You can’t shake hands online!

Online you can “poke” someone, “like” something, “friend” someone, “share” something but nothing can replace the experience that a face-to-face meeting provides.

In retail, this is the in-store sales and service experience. We often talk about the different purposes of different channel. Mobile for portability, online for pricing and information, catalogues for inspiration and bricks and mortar stores being for experience.

This experience in-store becomes increasingly important as online retailing builds and customer expectations heighten. Our research shows that 46% of people who don’t shop online say that the reason is that they prefer to speak with someone in person so we see the importance of this channel already.

We also learned that 58.5% of respondents believe customer service has declined in the last five years, and that age is a key reason service is falling. While age and experience can of course play a part, we believe there is much more to it and that increased expectations is a major factor.*

With these increased expectations needs to come more highly skilled staff to deliver a higher standard of customer service and a more compelling offer to our customers. As retailers, we need to train and motivate our staff to sell, after all isn’t that what they are there for?

Our customer satisfaction survey results over the past year show that the majority of salespeople do not acknowledge a customer to a desired standard (typically within 30 seconds) or open the sale in a skilful and engaging manner. We also see a low number of staff consistently offer an add-on item and even fewer consistently and successfully initiate and close the sale.

On a positive note, however, we do see that consistent training, motivating and coaching of staff can successfully increase these results and therefore sales and profitability in a retail business.

Here are 10 questions to ask yourself in regards to your sales and service procedures:

1. Are we over complicating the sales and service process? We recently worked with a retailer that had 14 steps in their sales process, which is exhausting and virtually impossible to remember.
2. Are we measuring the gap (that is, what we didn’t do well in the sales process) and rewarding improvement in selling skills, service delivery and techniques?
3. How many managers and business leaders actually know how to sell and can actively engage staff by demonstrating their skills with the customer?
4. Where are the sales and service heroes in our business? Do they exist and are they featured in our communications?
5. How important is product knowledge in our business and do we test product understanding?
6- Do we engage customers in asking and understanding their expectations or do we presume that this is how they like to be served?
7. Do we have 10 minute start-up meetings each day? Do we use this opportunity to introduce new products and role-play sales techniques to sell them?
8. Do we sell on benefits that customers want to hear or do we try to bombard with lists of features that don’t really solve the customers’ purpose?
9. Is selling fun in the business? Do our sales people they even like selling? This sounds obvious but there are a large number of unenthusiastic “sales” people out there.
And the final most important point…
10. Do we actually measure customer service and link the results to our staff KPIs?

* The full article can be read here. The study, conducted by research consultancy AMR and customer feedback platform Feedback ASAP, is based on a survey of 521 Australian consumers.

Brian Walker is Managing Director of Australasia’s leading retail consultancy, the Retail Doctor Group. For more on Retail Doctor Group’s Fit for Business program email businessfitness@retaildoctor.com.au or phone 02 9460 2882.