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24.01.2011
Will this show effect customer’s, store managers and retail recruitment agencies?
Mary Portas is an experienced retail consultant who loves shops and shopping. We all shop, some of us love it and some of us hate it, but everyone will have had good and bad customer experiences. In this show Mary’s aim is to expose the bad and shocking customer service some stores have which is one of the biggest frustration of both shoppers and retail companies alike with Store Managers, Assistant Managers and Sales Assistants all being employed, targeted and trained to deliver great service.
As a specialist retail recruitment agency we focus our time and energies in ensuring we work with our clients to help them attract the very best talent for their stores, irrespective of the company and brand, every one of our clients looks to recruit a people manager, someone who can lead and inspire their team to deliver a professional and commercial store which delivers above customer expectations. Clearly from this show and from our own experiences of shopping some Managers are not delivering on this.
When watching the episode I was shocked to see store managers looking uninterested in customer service and lacking a basic pride in the store they managed. The calibre of managers in these stores was low; they were prime examples of passive managers, waiting for the customers to approach the till before any interaction. There are a number of reasons this can happen, poor retail recruitment strategy, poor employee engagement or a lack of leadership/motivation from their area manager. There are always going to be times of bad service due to the nature and challenges of retail and people but if some retailers had a stronger candidate attraction and retail recruitment strategy they would be able to recruit and attract proactive store managers who are aware of the need to approach and interact with customers minimising poor service.
Stores often use excuses blaming their particular sector, as their stores operated in discount, high volume retail, but this was not an excuse for Mary who feels it is reasonable to expect high levels of service in any type of store whether discount or niche high end retail and we agree. Customers have for too long been content with poor service as long as the price is right and I believe that with the increased competition for every £1 spent on the high street then this will change.
Retailers will start to place more emphasis on their retail recruitment strategy to attract a higher calibre of staff, driving up standards within the stores with every member of staff truly representing the brand. With some retailers not paying attention to their strategy behind attracting sales assistant and customer service workers, the people who are often the 1st impression for customers, then these retailers are harming their brands. This alongside the cost of training new team members, providing uniform and creating a stable team means getting the right people 1st time is vital for any business.
