6 easy steps to improve customer service standards in retail
Your job is to ensure customer service satisfaction levels are kept at an all-time high for 365 days of the year, but sometimes it can be difficult to keep up with all the standards you should be tracking.
Customers are becoming increasingly impatient and the benchmark for what they expect from customer service and sales teams is being set higher every year. In fact, 56% of consumers have higher expectations for customer service than they did just one year ago (Microsoft).
If you fail to raise the customer service standards across your retail business this will not only be detrimental to your reputation but your bottom line will be hugely impacted too. A report by New Voice Media found that $62 billion is lost by U.S businesses each year following poor customer experiences.
So what do customers want and what factors contribute to a good or bad experience for them? In this article, we’re going to take you through various customer service standards that you should be measuring to ensure your brand stands out from the crowd.
Improve knowledge standards
62% of consumers say that service insight and knowledge are key to a good experience, yet so many sales associates fail to impress customers with their level of expertise. In order to plug knowledge gaps and wow your customers with a team of highly skilled experts, you need to measure knowledge levels across your business. Below are a few things you can measure which will help you assess how clued up your staff really are.
How long can they engage customers in conversation?
Have you ever been into a furniture store to buy a new sofa and found yourself in and out within 10 minutes because the member of staff couldn’t answer any of your questions?
A good sign of a knowledgeable sales associate is whether they can hold an in-depth conversation for a long period of time. This is because it’s usually an indicator that they are knowledgeable enough to answer all of the customer’s questions in depth.
To measure this across your entire business, ask your store managers to keep track of how long their members of staff can engage a customer in conversation. Use a digital reporting tool to track their answers and you will soon be able to see if your sales staff need more product knowledge training.
Bi-weekly training scores
To improve knowledge standards across your retail stores, it’s crucial that you measure current knowledge levels. The perfect way to do this is to create short microlearning courses which you send out every two weeks. Included in these, should be information which you think is essential for employees to know in order for them to provide a comprehensive service to your customers. Topics which you could think about including can be seen below:
Returns policy
Product warranty
Most popular products
Best products for particular demands and needs
Care instructions
Best deals
Products in stock
Analyse the results and coach those employees who have scored poorly. If you do this consistently you will notice training scores rise and knowledge levels sharply increase.
Measure speed standards to improve customer service
The importance of fast service in retail cannot be emphasised enough. If there’s one thing your customers hate, it's waiting. They hate waiting to be acknowledged, waiting in queues, waiting for replies, waiting for products, waiting for emails and just about anything else. To improve customer service standards across your entire retail organisation you need to boost the speed at which your sales associates operate. Luckily there are a few ways for you to measure the speediness of your store associates.
Length of your queues
Are your queues consistently more than five people long? This is a clear indicator that your retail staff aren’t working efficiently enough.
Queue waiting time
If you notice long queues you should then investigate how long those queue waiting times are. Start timing from the moment a customer enters the line to the moment they are served. You can then set a standard for how long you think is acceptable for your customers to wait.
Problem resolution time
Your customer may have been seen to quickly, but the time it takes for their issue to be resolved is just too long. If your sales associates are taking too long to get answers from managers, or collecting products from the stockroom at a snail’s pace this needs to be fixed ASAP. Measure the time from when they first interact with a customer to when the customer leaves so you can gauge how long your problem resolution times are.
Take a look at your friendliness standards
According to Harris Interactive, 73% of customers feel that friendly employees or customer service representatives are what makes a memorable experience that causes them to stick with a brand.
Your sales staff may be up to speed with your product knowledge training and they may work at lightning pace but all that could be useless if they have a bad attitude. To measure the friendliness of your retail staff we recommend monitoring the following things.
The tone of their voice
Do they exhibit a warm and friendly tone of voice or is it cold and stern? It may seem like a small, simple thing, but the way your retail staff talk to your customers can have a big impact on the way they feel and whether they want to return to your retail store again.
Their body language
How do they stand or sit when they interact with your customers? Are they demonstrating closed body language which is usually;
Crossed arms
Crossed legs
Hands close to their body whilst speaking
Looking down or away
Or are they showcasing open body language which is usually;
Lots of hand gestures
Uncrossed arms and legs
Plenty of sustained eye contact
Their ability to engage in conversation not related to the sale
Yes, you want your store associate to make the sale but you also want them to create a memorable experience for the customer. In order for them to do this, they need to make your customer feel valued and cared for like they are more than just a number.
