Why customers don’t come first....

Dear readers, don’t freak out, I’m not proposing that your customer is not important. Far, far from it. I just wanted to grab your attention to discuss the ecosystem of your customers and your colleagues.

I want to start by saying that all of your stakeholders are important. They coexist in a symbiotic relationship and putting anyone ahead of the other is a reductive exercise that is not only oblivious to the complexities of today’s retail ecosystem but will poison that ecosystem itself. It’s old and it’s tired.

Effective leaders lead by example, they embody the values and purpose of their organisation.

They motivate and empower their colleagues to deliver brilliant service by creating a supportive culture where everybody matters. There is no delighted customer without a confident, happy, service-orientated team as much as there is no such team without a leader cut from the same cloth.

Your competitive advantage is getting all parts of your ecosystem to work harmoniously. So I implore you, please, ditch the binary mindset of first and last and agree that great service is the priority focus and the only pathway to lasting success.

Keep the change

I don’t need to tell you how dramatically retail operations have changed. Long gone are the days of rambling down the high street in an old jalopy and calling that a win. Pardon the dramatics, but today’s retailers are at the helm of a McLaren P1 racing at 350km/h on a wet track, with bald tyres, in the pitch black of night... Fasten your seatbelts.

Your customer's relationship to shopping has changed - you know that.

Their expectations have changed, their product knowledge has expanded, their options have exploded and their concept of loyalties have morphed.

Your relationship with your colleagues has also changed - did you know that? The boss as an overbearing autocrat belongs in a museum of laughable caricatures from cringeworthy sitcoms, where ‘turn-up, shut-up and do your job’ was a pithy catchcry. We know that no one in fear for their livelihood can be expected to deliver impressive results. Not in this day and age, and definitely not customer service.

So it is with the carrot, not the stick that we motivate our people. 

The real cost of business

The cost of doing business is painfully more expensive than it used to be, so the temptation may be to hack your payroll, reapportion responsibilities, minimise amenities and decrease learning and development programs. This is, in reality, robbing Peter to pay Paul, with compound interest. A spreadsheet might record a saving but it is myopic to the significant longer-term costs of absenteeism, disengagement, disgruntlement, high staff turnover and failure to attract the best talent. And that’s whom you’ll have on your frontline.

When times are tough, and I know for many they are, the urge is to focus on spreadsheets and not on your people…

But ask yourself this, who’s going to turn a struggling business around, paper or people?

People before paper

I was recently introduced to the concept of ‘heads, hearts and hands’ by the Head of R&D at Atlassian, Dominic Price. Atlassian is the Australian success story of the global tech industry, a company - or family as they prefer to say - founded on the principle of wanting to make the world a better place: A pretty impressive why. Dominic develops and drives programs that inspire their hundreds of interdependent teams to do what they do more efficiently and effectively.

In a nutshell, heads is the strategic thinking behind your operation, hearts is the passion you bring and hands are the hard work and the hustle. All are vital to running a business but success is born of the balance between them - much like the balance required in the retail ecosystem.

Spreadsheets alone are too theoretical, you need the fire of purpose along with the practicality of a hands-on approach. Especially in retail!

Great service, great leadership

Retail operations may have changed dramatically, but great service is still - and always will be - great service. It’s a friendly, cheerful group of people who are trained to and passionate about providing the best service they know how, for a company - or family - they love and customers they care about.

That family extends past the frontline.

Great customer service is also about the variety and availability of your products, your pricing, the appeal of your branding and everything in between.

Start by asking your teams what great service looks like; never assume you’re all on the same page.

Interpretations will vary from person to person, region to region and store to store. The next question is, what are the barriers to providing that great service? Don’t be surprised if the answer is you!

I learnt this lesson back in my retail days, I realised that we were making jobs far too complicated. We were setting unreasonable expectations, putting too much procedure in place and we were doing all this without talking to the people whom those changes affected. We never asked them what the impact these changes were going to have on their ability to operate their stores and provide great service. No, we just thought we knew best. We were wrong.

The synergy of success

“There is no better salesperson than someone who loves their job.” - Richard Branson.

The happiness of your customers ultimately comes down to how you treat your people. Are they a means to an end, or do you see them as the face of your business, the ambassadors of your brand, your lifeblood?

If you lead a culture based on values and purpose where everyone is striving toward the same goal, you guarantee your customers will leave your store delighted, that he or she will return and that they will tell their friends and family about the fantastic service they received.

Your customers and your colleagues exist in a symbiotic state. Neither comes first or second; it’s about equilibrium in the retail ecosystem. Quite simply there isn’t one without the other...