As a newbie in Switzerland, nothing could make me more excited than shopping on a nice and warm weekend! Since I was not really familiar with the stores here, I tried to look for some honest review on the internet. Given the lack of information about the shops that have the best products and customer service, I decided to look for them by myself!
After a few days of raining and snowing in Zurich (its April!), I finally had the chance to hunt for my spring wardrobe and fortunately it was a sunny! I went to the shopping area, starting at Paradeplatz and walking up the Bahnhofstrasse. The shopping street is between Lake Zurich and the main station.
Want to know more about the retail customer service in Zurich, Switzerland? Join me?
https://youtu.be/b-s-yPsnSRo
In the last 7 years of my retail life, customer service had been always one of the most important Key Performance Indicators. It was really interesting to change my perspective from a retailer to a customer. After half a day of being a mystery shopper, I can say that the overall customer experience in these shops was good. However, I found 2 major issues:
Q1: Short of staff?
The seven stores that I’ve visited were all pretty crowded. It was difficult for the staff to satisfy all the customer at once. My question will be: How good was their ability to multi-task? Did they even provide such a training to teach the staff how to multi-tasks considering there was high customer traffic? From a company’s perspective, I understand it can reduce costs in a short term. In my view, sale assistants are the key in brick and mortar retail. They are the first contact of customers. Their professional service decides whether the customers will return or not. If a company can’t pay attention to more potential customers by providing more training or getting enough staff, I’m not sure how they are going to get more loyalty customer in the long run.
Q2: Only VM attracts customer?
The first step to increase your brand awareness and to lure in customers is definitely to have a clear message from your VM (visual merchandising). Most of the stores that I visited, did a really good job to make me enter the store given their VM. From my observation, the number of staff being busy unpacking or tidying was much higher than staff making sure customer needs are met. That’s where you lose potential customers.
The following two questions will be my focus in the future:
Q1: How do retailers in Switzerland handle CRM?
Q2: Cultural difference in retail?
In the next episode, I’m going to shop for my boyfriend’s gift!! Stay tuned and see you next week!
Cover Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels
