How can you increase the speed of retail operations in your stores whilst maintaining quality?

Speed and quality are the two most common factors that operations professionals are continuously fighting between. It can feel like you are on a seesaw, when one metric goes up the other goes down. When you hit the right balance between the two you have nailed a smooth ride to success. But getting the balance right isn’t the end of the story, it’s about keeping your position there for the foreseeable future.

When the balance goes horribly wrong

A recent example of where this balance has gone disastrously wrong is Jamie Oliver’s Italian restaurant chains. In the beginning, the expansion of the restaurants was incredibly rapid. You couldn’t go to any town or city without there being one nearby. When you managed to book a table, they were always incredibly busy with a vibrant and bustling atmosphere.

Why would you want to be anywhere else? Tasty, ‘famous’ food from the TV chef himself, plus a buzzing vibe. Fast forward 10 years and his restaurants are being closed left, right and centre. People are talking about the poor quality of the food, the slow and unhelpful service and the price that you have to pay to receive this terrible experience. Whilst Jamie was focused on rapid expansion in the beginning, the quality of the retail operations within the restaurants was forgotten about. This has reportedly cost him £20 million in losses, had he paid close attention to his retail operations and employee performance this may have been a different story.

1. Analysis and understanding of productivity in your business

The first place to start when improving productivity in your business is to understand fully where time is being spent. You need to analyse high priority processes and think about how you can shave minutes off. When you add this up for every employee the time saved per day can be huge.

1.1 How do I figure out where to shave minutes off from?

First of all, you need to actually go through the different processes yourself. It won’t work if employees simply tell you the actions and then you work it out in your head. You need to walk through the physical steps so that you can really get a feel for the different stages that are involved. From there, you can then think about which steps in the process provide little or no value. For example, are your sales assistants spending a longer amount of time trying to find customer data than they are talking to customers and solving their problems? If this is true, you may need to look at improving the UI or UX of your data management system, or simply reducing the amount of unnecessary information which employees have to input into it.
Think about quick wins which can almost immediately speed up tasks. In the example above a quick win would be to remove a few form boxes. A longer one would be to redesign the whole UI or UX of the system.
Look for bottlenecks, are you asking staff to complete a stock check at lunch when there are less staff working on the shop floor. This could result in them repeatedly being interrupted by customers which means the checks take double the amount of time to do.

2. What metrics or information can I look at to improve?

Walking through the process is the first step but you may miss some key findings when you are not looking at the bigger picture. Your second job is to have a look at some key metrics which will give you an indication of how fast tasks are being carried out in your organisation or whether they are being done at all.

2.1 Time it takes for a problem to be solved

Look for the time and date which an incident was reported and then look for the time when the problem was solved.

Is there a large waiting time or was the problem solved rapidly?

Have a look at the conversations which happened in between, does everyone appear to have the correct information and tools to sort the problem, or does there seem to be a weak link who doesn’t have what they need to get the issue fixed? If an issue is reported and it doesn’t get a reply for a few days, it's a sign that you need a more efficient communications platform. If an issue is reported but your staff can’t find the right information to rectify the problem it’s a sign that you need a better knowledge management or reporting system.

2.2 Time it takes for a task to be completed

The first question is do you even know how long it’s taking for your tasks to be completed?

If your audits or checklists are completed on paper, employees can simply scribble results down when they know they are due a visit by a regional manager. They could start an audit on Monday and finish bits of it here and there, eventually not finishing it until the end of the week. With a retail operations platform, you can set a deadline for when a task needs to be completed. You will be notified when a task has been finished and the app will log the minutes taken to complete the job. If you notice that tasks are taking too long to do it’s a sign to improve.

2.3 Are tasks being completed at all?

Are the number of tasks you think should be done in a day being completed? Do you have a place to go where you can see if tasks are being completed? If you do, are there any gaps where some tasks aren’t being reported? Have you now realised that you don’t have a central place to see if things are being done? If you feel like you are not really getting a full overview of everything being completed in your business it’s time to take action. With a retail operations platform you can track tasks with active task lists these can be set by management to ensure the day to day running of your business goes as smoothly as possible. Everyone will be held accountable for their responsibilities meaning no task will be left undone.

3. How to maintain and improve quality standards in your retail operations when you are trying to adjust your speed

The key to maintaining quality is to keep a constant eye on different sources of information which can tell you if standards are dropping. This way you can quickly work to propel the quality of work back up to where it should be.

3.1 Look at Trust Pilot reviews

This is a great way to see if your customers are still receiving the great service/products which they are used to or if your new initiatives to improve speed are deteriorating your quality.

Closely look at any patterns or keywords which frequently pop up. Are you noticing phrases like longer queues, unhelpful staff, not enough staff? The key is to look for common themes which correlate to the changes you’ve made. For example, if you go back to the instance above in section 1.1 where we discussed removing data forms. This could lead to employees knowing less information about customers which could lead to customers finding your staff unhelpful. You may need to go back to the drawing board and think about what else you could change.

3.2 Look at your overall audit scores and insights

These are a great way to check that quality isn’t slipping.

E.g. If you notice that ‘end of the day checklists’ are being completed in record speed time but then you go to your audit reports and notice that store inspection scores are poor because of cleanliness. This is a sign that things are speeding up because poor attention is being paid to certain jobs. This means your quality of standards are slipping. Ramp them back up by making your teams aware of their score. Provide them with the correct training and management to do the jobs better and in a better time frame. Set them small targets to realistically improve their speed rather than drastically reducing time and thus reducing quality.

3.3 NPS scores

Net promoter scores measure the willingness of customers to recommend you to a friend and they are said to be closely connected to revenue growth. The scores are a huge indication as to whether your quality of service is up to scratch. If your standards have declined then the likelihood of your customers recommending you to their close friends or family are slim. You will need to know what your NPS score was before you started your speed improvement initiatives (companies usually measure them every quarter). Have a look to see if your score has improved or declined. If it has stayed the same and you already had a good score then chances are that your quality hasn’t been impacted as a result of your speed. But if your score has declined then you need to revisit your speed of retail operations.

According to Retently, the average NPS score per industry can be seen below:

3.4 What counts as a good NPS score?

3.5 Employee training scores should correlate with speed results

Take a look at your recent training scores. These should correlate with the speed improvement results. For example, if you work in care and your nurses are completing the drug rounds in a really good time yet they are struggling to answer basic dosage questions. It’s a sign that the rounds aren’t being done with the safety measures and standards that are required.

Your training results are a clear indication of which people and teams are struggling, this should help you identify who needs the most guidance and training. A speed-up of tasks is only good if the knowledge and training of your staff isn’t compromised. If they are completing things faster because they don’t really understand the importance of certain processes this isn’t good, equally if they are faster because they are spending less time brushing up on their knowledge it can cost you in the long run. This is because employees who lack knowledge usually provide a poorer service.

3.6 Achievements and recognition, are you keeping tabs?

Do you have a rewards and recognition system in your organisation? If you do, have a look at the average number of achievements handed out for the month prior to your speed improvement initiatives. Were they higher or lower? If you are seeing a decrease in the number of achievements being handed out it could be a sign that either the quality of work is decreasing or people don’t have time to hand them out anymore. Either way, this is bad because they are a key way to measure the quality of work within your business. You can dig deeper into these by looking at the people who usually receive the most and reviewing their employee observations or one to ones. Through this, you may be able to get some insight into how they are feeling and what could be causing their quality of work to deteriorate.

4. How to balance employee satisfaction with your quality and productivity efforts

It is important to think about the satisfaction levels of your employees during your speed and quality improvements. So many leaders get caught up with the numbers and metrics that they forget to check in on the satisfaction of their employees. If your employees are continuously dissatisfied because of the amount of pressure they are under, you are never going to be able to improve speed and quality. Below are strategies to keep your employees happy and motivated whilst improving business performance.

4.1 Include the relevant scores and metrics in their personal one to ones

To make sure that speed and quality are always at the forefront of everyone’s mind in your business you need to keep reminding employees about the importance of the two metrics. A great way to do this is to include the scores in your employee one to ones. Use them as a talking point in your discussions asking them why they think the scores are the level that they are.

Ask them what they think they can do to improve the numbers and ask if there are any barriers that are holding them back. This question will allow you to see if there are any issues which are making your employees unhappy and are making their job more difficult to do. Use their feedback to improve their experience and show them that you are there to support them. This is an essential step in keeping your employees happy and showing that you care about their feelings and thoughts during a time of change.

4.2 Have a reward and recognition system in place

According to Socialcast, 69% of employees would work harder if they felt their efforts were better appreciated. When employees feel undervalued it negatively affects their productivity. They stop putting in effort because they know it will go unnoticed, so naturally, they think what’s the point?

By having a rewards and recognition system in place it allows you to easily make your employees feel valued. You’ll be able to quickly show them that you are aware of their efforts and you want them to keep up the good work. Our retail operations platform allows colleagues and managers to hand out stickers and trophies meaning employees can receive 360-degree recognition.

Peer to peer recognition is essential when boosting speed and quality in your business because it is all about teamwork. When you use peer-to-peer recognition it strengthens the bonds between colleagues leading to better working relationships.

4.3 Let all employees have access to performance analytics and insights

A Partners in leadership study revealed that 9 out of 10 employees cited accountability as one of the top development needs they wanted to see at their organisation. Despite this, 82% of respondents said they had no ability to hold others accountable. Lack of accountability can destroy employee morale. If top-performing employees are constantly being punished for work that someone else should be held accountable for they are soon going to become disengaged. If low performing employees are never held accountable for work they are not completing then their performance is never going to improve.

