The phrases “staff training” and “customer service” are well-worn in the retail industry. Good retailers have long adhered to the adage that investing in staff training leads to good customer service and will ultimately mean more money in the till. But perhaps it is less acknowledged that some outstanding retailers invert this theory and focus on coaching their customers to maximise sales.
Wittingly or unwittingly, retailers are training millions of customers how to shop. This can occur both consciously and subconsciously, but those companies that understand it, plan for it and invest in it can create a huge amount of value for themselves.
Graham Bishop, retail team leader at innovation company What If, cites Ikea as the archetypal example of a retailer that has mastered the art of training its customers. Shoppers will often drive for up to 100 miles to a store and then walk through every roomset available. Ikea even trains you to make notes as you go along, becoming a very efficient observer.
And the retailer’s Market Hall experience at the end of the customer journey equates to a modern bazaar. Bishop says: “You get a huge blue sack, which is just begging you to fill it up. There is a lot of stuff that you actually don’t need, but it’s such a great price and it looks so tempting. It’s not a Sale, but the emotional reaction is that of a Sale.”
Leaving the shopfloor, you then move into the collection area for bulkier goods, where you effectively become a warehouse worker and then a checkout assistant, because you handle all the bulky goods yourself and ensure the barcodes are facing the right way. You then pack your items into your car and go home and build them yourself.
In this way, Ikea invites its customers to be part of the business system and play their part in the value chain. Bishop explains: “It has planned the best way that customers can use its business and has communicated that and invested in things that make it a more efficient process.”
Educating shoppers on how to behave in stores not only encourages them to spend more, but also helps them to shop more efficiently. The grocery sector is particularly skilled at teaching customers to behave in a way that increases productivity.
Envision Retail director Jason Kemp says that improving customer efficiency can make a huge difference to the bottom line. “One second at the tills in Tesco can cost the business£10 million and the biggest gains can be made by changing customer behaviour – they are significantly inefficient compared with staff,” says Kemp.
Self-checkouts are a good example of supermarkets getting shoppers to do the work. Although the transactions often take longer, customers’ perception is that it is a quicker option because they are active all the time, explains Kemp.
“Come and play”
Apple has set up The Apple Store’s retail space to encourage customers to do much of the selling themselves. Upon entering, it is clear how Apple wants you to behave. It knows that, as long as you have enough space between the units, there are enough of them and you haven’t got staff and security looking over your shoulder, then you will react in a relaxed way.
Bishop says: “It’s actually saying: ‘Come and play’ in a very generous way. It’s a very efficient brand experience. You could say it’s big and glitzy, but it’s also sublimely efficient – that’s why it makes loads of money.”
B&Q’s policy of employing older staff is not just a case of positive discrimination. Older staff are perceived to be more knowledgable by customers and often get a better response from them – shoppers are more respectful, listen more, have a higher expectation and are willing to wait. Similarly, staff also dress like tradesmen, which automatically makes customers believe in their expertise more.
However, Boots Healthcare commercial director Simon Potts believes that the term “training your customers” does not explain the health and beauty chain’s approach accurately. “We would never talk about training our customers, because we would never make them do something they didn’t want to do. For us, it’s about creating systems that make things better and making them understand those systems,” he says.
Potts points out that customers want to know when there are discounts and offers in stores and if there is a better product or wider range available. And helping with navigation will make finding products quicker and less stressful.
Some retailers are leaping ahead of others in the way they use their web sites to influence customer behaviour. PC World encourages customers to look online before coming into a store. Kemp explains: “This makes them more informed and therefore efficient customers. And it’s much easier for staff to give targeted advice in a short amount of time.”
Retailers can also be guilty of inadvertently influencing or training customer behaviour in a negative way. Bishop says: “Money and loyalty walk out of the door time and time again, because retailers are inadvertently doing things that have a trained response that they are not aware of. The sophisticated retailers understand that.”
Likewise, asking the customer to do too much can have a negative impact. For example, too much information at the checkouts or a new layout can confuse and frustrate shoppers, or cause them to switch off entirely.
While Ikea is expert at getting customers to impulse-buy, it risks undoing its hard work when it makes them hang around and do a lot of the work at the checkout. It gives them time to rationalise. “Do I really need this?” says Kemp. “It [Ikea] is good at getting people to impulse-buy in the first place, but you have to be careful to keep the whole process going,” he says.
Potts agrees. “If you create any system, you have to make it a complete system and not vary from it. Take road signs, for example: if you miss out one sign in a series, people suddenly begin to mistrust,” he says.
Bishop believes the best way to go about it is to look at the business in its entirety. “It’s about viewing the whole customer experience – it’s not the marketing department and their work and the retail ops and theirs. That way, you can see where the biggest black holes are,” he says.
It’s certainly true that the retailers that are best at educating their customers have a joined-up approach. The key is to understand your customer and your business inside-out and establish a business system of big and little things that will work together. That way, you can teach customers to shop in a more positive and efficient way.
Case study: Boots
Boots had been facing a long-term problem in its medicine sales. The health and beauty chain believed it was losing out on pharmaceutical sales because some customers were unaware that there was a wider range of stronger drugs available behind the counter.
Boots had tested a number of different solutions over the course of two years, but had made little progress. In 2006, it teamed up with innovation company What If to assess how it could increase customer awareness. They tested a number of different solutions in quick succession during three weeks and observed which ones had an impact on shopping behaviour.
They found that people look and shop by colour and shape. They hit upon the idea of merchandising pharmacy-only medicines alongside on-the-shelf varieties through the use of dummy packs. Essentially, the show material looks, feels and can be picked up like any other product, but the label reads: “This is a stronger medicine – please take it to the counter”.
Potts says: “It’s all to do with how we process information. When they’re meeting someone and there is a crowd, people default to colour, such as blonde hair – you’re looking for something different. It’s similar when you go into a shop. For example, with fizzy drinks – you’ll look out for the shape and colour of a bottle of cola.”
Top five drivers of negative customer behaviour
1 Keeping customers queuing at the checkout. Many shoppers spend more than 12.5 per cent of their in-store experience queuing. This leads to irritation and a rapid increase in the probability that they will dump their basket and leave.
2 An inconsistent approach to handling customer queries about size availability. This leads customers to stop asking and damages sales and brand value.
3 Deep discounting in the days before Christmas. Kemp says: “If we want to avoid the later peak, then stop encouraging customers to hold out for a bargain.”
4 No clear order of who is going to be served next. This results in customer stress, because they do not know where they are in the process and causes them to baulk.
5 Not having baskets in stores further into the customer journey. If customers have to return to the front of the store to pick up a basket, they will often decide to stick with what they can carry in their hands.
Source: Envision Retail
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