Wharton University in the US has published “Discovering “WOW” – A Study of Great Retail Shopping Experiences in North America. Click on the link for the executive summary.
Reserach results from the study were outlined in Getting to “Wow”: Consumers Describe What Makes a Great Shopping Experience published at Knowledge@Wharton. What is interesting in this article is their list of five major areas that contribute to a great shopping experience:
- Engagement: being polite, genuinely caring and interested in helping, acknowledging and listening.
- Executional excellence: patiently explaining and advising, checking stock, helping to find products, having product knowledge and providing unexpected product quality.
- Brand Experience: exciting store design and atmosphere, consistently great product quality, making customers feel they’re special and that they always get a deal.
- Expediting: being sensitive to customers’ time on long check-out lines, being proactive in helping speed the shopping process.
- Problem Recovery: helping resolve and compensate for problems, upgrading quality and ensuring complete satisfaction.
Great shopping experiences are those we talk about to others.
Retailers trading under a common shingle – the various newsagency brands or just the word newsagency – need to collectively agree standards and strategies which drive great shopping experieences and commit to relentless pursuit of these standards and the implementation of the strategies.
Too many newsagencies are run by people who prefer process work over business leadership, people who have bought an income and not a business.
The strength of our future as a retail channel depends on how many of us want to provide a great shopping experience.
Mark – I think your wording that too many newsagencies are run by people “who prefer process work over business leadership” is spot on. I’m not an owner of a newsagency – just a customer. I love magazines and enjoy being in a newsagency that stocks a wide selection, displays them creatively, and keeps the display neat and tidy. To me, this signals that I am “amongst friends” – ie. that the business owner understands how important magazines are to some customers and wants to provide a great service and a great shopping experience. Unfortunately, the number of newsagencies of this type seems to be shrinking. The two in my local area are very ordinary. The one responsible for my home delivery has recently reduced the range of magazine titles savagely – so much so that there are blank spaces on the flat shelf at the bottom of the magazine display! I haven’t been game enough to ask any of the staff what’s going on, but the effect has been that I now only enter the shop to pay the account for my newspaper delivery once per month. The shop is depressing – it looks like the owner has simply given up on his business and is quietly closing down, although I figure that that can’t be what’s actually happening in practice.
Megan, thanks for commenting. We need to understand that a poor newsagent lets not only their business down but the businesses of other newsagents.
Hey Mark, great article. It is amazing how “a great shopping experience” depends so highly on great customer service.
We had a local restuarant that had average food but the service was always fantastic and so we went back again and again.
In our businesses we need to create that “among friends” atmosphere that Megan mentioned however it is also important to remember that we are a business. Great customer service is ESSENTIAL to our business but so is profit (or at least breaking even!!) otherwise there is no business.
Providing a variety of magazine while important can be expensive and costly if those magazines aren’t selling. We are constantly talking about over supply and supply of “non selling” titles.
We have a relatively small range however our over-all appeal is welcoming to customers and they are happy to ask if we don’t have something in stock.
Its sad that Megan’s local newsagent “appears” to no-longer care whether he/she does or not, if this is the impression they are giving the customer then there is a problem.
Have a great day!!
B, newsagents who do not care need to remind themselves that they have chosen to be newsagents. While I go on about issues here, I focus more time on solutions.
You are right, great customer service is essential. With everything we sell available elsewhere, how we treat our customers is our point of difference.
I do agree that good customer service is important, But I am hesitant to agree that it is the most important area of the business.
If your business is the same as every other newsagent and all you rely on in the way of points of difference is service then I think you are not working hard enough at making your business stand out.
What you should be looking at is what does the market want in terms of products/services that are not already being offered and then filling that need. We have eight newsagencies in our town and if we all offered the same products then I would be struggling, but what I do is look for the untapped potential in the market and then fill it, yes I offer good service but it isn’t what will make or break my business. What will get me ahead is offering my customers a genuine point of difference as far as product/services goes not just the service that is expected by most customers as a given.
Mark if the only difference between Tower and Possolution as far as the product is concerned was service then I’m sure you would be in trouble as a firm. However you have strived to make your product different and better then the competition to a point that they cannot compete and that is what is getting you business.
Service is important but not the thing that will define us.
The customer may not always be right …… but they are always the customer!