The Wonder of Westfield...

Whenever a new Shopping Centre opens, I am always filled with a huge sense of excitement!  I like to think I am a bit of a connoisseur of Retail Malls, having visited the majority of key outlets in the Country, including Bluewater, Thurrock, Meadowhall, Manchester Trafford & Arndale, not to mention major city centres such as The West End, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Southampton and Brighton, to name just a few.

Often, however, when I have visited the Centre in question, I can be very disappointed – thrillingly, that was not the case with the new White City development in West London!

From the clear and easy road signage pointing us in the right direction, to the sophisticated car park (which marks free parking bays with a lit green arrow), even the journey there and initial impression was a delight!

The design is impressive and the high ceilings of both the entire centre and the retail outlets within made for an exceptionally awe inspiring view.

Both design and ease of journey apart – the reason you go to Westfield is to shop! So did our retail experience match up? I am so pleased to be able to tell you – the answer was an unqualified YES!

Although the Centre had been open for some time and the visit was on a busy Saturday, every single retailer we visited really did enhance our shopping trip.

I can rarely remember when I have had the pleasure of being acknowledged and said ‘hello’ to in every single store I went in to. Whether it was fashion, electrical or even the food outlets, everywhere we went, we had a sense that staff and management really were wanting, and more importantly, were prepared to work, for our custom. Staff were happy to answer questions and queries and more importantly, knew their product! We were even offered some free samples in one of the Malls 3 Department stores, with none of the ‘snootiness’ that can sometimes be felt in those environments.

This should be the norm and it is almost sad that I am writing about such basic Customer Service as if I had discovered something special. So often, however, the retail stores in a centre can really make the difference on whether or not the consumer will make a return visit. These were all retailers that you find in every High Street across the Country - but Westfield seemed to have sprinkled a little magic across them all...

The visit to ‘The Village’, the designer part of Westfield was really something memorable. From sipping a glass of bubbly at the ‘The Champagne Bar’ as we listened to the pianist and browsing such brands as Gucci, Tiffany & Co and Prada, you really did feel that you were in the lap of luxury!

But it was the main part of the Shopping Centre that really over delivered around service, product and overall store visuals.

So, what can other Centres learn from Westfield? Well, it is a great example of when design and a serious commitment to delighting the customer in every single way, really do come together. I suppose the only question it leaves me posing – Is why can’t every Centre deliver this?

So arms full of shopping bags and full from a delicious lunch at ‘The Spaghetti House’ and a late bite at ‘Crepeaffaire’ we staggered back to the car, exhausted but happy!  Will we be going back – just try and stop us!

www.uk.westfield.com/london

Can you Conduct?

The art of ‘managing’ has become more and more challenging within the retail environment. So how do you know when you are getting it right?

The dictionary states that a Manager is:

One who handles, controls, or directs, especially:

a. One who directs a business or other enterprise.

b. One who controls resources and expenditures, as of a household.

c. One who is in charge of the training and performance of an athlete or a team.The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source www.dictionary.reference.com/browse/manager

So – it would seem initially very simple – right?

Unfortunately today’s modern retail Manager has many challenges and with many staffing budgets being slashed to the bare minimum to save on costs, it has become more and more critical that the team that you DO have is deployed in the best way. The key word for me in the above description would be ‘to direct’, as this is the task that ‘some’ retailers seem to be so poor at.

The art of Helicopter Management is one that is often spoken about and the best interpretation of this would to imagine you are conducting a large orchestra and have to be aware of every instrument or, more relevantly, aware of what every member of your team are doing at any given time.

Most Customers will be aware if a store is being ‘well managed’ almost immediately they walk through your door – even if this almost an ‘unconscious’ awareness’. This manifests itself in a well run store, in many ways. From the Customers perspective, there won’t be long queues at the till point as the ‘conductor’ will have ensured as many as possible will be open. Customers will find that staff will be available at the Fitting Room as the ‘maestro’ will have scheduled the correct volume of staff and will be ever ready to move the team around the sales floor, as required.

Being ready and aware enough to move your staff around the sales floor, as needed, is key to ‘Conducting’ your team and is the base for the smooth running of any store. This also means that as the Manager – you need to be ON the shop floor in order to manage it!

The below map shows the areas you should ALWAYS be ‘conducting’ and should give you some food for thought about how you can better plan your team to always be there for the Customer to deliver the best service that you possibly can!

I am reminded of walking into a large and busy store on Oxford Street and being instantly conscious of several things...


The Store Manager was ON the sales floor and was clearly ‘in charge’ of everything that was going on. I instantly knew that she was the Manager as she had a huge presence on the sales floor. Her staff were being clearly ‘directed’ or ‘conducted’ and she had a great talent of quickly spotting areas of the store that were either under staffed or getting busier and then reacting immediately. The result of this was that the shop was being run as efficiently and professionally as it could be. A great example of someone ‘conducting their orchestra’!

So ask yourself ‘Can you conduct’? And if you think you can – ask yourself whether you are a ‘Maestro’ or merely a Conductor without a clue?

The Final Countdown...

I was talking to a friend last night who was relating an experience she’d had in a well known young fashion chain.

She had been shopping with her niece and they had rushed to this particular store to try and find a specific item of stock. It was 5:25pm and concerned that they had only got 5 minutes before the store closed; they grabbed the nearest member of staff and asked what time the store closed. When the team member replied ‘6:00pm’, they breathed a huge sigh of relief.

With 35 minutes left to browse and buy, it initially might sound like a story with a happy ending? Sadly – that was not quite the case! What happened next really shocks and surprises me – although, sadly, I believe it is an extremely common occurrence in many retailers.

The store had already pulled the front door grill to the half way point and my friend was staggered to find that the Fitting Rooms had been closed. Staff were starting to cash up and it was made crystal clear to my shopping friends that absolutely no one was interested in them or what they as Customers might need.

This store was completely uninterested in making a sale and was in fact (which is one of my pet peeves in retail) treating the Customer as a total inconvenience and a barrier to them closing their store and getting home as soon as possible.

The retailers amongst you may challenge me and say – ‘it is very difficult when a customer comes in at closing time!’

My response to that would be that the Customer is coming into your store within your trading hours and I fail to see the issue!

I often ask myself whether the people at the top have knowledge of this common working practise.

Certainly in my experience as an Area Manager I would frequently ‘drop in’ to a store around closing time, just to ensure that this was not happening in the stores I managed. Key Shopping Centres, such as Bluewater, Thurrock, Meadowhall etc are also known for fining retailers for this kind of behaviour.

Your staff are being paid and you are advertising that you are open, so why in this difficult retail climate, do staff feel this is an acceptable way to treat a customer who actively WANTS to put some money in your till?

My friend and her niece never actually made a purchase – the item they were looking at was a bikini and without being able to try it on – they were unable to see if it was right for them. A £35 sale lost...

So I would ask any retailer reading this - Is the ‘Final Countdown’ actually your biggest opportunity and in fact a very simple way to differentiate yourself in a positive way from your competitors?

A Coach too far....

When I looked at the dictionary definition of ‘Coaching’, I was surprised by what I saw. It simply read:

‘To train or tutor or to act as a trainer or tutor’.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

Coaching is a widely used term in retail and is usually used to describe a more individual one-to-one training - and is normally completed on the sales floor rather than in a more traditional training environment.

So what contributes to ‘successful coaching’? As always, there is not a clear cut answer to this question.

It can be argued that it is good ‘business practise’ for a Retail Manager to spend time on the sales floor with their team. As most retailers can tell you about Managers who barely came out of the office – is it always what today’s employee experiences?

To really be a successful coach, you do need to find the time to work with your teams. You will reap the benefits. Successful coaches use their communication skills and will feedback quickly and simply to their team members and will always notice and give praise when they observe something has gone well. This to me is one of the main differences in a good or bad coach. It is always better to ‘catch someone doing something right...’

I remember watching a Manager in one of my stores ‘coaching her team’. She really hadn’t grasped the concept of what she was trying to achieve and it was very painful to watch. She also had failed to understand that a successful coach NEVER switches off and is always ready to feedback - both in a positive and constructive fashion. Her first mistake was to ‘coach’ a large group of people at the same time, who were all at very different levels. Her negative comments about a particular individual – though correct, were crassly expressed and had a very poor impact on the entire group.

The best coach I have ever seen was an Assistant Manager I worked with in a large fashion retail chain. He always seemed to be aware of what his team were doing and always MADE the time to comment on it. Watching him ‘work the team’ was really a big lesson in how effective coaching can be if it’s done in the right manner!

He would never walk through the sales floor without making comment to staff on what he saw – the effect of this was to create a team that really strove for his approval and had a desire to get things right. He had, almost unconsciously, created the very best environment to train and develop his team!

It is vital for today’s modern retailer to recognise when it is appropriate to coach a member of staff on a one-to-one basis and when it is more suitable to hold a training session.

How can you be sure that you are getting it right? Well the best coaches guide, inspire and motivate all through effective communication. Take the time to observe your team in action – catch them ‘doing something right’ and let them know you ‘caught’ them and see what results this can give you! You really will see the difference and your team will feel respected and respect you!

So – are you the best Coach you can be??

The Retention Trap....

The hardest thing in the world for most retailers is retaining their staff. With fashion retail retention running at a frightening +75% staff turnover, it must sometimes feel like a thankless task to train and develop your team, only to see them move on and take those skills to a rival competitor.

So, can you stem the tide? And is it even worthwhile trying?

Of course my answer to both of the above is yes – and it is worth remembering that without training and development, how much higher COULD this figure be?

When times are tough, the Training and Development teams CAN be the first to go, however with ‘Retail Week’ reporting that ‘Customer service expectation soar in recession’ and Nicola Harrison reporting that ’The recession has changed consumers’ shopping habits so much that three quarters of shoppers would leave a store without buying if they received poor levels of customer service.’

It seems critical that training your teams to give fantastic service is the base of delivering and meeting your customer’s expectations!

You may ask what retention has to do with training. Well, if you are struggling with a constant stream of exit interviews and recruitment, you may want to find out where you are going wrong!

When you follow the right process with any member of staff, it can be possible to increase retention and alongside that provide a future pool of talented individuals that will grow WITH your business.

So, how do you achieve this? Well, the most important thing to remember is the Induction that any new member of staff receives within your business. This sets the tone of their employment with you and a rushed and hurried introduction can make an employee at best, feel nervous and unprepared and at worst, feel that they may have made the wrong employment choice!

Setting out a clear Training program at this stage with regular performance reviews also goes a long way to making a member of staff feel wanted and that they have a place in your organisation.

So what happens next? This can be when, after a very positive start, things start to go wrong. All too often staff training programs can become a tick box exercise and Managers push people through some of the basics of retail, without ever really checking that they have understood or grasped the skills needed to succeed.

This can also lead to talented, but inexperienced members of your team being underdeveloped and mean that potential Management of the future is left disillusioned and looking for pastures new.

Customer Service is such a critical part of any retail business and I have been surprised over the years, how often staff can fail to make the correlation with the people they serve every day and the money that contributes to paying their wages!

If you can get your staff to understand this and they aim to deliver a better standard of service, you will find yourself in a win / win situation.

Some movement within retail is positive – staff being promoted, for example, should always be viewed as a good thing and no movement at all would be an extremely challenging work force to manage. This is where a strong Succession Plan is key and the clever Managers are usually always looking for the next personal to fill those upcoming and important roles.

When you are looking to fill a ‘sales floor’ position, it can sometimes be seen as less important. I would remind any retailer to take a different view around this. Usually your ‘Sales Assistants’ are the front line personnel and will represent your brand and store to the majority of customers who enter your threshold. Baring this in mind, maybe we should all view these positions as the most significant and strategic of all!

The final caveat I would remind you of, is that if you recruit the right person for the job in the first place, you will have already increased and improved your chance of retention!

Service with a Smile...

Supposedly it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown, however, that may not be the impression the average customer gets in today’s High Street!

I am always flabbergasted by how few people who work in retail seem to be actually enjoying what they do!

With unemployment at a record level, it seems to be high time that Retailers start to employ people who have a vested interest at actually being in a service industry!

Customer Service is sometimes used as a blanket term to describe anything to do with interaction with the public. If you look up a dictionary definition you would get the below:

‘assistance and other resources that a company provides to the people who buy or use its products or services’

Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon
Copyright © 2003-2009 Dictionary.com, LLC
Cite This Source

I would, however, suggest that service at its most basic level, is about just acknowledging the customer! This may be an extremely low base to insist on – but it is still woefully lacking in many of the major retailers.

The basic common courtesies that may seem ‘unfashionable’ these days are still the cornerstone of ensuring that your customers are dealt with in the best fashion.

I am amazed, that even in this difficult retail climate and with many businesses going under, that I can still be served in a store, without the member of staff even offering me the most basic of service. This may include eye contact and a smile - right through to stopping a conversation with a colleague about their night out!

It doesn’t sound much to ask – but a straw poll amongst friends and family would reveal that the above basic courtesies are rarely the norm!

It is widely known that is you smile at someone – they tend to smile back. It also shows the person you are dealing with that you are paying attention to them and implies that you are receptive and willing to give them your full focus. It also makes you far more approachable. All the things that would enhance the shopping experience for the Customer.

With staff hours becoming more and more limited and some stores replicating a ghost town with not a member of the team in view – it is even more critical that the customer can identify and feel confident about approaching staff with a query or question.

If you have a team that is uninterested in the customer or unwilling to provide ‘service with a smile’ – perhaps it is time to dip into the ever widening pool of unemployment to find staff that will!

When Mature means Magnificent!

As current employment reaches over 6 Million people and retail continues to be one of the few industries that are still recruiting, it often surprises me that that the more mature workforce continues to be disregarded by many leading retailers.

Having been a Manager in several store’s, primarily in young fashion, I have always found it a challenge having an extremely young team. Whereas some retailers deliberately try to recruit people who fit in with their ‘brand culture’ and will therefore showcase their product to the best effect, this can be offset with employees who are unreliable, uninterested and simply unable to grasp the hard work which IS retail!

