In the current issue of the American Marketing Association's
Marketing News magazine, columnist Don E. Schultz suggests that today's shoppers long for the intimacy and caring service once provided at their local butcher, baker or dairy deliveryman.
He contends that retailers wishing to survive in today's hyper-competitive environment must possess three attributes:
- Fast: Like Spanish clothing retailer Zara, merchants need to respond quickly to changing consumer tastes.
- Friendly: Like the Apple store where employees are taught not to sell, retailers need friendly people, friendly products, friendly atmosphere and friendly shopping.
- Focused: Here, Schultz cites online retailer Zappos as having narrowed its mission to one thing, namely making customer service their true competitive differentiator.
I believe that
retail employees – as well as their managers – play a key role in delivering on these priorities:
- Fast: Employees can listen carefully to customer comments and requests on the floor of the store; pay attention to market trends on their own as consumers; then feed their insights back to the company to accelerate innovation. (For this to be successful, the company needs an easy system for collecting such feedback, and needs to build receptiveness for such employee engagement into its culture.)
- Friendly: Employees are chiefly responsible for providing customers with helpful and friendly service. Staff need to understand the products they sell, and know the store's policies on returns, exchanges and the like. (This means that management should provide adequate employee training about products and service delivery, and should consider some form of recognition program to motivate employees to deliver the best customer experience.)
- Focused: Identifying the company's focus – then communicating it to employees in a manner that they can act upon it – is a prime responsibility of management.
AMA members may read the full article by
clicking here.
