Measurable Influence: Improving Customer Service
The Challenge: Many store managers at a national drug chain appeared to be undermining both store associate behavior and training guidelines. As a result, the in-store performance of associates began to deteriorate. Even worse, customer perceptions of the chain's overall service started to suffer.
Our Solution: Retailers worldwide often turn to mystery shopping programs to ensure that their store associates are complying with behaviors that contribute toward building a consistent brand and a positive customer experience. When our client called on us for help, we were ready!
We worked with the client to create a shopping scenario that would require specific interaction with a store manager. Then we evaluated each interaction to ensure that the manager was providing the same great customer service expected of store associates. Based on the mystery shopping scores, we created baseline readings of the 44 highest and lowest scoring stores and call center records over a one-year period.
Managers who were affected by the visits were shown their results and given a copy of Carol Radice's insightful article, "Retraining the Trainers." They were also informed that an unannounced follow-up visit would occur -- in order to assess their compliance and improvement. Two months later, those follow-up visits revealed markedly improved results:
- The lowest scoring group realized a 25% improvement for wearing name tags and a 7.3% increase in making eye contact.
- The highest scoring group realized increases of 7.9% for greeting customers and a 20.6% increase in communicating a parting comment.
In all, lower-ranked stores enjoyed a 2.4% improvement. For higher-ranked stores, the improvement level was pegged at 3.8%. The improvement rate across all stores was a very significant 3.0%. Note: In retail, every single percentage point improvement translates into increased sales, improved brand loyalty, and customer satisfaction.
How We Did It: Using customer service scores from an on-going client assessment program, we were able to identify specific service influencers as the root cause of the problem. We also identified performance disparities between top and bottom performers, enabling us to target those lower performers for additional training.
