort of score so they can “manage it.” Customer service is not scoreable.
It is as simple as Dan S at Big Lots says. Engagement. The indifference you see in retail is the indifference in management towards the rank and file retail $7.50/hour team member. The associates are treated as a number to hit as a percentage of payroll.
All people want to be recognized in some way. They are human beings having a human experience. Until management becomes engaged with the employee (show they care) then they will continue to get apathy towards the customer.
Every year the nation’s largest retailers spend hundreds of millions of dollars advertising their stores and merchandise. Maybe one day these same retailers will allocate some of those dollars to better pay for front-line associates and better training for those people.
The problem is not about assigning salespeople too many tasks. The problem is with accountants and numbers crunchers making decisions about every aspect of the business including how customers are served. When times get tough, many retailers cut back on the number of people working in their stores. They cut back on training and they cut back on benefits and bonuses. The lifeblood of a retail business is today and always will be having legions of happy, satisfied customers. The crucial connection between company management and the store’s customers is the front-line people serving those customers every day. Any investment in them will pay tremendous dividends.
This may be to fundamental. But, the simple fact is retailers lose more customers because front-line associates either cannot or won’t do the job they’ve been hired to do. While it’s not necessary to have a study that reflects this, it is something every retailer knows yet some continue to ignore the problem. The answer is: hire better people, pay them better and constantly invest in their training and development.
It’s all about the level of engagement. Engaged owners develop engaged managers. Engaged managers develop engaged employees. Engaged employees develop engaged customers.
I believe there are several issues involved with poor service.
1. Our trend toward self service has caused an attitude that todays consumer does not need or require much service.
2. Depending on what part of the county you are in the shortage of qualified people causes businesses to hire “what they can get,” based on the corporate pay guidelines.
3. Even though we are becoming a service economy, too many people do not want to see this as their desired job.
4. Corporations have in the recent past treated their employees as a disposable asset rather than a fixed asset and therefore the employees see no reason to trust and or support the company. It’s much like the union vs. management mentality.
5. Company culture has vanished as the turnover of management and longtime employees leave the company and the replacements don’t have the same attitude. I worked for a grocery company for 15 years and as a store manager I was expected to be at the front door almost all the time to greet the customers and help the employees as needed to take care of the business. Everyone was required to speak to a customer when they saw one, and if they had a question about where a product was located, you didn’t tell them, you took them to it. What happened to that type of service? When was the last time you saw a manager of a business on the floor making sure business and customers were being taken care of?
6. Expectations and training, you can go to pretty much any store now days and if you can find and employee they won’t be able to answer your question let alone tell you where the item might be. I even have run across employees that can’t speak the English language.
A fish rots from the head first. Top management has to focus on the basics of business, not get so caught up in all the other “wouldn’t it be great if we did this stuff” and their short term mentality to make Wall Street happy.
Great observations about those on the front line of retail sales. There are a few comments that snuggle up close to the real problem, but blaming poor performance on the retail sales people is like blaming a kitten for playing with a ball of twine when there’s work to be done.
The difficulty in this whole scenario remains with the leadership. When we compliment Nordstrom or Costco, we’re recognizing top-notch leadership. They know how to hire the right people, train them for the job, supervise daily activities, and reward successes.
If you’re a retailer having problems with sales people, look at the ways successful leaders get past all of these problems. They start out with the same raw materials you do, and we don’t see a lot of complaints here about their end products ignoring customers or arguing in the aisles.
When you find a retail store with the kinds of problems described here, you can ask management about the kind of leadership training they get–you’ll find out why you get bad service, why the store has high turnover, and why many of the managers jump ship along with their employees.
This looks like one of those items that everyone of the thought leaders wants to write about and all of them are making great comments.
If you are taking the time to get to this posting then you have a great sense that there is a lot of agreement that 1. Customers expect better customer service then they are getting and 2. That level of customer service expectation in some ways depends on the store the customer is shopping at. (But even in the case where customer expect lower levels of customer service they are complaining that they are not getting it.)
A couple of different points. This is not really research, this is a survey of what people say they will do because they got poor customer service. But if the the savings are enough or the convenience is there for a lot of other reasons, customers keep coming back even after they get bad customer service.
Now for the solution: 1. Quit hiring people where the only requirement is having a pulse and start hiring people who at least have a customer service attitude. 2. Once you hire them give them the training they need. 3. Support a culture that truly believes in customer service. 4. Reward great customer service. 5. Create a fun place to work. 6. Recognize that it cost a lot of money to get a customer in the door and the easy way to keep them and get them to come back is to make they feel like they are wanted and appreciated. (The same goes for employees.)
Last week I had to ask two retail associates who were arguing with one another to step aside so I could get a cart at the entrance of a mass merchant store. The response I got from them made me want to walk away and never visit that store again. I counted to ten and continued, focusing on the savings I was about to get on the big stock up trip. (just returned from vacation and had spent a lot of $$ on golf and travel) For me, the trade off was worth it that day.
