A Smile Can Make All The Difference

Jet Airways management’s decision to sack thousands of customer facing staffers justifies the perception that Indian service industry is today driven by the sheer number of staffers rather than their competence and aptitude to deliver quality service to their customers. As and when any of these service sectors will face growth challenges the companies will start focusing on quality and correct numbers.
I firmly believe globally retailers have remained profitable only by maintaining promised service standards to their consumers. The fact that more than 75% of employees of any corporate retailer are in consumer facing duties and that surely makes retail a service business. Following my last pieces on consumer experience this time I decided to go around and speak to some of the store staffers and find out why they are not focused on their consumers! Once I again I visited some of big brands in F&G retailing.
CSA working on the floor are only trained to move the merchandise from back office to the shelves and arrange the shelves from time to time. When they are not doing that they can have a tea break! Though they operate in the consumer environment but they hesitate in making eye contact with any consumer because of lack of confidence and motivation and this is the reason every time a consumer seeks help they fail to deliver especially the sub-contracted staff. Most of them admit of being thrown into this job without even being told about their job in detail leave aside the training on it. Basic training on shelf management, product identification and regular brief on promotion and schemes can make these staffers very effective and this can be achieved by store manager holding a morning brief with all of them before the start of the shift. Some of them have a different energy level because they are ambitious and they have their own initiative. Ganesh at Spencer’s tell me he enjoys talking to customers helping them and this has helped him a great deal in learning English language skills. I am sure Ganesh will go very far if he continues making these efforts.
Cashiers are seen as seniors by the floor staff and this is the reason many of them aspire to be in the check out job, also it is seen as more dignified. Since most of the stores face shortage of trained cashiers, one of the key reason for not able to operate all POS terminals at any point of time, retailers must train all direct staffers in check out process and rotate their duties between POS and shop floor. Since cashiering gives enough exposure and understanding of store merchandise cashiers can often be asked to supervise certain sections and help consumers. This role flexibility can directly impact the movement of consumer queue more effectively and also bring more parity amongst the staffers enhancing their motivation.
I have always advocated that store manager is like a ship captain with all types of resources at his disposal and every proactive store manager will first make a list of consumer touch points he/she wishes to address and sensitize all the staffers on these touch points regularly. Shuffling these resources between consumer touch points and back office activities such as unloading, sorting, labeling, packing or shelving based on consumer traffic can be very effective. Daily brief by the captain every day on daily sales targets, promotions and schemes of the day and allotting targets to each of them for counting consumer smiles can be very effective and motivating to get the best out of them.

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Published in DNA Money on 23rd October 2008