Las Vegas is a people town, and retail is a people business. So the question arises: How can retailers hire and train people to provide better customer service and build customer loyalty? “The key to developing loyal customers is creating a connection between employees, customers and brand,” said Steve Nachwalter, principal of Nachwalter Consulting Group, a global management consultancy based in Las Vegas.
A brand is an emotional connection to a product, Nachwalter said.
“It’s a feeling people get when associating with your product or employees,” he said.
The secret to establishing a brand is creating an emotional connection to the audience, and one of the best ways to do that is through customer service.
“Be organized and mindful,” Nachwalter said. “Make sure you understand the experience your customers are looking for, and make sure you are able to provide it to them. See your business through your customers’ eyes. If you can’t walk in their shoes, you will never be able to connect to or satisfy them.”
At the same time, employees’ connections to a brand are just as important as the customers’.
“The most effective way to get employees to provide better customer experience is continued education, developing an environment of ownership, and listening and adjusting to the needs of the customer and the employees,” Nachwalter said. “Ask yourself, have you taught your employees the simple techniques of learning to like the people they work with or for? The first thing I teach managers in my seminars and in the offices I consult with all over the world is to find something to love about everyone you deal with.”
Dan Jablons, the principal of Retail Smart Guys, a consulting firm in Los Angeles, said: “The problems of training staff come from the first and most incorrect supposition, which is that we want all salespeople to operate the same way, to look the same, act the same. This creates salespeople who ask uninteresting questions such as, ‘Can I help you find anything today?’ Yawn. Heard it a million times.”
The best sales techniques and training, Jablons has found, are those that invite salespeople to be what Jablons calls uniquely themselves.
“That means that I don’t want to meet a salesperson who is like every other salesperson in every other store in every other mall in every other state,” he said. “I want to have a unique, fun, exciting experience. I want to tell my friends, ‘You gotta go to this store; their staff is so much fun to be with!’ ”
Jablons recommends retail salespeople ask their families and friends, “What is it about me that you think is different?”
“The answers are often things like, ‘You are funny,’ ‘You know more about music than anyone,’ ‘You have an ability to get close to people really quickly,’ ‘You always look great,’ ‘You really know how to put an outfit together,’” he said.
Employees should take those elements “and kick them into super high gear. That’s what makes a unique experience for the customer and keeps them coming back,” he said.
It also is “the exact reason why a customer shops in a boutique — for the unique experience,” Jablons said. “So the store should give it to them, full throttle.”
Focused training
Training should focus on the positive — especially with difficult people, Nachwalter said.
“When I encounter a very difficult person, I think, ‘Maybe they just ended a relationship and are having a bad day, maybe they are ill, maybe they are sad and lonely and don’t know how to connect,’” Nachwalter said. “Kill people with kindness and understanding; it will soften them and make them more likable.”
Retailers need to teach employees how to connect, Nachwalter said. One of the exercises he requires has salespeople go to stores where workers are underappreciated and, after making a small purchase, “they must make eye contact and say thank you,” he said. “A sincere thank you, with connection. I’m not looking for the run-of-the-mill thanks. I’m looking for a smile with their eyes and a true connection. You will see the connection in the other person’s eyes if you do it right. Employees must be taught to connect. They will start to do it automatically and often.”
Employees must be taught the proper way to represent a brand “and must be coached and appreciated,” Nachwalter said.
To develop employees who care about their brand and customers, Nachwalter said, retailers must:
■ Be clear on company goals.
■ Set strong guidelines for behavior.
■ Continue to teach store personnel.
■ Reward and notice the good employees do.
■ Correct and “create new paths for the stuff they do wrong.”
■ Give employees some ownership and openly communicate about issues.
■ “Train, train, train. And keep teaching.”
■ Follow up and be consistent.
■ Give the customer “such a good feeling that they go out of their way to compliment” employees.
■ Self-evaluate. “No one does everything right. If you think you do, get an honest friend to help you see how wrong you are.”
■ Role play. Have employees pretend to be customers of all types and see how they handle it. “Show them what you want and make sure they can do it. Make no assumptions with your success. Seize the day. The more you practice and teach, the better and more loyal your employees will be.”
Employees and employers
“First rule of service: Hire people who fit your culture,” said Matthew Hudson, president and general manager of Rick Segel & Associates, a retail consulting firm in Kissimmee, Fla. “The issue is we hire people based on emotions, much like our dating life. We interview them, and if there is a connection, we schedule a second date and so on. We put all the emphasis on résumés and past work history and very little on cultural fit.”
What Hudson called the “secret reality of people” is that “you can’t train nice. You cannot train an employee to be nice if they are not nice to begin with. You cannot train someone to smile if they do not naturally smile.”
“If you want a service culture, you need to hire compassionate, magnanimous people,” Hudson said. “I do not care about product knowledge; that can be trained. Service, on the other hand, cannot. Sure, you can train someone for your ‘version’ of service, but the service heart has to be there to begin with.”
Some in the industry, however, focus less on employees than on employers.
“I’m not sure it’s the employees that are the problem,” said Fred Faulkner, sales and marketing director for Jaco Oil/Fastrip Food Stores Inc. in Bakersfield, Calif. “Very few companies provide the support and resources to make this happen and to make it happen over a long period of time.”
Today’s employee “needs and wants more feedback than in past years,” Faulkner said. “They also want to be rewarded for basically doing their job, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s just that they are looking for more recognition.”