Back to School officially kicks off a slew of busy seasons for retailers and customer facing businesses. A recent survey by The Retail Council of Canada indicated that 3 out of 4 consumers plan to shop back to school products in person, breathing new life into bricks and mortar operations. Spending is also forecast to increase with US consumers poised to shell out 22% more than last year on back to school gear. Increases in traffic and business can create additional opportunities for SMBs and by making improvements in operations and processes, businesses can fully take advantage of every customer interaction while increasing productivity and accuracy in the back end. Check-ins on different facets of the business can easily identify opportunities for improvement and even quick, minor changes can increase efficiency and output, positively impacting the bottom line.
Elevating Customer Experiences
Retailers and customer facing businesses depend on their frontline teams to generate revenue by handling transactions and delivering service to those customers. Veterans and new hires alike can always benefit from customer service skills training and every interaction with staff should impart the importance of delivering exceptional customer service. Mini-trainings, short huddles and consistent upskilling will keep individuals engaged and aware of the importance of customer service. Some quick points to cover:
- Understanding customer wants and needs by asking open ended questions
- Knowing what promotions are available
- Increasing product or service knowledge
- Engaging customer proactively
Even small changes can make the difference between a good customer experience and an excellent customer experience. Optimizing customer service can increase individual transactions and sales as well as word of mouth marketing.
Efficiency in the Back End
Retailers or any business that sells goods in a bricks and mortar setting usually has to handle inventory. That means receiving the goods and then getting it out in front of the customer in a timely and efficient manner. A closer look at how inventory processed from receiving door to sales floor could identify potential problems with accuracy which could lead to losses (shrink). Faster ways to get inventory off the truck and into customer’s baskets could also be revealed when looking at receiving and merchandising processes. SMBs feel the impact of shrink far worse than larger organizations and optimizing back-end processes will yield positive effects to the business. Potentially higher traffic could mean more wear and tear on the outward facing part of business and revisiting merchandising and maintenance plans can also find ways to create efficiency and improve deployment of saleable assets.
Unfortunate Times for Retailing
Anyone who works in retailing is well aware of the situation when it comes to external theft. Desperate economic times may be the catalyst for the increasing and more brazen attempts at removing goods without paying for them. While no product is ever work physical violence, it’s always a good idea to take some preventative action that can at least reduce crime of opportunity type shoplifting:
- Walking the sales floor to identify any blind spots or vulnerable areas
- Map out the flow of customer traffic and build layouts to help direct customers
- Proactively engage customers while on the floor
- Talking to staff about theft awareness and loss prevention
As always, it is also important to educate frontline staff that they are worth more than any product being sold and to never, physically engage with a shoplifter. Awareness and proactive measures can reduce certain types of theft which will always have a positive impact on shrink and profitability.
The Bottom Line
Consumers may be stepping back into stores this coming back to school season and that could provide positive momentum for the next few busy seasons for retailers. As in-store shopping becomes more in favor, the potential of more foot traffic at customer facing businesses highlights the need to revisit and optimize operations and processes. Areas such as customer service, backend operations and loss prevention are important to focus on and identifying opportunities can help control costs and drive profitability. Even with possible increased transactions, SMBs, especially, should laser focus on maximizing each customer interaction to drive both basket value and word of mouth marketing. Improving backend and loss prevention processes can also mitigate expenses related to accounting and inventory errors as well as potentially deter low level shoplifting. Investing some time can reveal small and big opportunities to tweak operations and improve efficiency, productivity, and eventually the bottom line.