But I don’t think retail employees are overworked, I think they are under-trained and not incentivized to be aware of or respond to shopper feedback. Retail service employees in many locations are so ambivalent, so disengaged, so uninvolved…many acting like the shoppers are the problem they have to put up with as they work.
Service economy jobs can be rewarding and even fun, given strong management and attention to corporate culture. That’s where the investment is needed in the future. There are success stories all over the world that prove it can be done well.
Yes, but the kind of person attracted to a job at a high-end retailer such as Nordstrom is very different from the “chicky” with the gum at Circuit City who insisted I couldn’t read the sales sign correctly because it wasn’t there until I had to drag her butt over and prove it to her.
Please add into this equation the major mistake that has been made by most Baby Boomer parents–we grew up with very little; we give our kids everything they ask for–and spoiled children make lousy sales associates. Add in the guilt many women feel for working, and the two-income family becomes a feeding ground for bad retail representatives.
“I’ll choose D, all of the above.” I think everyone has well articulated what the problem is.
– It starts at the top.
– Customer service needs to be embedded in to the culture.
– We need to hire better.
– We need to train better.
But most of all, I think executives have to believe that their people truly make a difference in their customers’ experience. I think a lot of people say it, but do they really believe it? If they did they would invest the resources in ensuring every customer has a fabulous and memorable experience. But they don’t.
This survey along with our own shopping experiences proves over and over that people want more than to just go into a store and buy something and leave. They would actually like it to be an enjoyable experience. It’s easier said than done, but there are retailers who prove day in and day out it can be done.
A friend of mine always says, “This retail would be a lot easier if it wasn’t for people and product.” Every day he’s proved right.
Paula Courtney’s suggestions of looking to the telecommunication industry as a customer service model and using a “save desk” strategy seem bizarre. The telecommunications industry is legendary for abusing its customers. And a “save desk” doesn’t prevent problems. It’s like adding more quality control inspectors to a factory instead of designing the work process properly in the first place.
The root cause of poor customer service: retail executives who don’t think customer service pays. If they thought it would increase profits, it would be measured and nurtured obsessively. Look at the hotel business: those guest comment cards and surveys are often directly tied to the management’s compensation. How many retailers tie executive compensation to customer satisfaction? Generally retail executive compensation is tied to sales, margins, return on investment and profits. Customer satisfaction is usually unmeasured and unrewarded.
This points to huge pet peeve of mine lately. I am beginning to notice this at many large mass merchants and grocery stores. Especially those retailers who use the motorized cart pushing vehicles. The people operating them can now wait until they have 30+ carts to move from the parking lot to the store. It never fails that I see these carts blocking intersections, pedestrian walk-ways, and parking spots. I’ve seen people stuck in their parking spot for 10-15 minutes waiting for some parking lot attendant to finish their conversation with another employee before they move begin to move the carts, only to see them stop the carts again after only moving 10 feet. I’ve sent emails to the retailers through their websites about this and never once received a reply.
I’m all for easing up on the task driven sales associates.
It is my experience that burdening the sales force with stock work such as preparing new-coming merchandise for the sales floor, merchandising it properly, taking markdowns, setting up promotions, hanging signage, returning try-ons to the sales floor, watching for shoplifters, ringing up the sales, pushing credit cards, obtaining shopper information, as well as the housekeeping aspects of keeping hangers organized, trash controlled, fixtures dusted, floor mopped, etc., only accomplishes one thing–giving the salesperson jobs to do rather than finding a sense of accomplishment in having a good sale and developing good customer loyalty.
Most store employees feel it’s a “job well done” when the store looks properly merchandised, they’re caught up on freight, and markdowns are done. Generally only management really cares if they made their daily sales goals.
If employees are properly trained to sell (which too few are today) and offer good sound customer service and hire other employees to handle tasks, you’ll come out ahead. It really is the employee who is the most important person in the store. They can make it or break it for retailers.
Oh, and just a general note–the Target in my area offers superior service in comparison to Nordstrom. It isn’t the level of service that is expected that matters, but rather the level of service employees are expected to offer.
There is a real, palpable, difference between the charming, if overbearing, “professional” salesperson of not that long ago, and the crop of “stand-arounders” and “cell phone chatters” that currently double as sales help in so many stores. This is perfectly obvious to any one who has managed, or even shopped in retail establishments over the past decade.
While I hate to bring up poor Macy’s again, I must, by way of example. In the Chicago area many of Marshall Field’s most outstanding, beloved and effective sales people were immediately wooed and snapped up by other stores such as Neiman’s and Nordstrom’s which knew exactly what they were getting–both competence AND a trailing customer base!
Along with their other issues during a difficult transition, Macy’s was forced to hire new sales and customer service people and get them out on the floor in a hurry. Complaints by shoppers about finding adequate and helpful service on the sales floors of Macy’s in Chicago continue to be an ongoing theme in discussion boards, and appears to be at least a contributing factor towards the less than stellar debut of Macy’s in the windy city.
