Customer Service
Posted: September 27, 2007
Updated: October 21, 2007
Troubling Time at Target by Chris McCrory, Lead Strategist
Occasionally at my kids’ school, students get to wear team apparel instead of a uniform shirt. Last year, they could wear New Orleans Saints shirts on the Monday of the home opener against the Atlanta Falcons. That meant a scramble to a store the weekend before, and we weren’t the only ones shopping.
My oldest daughter, generally a pretty traditional kid, opted for a white long-sleeve shirt with sparkly fleur de lis. My middle one, however, went pink, which is her modus operandi.
This year, with the LSU-Tulane game looming, I was on the hunt for a pink LSU or Tulane shirt of some kind for above-mentioned middle child. My wife, a Tulane Law School grad, was pushing for something representing the Green Wave. Me, I didn’t really care; I just wanted to find something pink. My oldest already had her Tulane shirt from an earlier excursion.
Anyway, I went to a few stores with limited success (but success nonetheless, in the form of a pink LSU jersey; sorry, honey). As I searched through my local Target, though, I had a troubling experience with several of the employees. It wasn’t a direct confrontation with any of them. In fact, I had no interaction with them at all. It was what I saw and overheard that was most bothersome.
Let’s start with what I heard. Two young male employees were strolling up an aisle across from where I was feverishly digging through shirts. One was telling the other that it was obvious the second wasn’t happy doing what he was doing at the store. The conversation went back-and-forth with neither expressing any displeasure with the other. When they did say unfavorable things about anyone, it appeared to be about a supervisor or a manager—someone identified as not really doing anything to help the staff.
Not finding what I wanted (pink Tulane or just Tulane in her size) I went to another floor hoping for some luck. As I jutted from one area to the other, a discussion from an aisle I was about to pass caught my attention, and I turned my head just as I arrived at the opening. There I caught three female employees gathered next to a rack of shoes with no apparent purpose other than talking about some estimate one of them had gotten recently.
What I saw has become all too common—sloppily-dressed staff. Shirts were untucked, pants were either too big or too small and people generally looked disheveled.
Now I am well-acquainted with this store, spending a fair amount of discretionary income there and referring to it by its popular French-sounding nickname. Really, it is often my store of choice. And this is not the first time I have encountered this particular behavior. In fact, it is a disturbing trend that is not isolated to this one store or to the same individuals.
Most organizations believe customer service only involves a direct interaction with the customer: helping her find what she needs, answering her questions appropriately and being attentive to her. That is only part of it. Customer service is based on the customer’s experience from the moment she enters the store until she gets home and uses the product for the first time (or maybe even the twentieth time, if it is corporately-branded).
Here are some basic customer service tips. First, if employees are on the floor in plain sight of the customers, make sure they are actually doing something productive. If not, your customers may start wondering how much more they could save on their purchases if the store simply rid itself of useless staff.
Second, if employees are interacting with each other while on the floor, they need to keep it relevant to the task at hand. As tempting as it may be, it is not appropriate for them to discuss what’s wrong with their lives, who they’re dating or what they thought of what Susie was wearing the other day. Work should have its element of fun and social connectedness, and that doesn’t need to stop entirely. What needs to end are conversations that can sour how customers regard your staff. If your employees are engrossed in irrelevant discussions, customers will either avoid asking for the help they need or, worse, be ignored. Both situations often lead to the same result—a lost sale.
Third, if you don’t have a dress code policy for your staff, set one. If you do, re-evaluate it and hold people accountable. The policy needs to express clearly to staff how you want and need them to be perceived. What are they allowed to wear for tops? Bottoms? Do the tops need to be tucked? Is staff required to wear a belt? What color? What kind of shoes? What about hair, makeup and perfume? When you have a solid policy in place and you enforce it, your customers should be able to tell you what the policy says simply by observing your staff. People should expect that store workers be as neat and clean as the store itself.
Remember, your staff are at work to, well, work. Setting the right standards for their behavior, enforcing your expectations consistently and establishing the right environment will create an exceptional experience for your customers.
Let Chris know what you think. E-mail him at chris.mccrory@kennen-bmc.com.