Stop ticking the box! Game on to create the best customer satisfaction!

In my last blog, I showed you how important positivity is in our daily life. In this blog I want to share my experience about the importance of positivity in retail.

Not long ago, many of my colleagues were complaining about new customer satisfaction reports, they argued the whole store performance shouldn’t be based on one single report. But at the same time, they asked me how I can lead the store to achieve the best results consistently. For those managers who are still struggling with the customer satisfaction results, I’m going to share my secret with you!

Many of you probably know that in retail, one of the most important indicators to evaluate the brand of business is customer satisfaction. It is essential not only because it helps to maintain the relationship with loyal customers and to identify potential loyal customers. Moreover, by closely listening to your customers, you can improve your business and your value proposition.

In order to measure the customer satisfaction of store performance, the company will train a group of people, called “mystery shopper”. After they complete the training, they will then visit individual stores and act as typical customers. There are a lot of different ways to train mystery shopper, usually the company will give them a specific set of instructions of what they want to measure.

For people who don’t understand how mystery shopper works you can check here.

With 8 years of retail working experience, I have met at least 20 mystery shoppers and attended countless workshop. While I understand that not all the efforts we put into the store can be evaluated by a single report. However, I think mystery shoppers still provide some very valuable messages for the company. The numbers you should care about is how many happy customers walk out of your store today not how much you sell. And trust me, it brings you much more than just achieving the sales goal but royal customer. Skip the visual merchandising and the audit part, I’m going to share a simple guide you can use to create your own customer experience in your store today.

1.Be a brand ambassador!

-Show your passion, find out what’s your store’s unique gene

Do you love your job? Are you having fun with what you are doing now? Think about why and what you love about your job? The reasons strongly influence your working environment as a store manager. It will reflect on your team and store performance. It was proven by multiple reports stating that they feel comfortable and welcoming when they walk into the store as their first impression. And that was exactly my “store message”. Consider your store as your own brand, discover your store’s unique gene and combined it with your vision. You can start with putting some keywords together and compare it with your staff’s personality. You will see that your store’s uniqueness is strongly connected to your staff.

-Understand the messages behind scores

Don’t just do it because it’s your KPI, do it because you love your company! Try to understand why your company put this KPI in your annual review. You are the first customer contact and the role model of the store. Instead of ticking all the boxes in the customer satisfaction report and blindly follow the company’s procedures, you should inspire your management team and staff by passionately sharing the company’s core values and uniqueness. It’s really important that they understand why customer satisfaction is the main indicator and how it affects business revenue.

2.Train your team

Do you know 95% of respondents said they usually tell at least one other person about a bad customer experiences with a company, while 54% said they share it with at least 5 other people? As a store manager you can’t fulfill every single customer, it’s all about team work to have a positive impact on as many as possible! Give your team the authority to create their own customer experience.

-Approach is important, be generous

Smile, smile, smile! Do you know smiles are contiguous?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMOKdSilTA

Believe or not! I actually had the “smiling” practice with my team, make it a hobby. Be really careful about the approach as that’s the first impression. Always use questions like” How can I help you?” instead of “What are you looking for?” But also give the customer some distance to think about what they want so they don’t feel overwhelmed. Another good approach is starting a conversation by complementing. It could be their outfit, bag, hair, face… anything you like about them, it usually helps you to connect with you customers.

-Create a helping culture, be authentic

Treat all customers like your family or close friends. Trust me, it ALWAYS works! Instead of digging out as much as money they have, trying to help them with authentic advice based on your professional knowledge. The customers come to the store with a purpose (either they purchase today or not), they look for suggestions and motivations. Help them to find the suitable product and respect their first choice. Always put their shoes in customers.

-Lead by example, be supportive

Give your team some scenarios such as “Would you judge your best friends when you go shopping with them?” “Do you suggest your family to buy something they don’t need?” When they have questions about product knowledge or service, make sure you have your management team or yourself stay on the shop floor to give them immediately support.

3.Always give positive feedback

Although one of your responsibilities is to achieve the sales goal, I suggest you always put the first principle ‘be a brand ambassador’ in mind and appreciate your staff by showing them the bigger pictures. Define “successful sales” to your team, it’s not only about how much you sell but how much you help the customer. Instead of just praising the big sales, try to recognize team effort even they didn’t sell anything (yet). Remember to show your appreciation and celebrate the success with your team! You can check out my last blog about the power of positivity and think about how it can affect your team!

I hope the simple guide helps you to get the best customer satisfaction! Do you have different ideas creating your own store customer experience? How would you do it differently? Or as a customer, have you ever had an amazing service from someone? Share your story with me by commenting below. I can’t wait to hear from you.