Not that long ago, creative and educated women flocked to sales and teaching as professions, and those professions were the better for it. Today, happily, their educated younger sisters are designing buildings, flying planes, and running companies. The pool for hiring and developing young salespeople is smaller, less educated, and so many of the ones who do sign on are just coasting until something better comes along. As others have mentioned, sales is considered neither a prestigious nor well paying job.
“Overburdened” sales staffs are not the real problem. Unfortunately, it is a problem much larger and more difficult to solve than hiring a few more associates.
Our research has shown the core problem is not really workload, it’s the fundamentally adversarial relationship between retailers and their employees:
– retailers are convinced their employees will steal from them at the first opportunity (they are probably not wrong)
– retailers have no particular retention program, or even career path for the average store associate.
– when economic times are good, store associates can just leave and get another job elsewhere if they’re not happy with their workloads
– when economic times are rough, store associates are just quietly resentful.
Think about Circuit City. The company worked with its associates. Got them to really care. Then, because of a really bad pricing decision around flat screen TVs, the company lost money and fired 3400 of its best employees. Six months later, it tried to hire them back. Does this breed trust?
My friend Greg Girard always used to say: pick a roomful of executives in any industry…the higher level the better. Ask them how many had their first job in retail. You’ll always get hands raised by 90% of the room. Greg’s question (and it remains totally relevant): Retailers get first crack at the best talent in the world. How and why do they let this talent slip through their fingers?
The industry has to do some real soul-searching, I think.
The irony of this discussion coming directly on the heels of our conversation yesterday about the prospects for L.L.Bean being able to successfully clone their service experience into 32 retail locations is too much to pass. To reiterate our opinion on that one–no way in….
The cause of that caustic assessment is my opinion that we have largely lost the concept of a “service culture” in America. Service in viewed as beneath us. And as David Bierbaum pointed out, we are so skeptical that anyone might be truly interested in “serving us” (as opposed to just trying to earn a commission check) that we actually complain about being approached in some retail outlets.
In general, we reject arguments blaming ‘society’ for what are really abdications of personal responsibility. But it is getting hard to find examples of our society honoring service, rewarding service, in ways that go much beyond ‘lip service’.
The retail service (or lack of it) is a deeper cultural issue.
I often hear of employees complaining of being overburdened, while the reality is that only a small percentage are overburdened–and never complain, while the rest slide through their day and claim to be overburdened and underpaid.
Hiring practices and training can solve the issue, but only if done consistently. The “save desk” is simply another means to dismiss customer service and leave the problem to someone else.
Management is key. Employees take their cues from supervisors; if the management attitude is poor don’t expect the subordinates to act better.
Jack Welch used to cull the bottom performers of his company….
My suggestion on improvement would be to look at the customer service system from the top to bottom. The clerk dealing with the customer is only the symptom of a bigger problem.
The keys to the whole thing is balance and attitude. As one contributor noted, some people are turned off by associates that are too aggresive or hovering.
An associate can be working on a task (stocking, etc) can still be cognizant of the customers in the store. A casual greeting from someone who is performing a task may let the customer know that while (s)he is busy, they are still available to help if needed. And if needed, the associate must be able to immediately drop the task in favor of helping the customer versus acting annoyed at the interruption. The culture that encourages this comes from the top down.
I don’t think most customers find hardworking associates frustrating. I think they find disinterested, uncaring and uninformed associates frustrating.
I’m actually in a different kind of “retail”–a library. My observation is that customer service suffers when managers are pulled away from direct service to more administrative tasks. We managers set the tone for everyone else. I can model behavior that I expect the “associates” to follow, and they do.
They also have someone immediately at hand to observe and answer questions. Too often, if they don’t know the answer to a question, they make something up to not look stupid. Having someone nearby to ask can make a big difference, because a lot of training happens on the spot.
Is is not the work load, but the lack of direction they get. In fact, in a study done several years ago, it was shown that associates that worked hard all day, were happier and did a better job serving their customers.
To much help leads to idle time–and hands–and that is when employees get into trouble and ignore their customers.
A company needs to create a culture of valuing customers and treating them right. Of course, this starts from the top down. It baffles me as to why there aren’t more retailers whose management teams live and walk the stores and engage with real customers, as well as store associates.
I agree with Mark that retailers who are serious about customer service need to measure it, reward it and tie executive and store manager compensation to it.
At my independent store, we initiated sales associates having only sales and customer service as their job description several years ago to marvelous sales increases that still continue to this day. It has also contributed to higher than average wages and associate longevity which in itself increases our ability to service our customer better than average.
Suggesting the problem with poor customer service is overburdening salespeople with too many non-selling tasks like stocking, taking inventory, sales reports is setting the bar too low. Poor customer service is created by poor salespeople often managed by poor managers. A company with chronic bad service has either hired poorly or incorrectly set priorities for salespeople. Get the right people on the bus, train them thoroughly, and demand they put customers first and there will be time for other less important activities.