Retail surgery: How do I make sure I don't lose customers through poor service?

This is a conundrum many retailers struggle with. Solving it requires retailers to apply their best staff to each task on the shopfloor as efficiently as possible.

Queue management and customer service expert Terry Green says: “Too many stores have trouble balancing things, struggling between cash taking and being there to support shoppers while they are selecting from your merchandise.” Furthermore, walk-ins are difficult to predict. “Each customer arrival is an independent statistical event and the numbers per store are too small for accurate and reliable modelling,” says Green.

He suggests tackling the queuing system to help boost both store efficiency and sales. He believes customers don’t mind waiting for service providing that service allocation is fair. He recommends retailers bring all their registers together into a single bank – “this makes them easier for customers to find and makes staffing them more scalable”, says Green. For instance, if the average transaction takes 90 seconds, then customers will need to wait no more that three minutes on average. “You can plot how many waiting customers can be banked up acceptably in this way,” says Green.

He adds that retailers must have a proper means for people to wait in turn for service and show customers some impulse-buy merchandising while they are standing in line. Get this right, he says, and retailers will not only boost sales but will free up valuable staff hours.