Watch to see if they ask general conversational questions such as;
Ask for the customer’s name and remember to use it in conversation.
Find out what the customer’s plans are for the day.
Whether they’ve been on holiday.
If they’ve had a good weekend.
If they have any exciting plans for the weekend ahead.
Do they have any pets?
What brings them to the shops today etc.
Measure attentiveness standards to improve customer service
Nothing boosts your customer service levels like attentive staff. They pay close attention to the needs of your store and the people in it, and you can always count on them to act in a polite and courteous manner no matter what the circumstances are. To measure attentiveness you’ll want to watch out for the following things.
How long they take to notice empty shelves/ missing display items etc.
Does your store look like a hot mess for a few hours before anyone notices or are your retail staff on the ball when things need replacing or fixing?
Move or misplace a product in-store and measure the time it takes for it to be attended to and fixed by a member of the team. Report your findings back to them and ask if they think the time is acceptable or not.
The length of time it takes them to acknowledge and greet a customer
All customers like to feel noticed so it’s essential that you greet each and every one of them. See if all of your customers are receiving the same warm welcome or if some are being forgotten about.
How are your accuracy standards?
It’s great if your sales associates work fast and efficiently to get your customers the answers they are looking for. But it’s not so great if those answers are wrong. Monitoring your staff’s level of accuracy will dramatically improve customer service standards and your customers will leave your retail store feeling impressed and happy with your superb service. To measure accuracy standards, take a look at the following things.
Number of returns
You’ve sold a tonne of phone packages over the weekend but the following week half of the customers want a refund, why is this? It’s usually because your sales associate has misled the customer in their selling techniques and missed out on some vital information which has caused the customer to feel uncomfortable about their purchase. Dig into your returns and notice if there is a pattern emerging.
Types of complaints
A huge indicator of poor accuracy standards is when your complaints are sky-high. Humans are hard-wired to hate uncertainty which is why people go mad if you tell them the wrong information which affects them later down the line. Let’s say one of your retail staff tells a customer they have 30 days to return their item when they only have 25, this poses a lot of issues for the customer and makes your business look deceitful and untrusting.
Look into your issues and read through the types of complaints you are receiving.
Include accuracy in your employee observations
When observing employee behaviour, have a section in your digital report which mentions accuracy. This should be used to highlight how accurate your sales associates are in the things they are saying. Include questions such as;
Is any of the information they are relaying to the customer factually incorrect?
How accurate are they with their description of…
If they don’t know the answer are they asking someone who does?
Standards for honesty
We don’t like friends or family members who are dishonest so why would we like companies who can’t operate in a transparent manner? In fact, almost nine out of ten Americans believe transparency from businesses is more important than ever before (Zdnet). To improve your honesty standards take a look at the following factors.
Your training
Sometimes your employees aren’t honest because it’s unclear what they can and can’t say to a customer. For example, if a customer's item is cheaper because it was the display product are they allowed to tell the customer this? Have you made this clear enough? A good idea to resolve any confusion is to ask your employees what they need some clarification on when talking with customers. From their answers, you can then build a short microlearning course to prevent miscommunication and confusion.
Discrepancies between what you say and how you behave
As a company, you put out tonnes of communications which you should act in accordance with. However, when staff are working on the shop floor it can be easy for them to forget. For example, let’s say you have a sign on your storefront which says you shut at 5.30 pm, only your staff start cleaning up and shutting the store at 5:15 pm. This makes you look dishonest and untrusting. Keep a watchful eye for discrepancies in your business, a few other examples include;
Wait times you tell customers compared to the actual wait times.
Telling customers you offer the best deals when you don’t.
Telling them their item will be delivered within 10 days when it takes longer.
Displaying certain products or services in your shop window then not having them in stock when customers enter the store.
Ready to start improving customer service standards in your retail business?
The high street may suffer a harder struggle than most e-commerce stores but there are some products and services you simply have to have a brick and mortar shop for. Ensure your customers get the service they want when they visit you on the high street and earn a loyal customer base as a result.
Our retail clients such as Next and Virgin Media use Oplift Review to raise the standards in all of their stores. The quick and easy digital reporting tool makes it effortless for managers to report on behaviours so head office gets an insight into how every store is performing.