This is not to tar all young people with the same brush, merely to emphasise the skills set of the more mature workers, which sometimes just cannot be found in younger staff. Is this maturity learnt through life skills or simply that the older employee has a more balanced and realistic approach to work?

Reading an article in ‘You’ magazine from ‘The Mail on Sunday’ – ‘The Egos Have Landed’ by Elisabeth Wilson’ this really hit a nerve with me. She quotes a recent article in ‘The Economist’ which stated the Generation Y’s, born in the 80’s and 90’s have known only economic boom years and have largely ended up ‘spoiled, narcissistic layabouts, under the illusion that the world owes them a living’

Again, this does not apply to all people born at this time, however, in my experience the ‘Generation Y’s’ are genuinely shocked by the physical hard work that most shop workers have to do, the long and unsociable hours and have a habit of doing the very least work wherever possible. The ‘world owes me a living’ attitude is often highly visible to the customer and manifests itself in a sales team that are simply disinterested in the job they are being paid to do. This generation also seems to lack some basic skills that as an employer, you would assume a member of your staff might have.

I remember being actually lost for words, when a member of my team came to me to tell me that the vacuum cleaner was broken. When I suggested to the 19 year old that maybe the bag needed changing, she was visible stunned. This was the first time she had attempted such a task and genuinely didn’t know that vacuum cleaners had a bag!

Compare and contrast this to the more mature employee. They are more likely to have run a household, therefore contributing to many, many life skills. These may include managing a budget, bringing up children and they also are more likely to have learned some tact and diplomacy along the way.

‘B & Q’ has been one of the few retailers that seem to have grasped the benefit of an older and more experienced team and certainly when you visit their stores, it is gratifying to be talking to someone who has knowledge and passion around what they are selling.

That may, in fact, be the key to why it would be good practise in the retail trade to see whether a more mixed age range of staff, would suit all sectors within the trade. Surely it is in the stores best interest to have a team who wants to be there and enjoys and takes pride in what they sell?

Customers have also recently reported that they find it intimidating being served by extremely glamorous and young sales staff. The ‘grey rinse brigade’ is a long gone fallacy and with older people these days being far more active, mobile, fashionable and not to mention demographically that they will continue to become a bigger and bigger slice of the population - Maybe it’s time for retail to realise the ‘Mature can be Magnificent....’

The Little Shop that Wouldn’t....

I was always surprised when speaking to the Retail Operation Manager of a large and well known Fashion Retailer on his stance on Customer Service.

He strongly believed that the clothing in their store’s ‘sold itself’ and always seemed to have a very unusual (and not to mention foolish) idea that service was something that his business could do without.

Whilst working with this particular individual on a project to drive service and sales through converting more customers that came through the door, it highlighted to me – yet again – how some business can start to believe their own hype.

Was the fashion chain in question a cutting edge and up to date trend leader – yes, it was! Could this ‘little shop’ further increase sales and their customer experience through better service – the answer to that is, of course, a resounding ‘yes’!

As a customer of the store I used to find it extremely frustrating when I visited one of their many outlets. What the Operation Manager called tight scheduling - I called frighteningly short staffed! What he would see as the product driving sales – I saw as a missed opportunity for service! What he would call an excellent stock and replenishment system – I would experience as staff obsessed with tasking and ignoring the customer standing right in front of them...

Why is it, I asked myself, that a major Retailer finds it acceptable to have a fitting room ‘unmanned’ during what ‘they perceive’ as non peak trade? It’s a well known fact that most people who have taken a wrong size or need an additional piece of clothing, are unlikely to get dressed again, return to the sales floor to find an item and THEN go back to the Fitting Room! It is a vital area for customer contact and one that the majority of Retailers perceive they can make the biggest ‘difference’ and add value to their customers by providing some basic one-to-one service!

Do I, as a customer, want to queue for nearly 20 minutes – just because there is only one member of staff at the Till Point? Again – the answer is no and I have seen many people ‘dump product’ as in our current time poor culture, people just don’t have the patience to wait.

When I would challenge him on his short sighted approach, he would just reiterate his mantra that ‘the clothes sold themselves’ and seemed to find my suggestion that improved service would only enhance this great clothing offer and add further value to the brand, as the views of someone who didn’t understand his business.

Did I ever manage to change his mind? Well – no! But in these challenging climates and with more than 25% of town centres standing empty – I think that the retailer should understand that the ‘customer’ does not have to ‘understand’ a business – but just receive enough service to enjoy their shopping experience and to convince them to make a return visit.

This chain’s recent results have been decidedly patchy and have shown a drop of 29% in profits. Would an increased focus on service make a real difference? I strongly believe it would and it seems to be a good time to re-name it the ‘little shop’ that SHOULD!

With retailers fighting for survival on a daily basis and every day bringing tales of more and more business going under - maybe one day this will turn into the ‘little Shop’ that did!