Today, I want to share a story about how not "judging a book by it's cover" paid off.
Several years ago, I was working for a premium retailer in Tuscon, Arizona. It was a pretty slow day in the spring, and we were taking advantage with a little spring cleaning. After a few hours of seemingly nobody coming through the door, 3 young teenage girls walked in. Myself and the other sales associate gave a usual greet, and began to engage the customers. My traditional experience would have grown a little suspicious when these girls amassed a rather large quantity for each of them to try-on. Those suspicions would usually grow as these girls tossed product from one stall to the other.
Instead of my allowing my suspicions to grow, I took comfort in my training of giving quality service and adhering to basic loss prevention measures (item counts). These girls spent close to 30 minutes laughing and modeling. They enjoyed their free reign of the store as they went back and forth for different coordinating product and sizes. We both offered as much assistance as we could, but these girls were having too much fun being each others fashion coordinator, that all they allowed us to help with was grabbing different sizes. As I said earlier, this as a premium retailer. Each of these girls had several hundred dollars worth of product that they eventually emerged with and asked us to put on hold.
How many times have you seen this? What are you thinking as you read this so far? Please comment!! What happens next may surprise you....
Typically, I would be rolling my eyes (on the inside..of course!) thinking this was just another group of girls having fun in a high end store to kill the boredom of their day, but it was when one of the girls turned to me and said, "I work retail too, you guys were so cool with us and I know we left you a lot to put away. You only need to hold these for an hour, if we can't make it back go ahead and put it away. Thank you so much!" that I felt good about what it is we do everyday. This girl moved away from her friends when she came over to say this, that I believed in her sincerity, and appreciated she recognized our attempts to help them without being overbearingly suspicious.
Just over an hour had passed, and we had just finished putting the first pile of their holds away, when the three girls returned with one of their mothers in tow. My associate remembered the product she had just put away, and went to put it all together again. Each girl bought the entire pile of product they had on hold, and the mother bought them each matching accessories. In all, these purchases totaled almost $1100!! If it weren't for those girls, we would not have come close to making our budget for the day, or even the week!
Too many times, store teams will give terrible service because they predetermined a customer to not being worth the effort. This is one of the BIGGEST problems in retail today! I don't know of any business that would claim to have the luxury to pick and chose who their customers are. EVERY customer EVERY time should receive the same amazing customer experience....cause guess what?! It's worth it!!!
Several years ago, I was working for a premium retailer in Tuscon, Arizona. It was a pretty slow day in the spring, and we were taking advantage with a little spring cleaning. After a few hours of seemingly nobody coming through the door, 3 young teenage girls walked in. Myself and the other sales associate gave a usual greet, and began to engage the customers. My traditional experience would have grown a little suspicious when these girls amassed a rather large quantity for each of them to try-on. Those suspicions would usually grow as these girls tossed product from one stall to the other.
Instead of my allowing my suspicions to grow, I took comfort in my training of giving quality service and adhering to basic loss prevention measures (item counts). These girls spent close to 30 minutes laughing and modeling. They enjoyed their free reign of the store as they went back and forth for different coordinating product and sizes. We both offered as much assistance as we could, but these girls were having too much fun being each others fashion coordinator, that all they allowed us to help with was grabbing different sizes. As I said earlier, this as a premium retailer. Each of these girls had several hundred dollars worth of product that they eventually emerged with and asked us to put on hold.
How many times have you seen this? What are you thinking as you read this so far? Please comment!! What happens next may surprise you....
Typically, I would be rolling my eyes (on the inside..of course!) thinking this was just another group of girls having fun in a high end store to kill the boredom of their day, but it was when one of the girls turned to me and said, "I work retail too, you guys were so cool with us and I know we left you a lot to put away. You only need to hold these for an hour, if we can't make it back go ahead and put it away. Thank you so much!" that I felt good about what it is we do everyday. This girl moved away from her friends when she came over to say this, that I believed in her sincerity, and appreciated she recognized our attempts to help them without being overbearingly suspicious.
Just over an hour had passed, and we had just finished putting the first pile of their holds away, when the three girls returned with one of their mothers in tow. My associate remembered the product she had just put away, and went to put it all together again. Each girl bought the entire pile of product they had on hold, and the mother bought them each matching accessories. In all, these purchases totaled almost $1100!! If it weren't for those girls, we would not have come close to making our budget for the day, or even the week!
Too many times, store teams will give terrible service because they predetermined a customer to not being worth the effort. This is one of the BIGGEST problems in retail today! I don't know of any business that would claim to have the luxury to pick and chose who their customers are. EVERY customer EVERY time should receive the same amazing customer experience....cause guess what?! It's worth it!!!
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