If you have the ability to show all employees who’s doing what and how well others are performing it makes people responsible for their work. Retail operations platforms allow you to show performance scores to all employees. Within these scores you can see exactly who has completed what, and who is positively or negatively impacting your overall score. This not only adds healthy competition to your business making employees want to perform better. It also helps give them a guide of what they need to do to improve which they can refer back to whenever they want to.

5. How to keep a close on everything going on in your business even when you are not there

When you have multiple stores to look after it can be really hard to get a full overview of your retail operations. A lack of visibility in your industry can lead to poor quality of services or tasks and stunted improvement. Not only this, but you face an increased amount of risks.

Sadly the reality is that in a lot of businesses, Retail Operations Managers are having to resort to outdated information to assess quality and speed. This is because of the inefficiencies in data gathering and reporting functions which makes it difficult to gain full visibility of your business. Having good visibility means it is easy for you to access real-time information about your retail operations whenever you need to. Below we will discuss the options that will help you gain better control over your business and keep track of overall speed and quality.

5.1 Create and collect real-time photos

Do your employees frequently carry out tasks which need to be up to company standards? Perhaps they need to do your point of sale displays? Maybe they need to maintain the cleanliness of your store or hospital. Whatever it is they need to be maintaining how do they let you know when they have done it and how do you know what the end result looks like? Some operations platforms have reporting features which allow your employees to send photos and notes when they submit the status of the task. This allows your managers to make sure that the quality of their work is always up to scratch. Having this feature makes it easy to see tasks and ensure that they are consistent across your business. You can also use the photos in your comms to highlight company best practice and internal benchmarks to work towards. If the quality is below average, you can alert the employee to make the correct changes, a lot of new platforms have instant alert features to help with this.

5.2 Analytics dashboards

When you speed up operations it can leave you liable to mistakes. Using an analytics dashboard and ensuring all data is collected electronically will minimise human error. A dashboard can provide you with real-time results eliminating the need to sift through reports and checklists. Most modern platforms allow you to customise your dashboard so that you can predefine the metrics which allows for even faster tracking of your activities. Not only that, but you will be able to drill down deeper into what’s really going on in your business. This makes it easy to spot patterns and trends so you can stop issues before they happen.

Do you feel like you are always mapping out strategies, plans and tactics but find it difficult to stay on top of them and track whether you are actually achieving your results? An analytics dashboard makes it easy to view your progress and compare results.

5.2.1 How do I choose the right dashboard?

Identify what the driving need is for your dashboard and go from there, think about:

What problem you are trying to solve in your business/what are you most interested in?

Data awareness and time-sensitive data = Operational Dashboard
KPIs and top-level data = Strategic Dashboard
Patterns, trends and insights = Analytical Dashboard

Think about who the main users of the dashboard will be?

Managers or lower-level employees = Operational Dashboard
More senior-level professionals such as executives or directors = Strategic Dashboard
Analysts within your company = Analytical Dashboards

What are the main goals that you want to track?

Employee empowerment and awareness to keep everyone on track = Operational Dashboard
More top-level goals such as KPIs = Strategic Dashboard
To predict outcomes discover deep unearthed insights = Analytical Dashboards

To summarise here is a checklist of questions to ask yourself, these will help you start your speed and quality initiatives:

Do I have an accurate history of how long tasks are taking to complete in store?
Do I have a list of high priority and low priority tasks and have I worked them out in the correct order?
Do I know which tasks provide little value?
Am I aware of all the current bottlenecks in my business?
Am I aware of how long it is taking for incidents to be reported and then resolved?
Do I have an accurate understanding of whether tasks are being completed?
Am I up to date on my latest Trust Pilot reviews?
Am I up to date on my audit scores are these improving or declining?
What is my NPS is it improving or declining?
What’s the benchmark metric or NPS score for my industry?
What are my employee training scores are they improving or declining?
Who is my star employee? Where are my best-performing employees?
Do I include quality and speed scores in my employee one to ones?
Can my front line employees view their performance analytics and insights?
Can I see the status of tasks once they are completed? E.g. how tidy a shop floor is?
Do I have a central place to view all of the tasks in my business?
Am I using the right analytics dashboard to match my specific goals?

Improving the speed and quality of operations in your business requires careful planning and strategy. Throwing lots of money and time at the problem will not improve your results. You need to have a solid strategy in place that you stick to religiously, this will enable you to more easily analyse and measure the results so you can test whether you are making a real difference.

How can we help?

Ocasta Review can transform the way your people work through behavioural changing observations and audits for your Retail stores - all with a focus on customer experience, increasing sales and driving operational efficiencies: