While some people may say retail is retail, there’s actually a marked difference between outlet stores and traditional retail stores in terms of traffic, customer relationships and frontline staff performance.
The typical outlet shopper isn’t as much interested in assistance from staff as they are in finding the good bargains. They’re more willing to search through merchandise for good deals and don’t expect to receive the same level of personal attention as when shopping in a retail location.
Shoppers in traditional retail locations rely more on the assistance from staff and are more unhappy when those expectations are not met. With the exception of Nordstrom’s, Victoria’s Secret and a few other fine retailers, shoppers have come to accept that standards of personal attention have changed in retail in the last twenty years, but they continue look to staff to answer questions, locate merchandise, and generally assist in the purchasing process.
It’s logical then that the surveys used to measure store data should be different for each of these unique environments.
In many cases, clients using retail-oriented surveys actually have more outlet stores. The outlets are typically busier in terms of absolute customer numbers and all outlets have a higher customer/associate ratio than would be normally found in a retail setting.
In all cases, the outlets score are lower then the retail stores. Perhaps it is because the outlets are using the same survey measurements as are being used for the retail locations. With such a different customer mindset, and less associates to service a higher number of customers, it’s not hard to figure out why.
Customers in both outlet stores and retail locations do want some of the same things. Being greeted quickly by store staff, the ability to ask questions and receive correct answers, receiving attention, being escorted to and assisted in the fitting rooms that are clean, and identification of store personnel by name (either verbally or with a name badge) are high on the list of customer expectations.
Since outlets often do not offer the same levels of personalized service and attention as retail stores, using a retail survey to measure outlet store performance is like handing someone an apple and asking them to describe an orange. The outlets are getting short-changed. With some simple modifications to the retail survey, outlets would be in a better position to measure the actual performance data that matches their environment. Armed with this targeted information, realistic benchmarks could then be set and achieved by frontline staff.
