5 Secrets To Making Staff Training Stick

Staff Training Tips

Improving Your Business’s Performance Through People.

We’ve been in the mystery shopping and consumer research business for 20 years. One of the fruits of this kind of work (apart from helping businesses large and small across Ireland and the UK to identify, tackle and resolve issues inhibiting their success) is that we now sit on a goldmine of useful business information. Over the past few months we’ve been blogging consistently with some of that information (they’re all here).

What’s always most surprising to us, however, is not the myriad variety of different complaints or issues that our mystery shoppers identify; on the contrary – again and again we find the same issues raising their head. Again and again we find ourselves advising different businesses on the most effective and efficient ways of resolving the same old issues, and if you’ve read any of our blogs  you’ll find that one key element of your business comes up as the solution again and again – staff behaviours and competencies.

It’s not, of course, that people don’t know their business or employees don’t value their jobs. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of getting people in the habit of upselling, or approaching customers, or effectively identifying customer needs once they have – there’s a lot of simple, effective tricks that staff can be trained in to help any business gain the edge over its competitors. The quality of that training, and making it stick – that can be an issue in itself. Here’s 5 simple rules to keep at the forefront of your mind when organising or carrying out staff training to ensure it’s as effective as it can be, and to ensure it will result in lasting value for your business:

  1. Variety of Training Materials: People don’t learn well when they’re bored. You need to keep the training varied and interesting, and a good way to do that is to introduce little pieces of video, of images – anything to break up what would otherwise be monotony. Fundamentally, if you engage people and keep them interested in the information and competencies you’re trying to impart, you’ll find it’ll be easier for everyone and be more likely to have lasting results.
  2. Don’t Lecture: Staff training shouldn’t mimic for your employees the worst elements of their past college experiences. This is very much related to the previous point: you want to engage people, not turn them off. At its worst, staff training can devolve for your employees into a long, boring way of getting away from the shop floor for a few hours. That experience does no good for anyone. Training material and information should be relevant to your staff, should be immediately actionable for them and very importantly – your employees should be involved and contributing at all times.
  3. Not Enough Training: Here’s an interesting statistic – staff leaving a company in the first year of employment is four times more likely in a company offering poor or no training. Direct replacement costs can reach 50-60% of the staff salary. Quite apart from encouraging staff competencies and ensuring consistent adoption of best practice across your organisation, that’s a bottom-line figure that should cause very serious pause for thought.
  4. How Do People Learn? People learn best when digesting bite-size chunks of information. That’s not some terrible character flaw in the younger generation, it’s simply a fact of life (don’t believe me? There’s an interesting article here). Reams and reams of facts and statistics aren’t going to engage or be absorbed by most of your employees – smaller chunks of relevant, actionable information are by far preferable. Think about it – would you have clicked on this article if I’d entitled it 5,901 Secrets To Making Staff Training Stick? Even if you had, how far down that list would you have made it?
  5. The Facilitator is not the main attraction: Whatever practices or competencies you may want your staff to pick up, or however accomplished or highly-paid the training professional you’ve brought in might be, your staff will know your business better than anyone else you leave in the room with them. It should be the facilitators job to tease out that knowledge and experience, encourage interaction, discussion and debate about workplace issues, and steer the conversation away from dead ends and towards productive information. Your staff will retain better those solutions and ideas that emerge organically from their own experience and discussion than list of dictates from an external expert, no matter how accomplished he or she might be.

 

The Meat of The Issue:

Meat Retail - Meat counters

What Your Customers Want At The Meat Counter.

Fresh meat is big business. According to the FDII, in 2008 the total gross agricultural output of Ireland was valued at €5.7 billion, of which cattle accounted for 26%, pigs for 5% and sheep for 3%. Overall, meat production accounts for a significant percentage of the total agricultural output of Ireland. The meat sector and meat retailing hasn’t been without its scandals, of course, with issues like BSE in beef and the more recent horsemeat scandal in processed foods bringing a spotlight on meat production, processing and retail. Even in the last week, there’s been some potentially troubling reports around the issue of fresh meat retailing: here. It’s our business to figure out what your customers make of all this, so we went ahead and asked them.
48.06% of our 283 respondents advised that they purchased their fresh meat in a butchers, the remaining 52% purchasing their across a wide range of different retailers (Tesco the largest single fresh meat retailer in this survey with 40.28% of our respondents purchasing their meat there – way ahead of the runner up, Supervalu, which accounted for 23.67%). Of the respondents who advised us they purchased their meat from a butchers, quality and freshness, along with trust and tracability, were perhaps unsurprisingly the main reasons given. When we asked our respondents whether they purchased their meat from the fresh meat counter, 69.96% told us that they did. The main reasons given for this were to get meat cut to order (49.47%) and because of the butcher’s knowledge (34.98%). It’s worth noting, however, that almost a quarter of our respondents (24.03%) did tell us that they only go to the fresh meat counter for “special occasions”.
Of the 30.04% of respondents that claimed they didn’t buy meat from a fresh meat counter, but instead bought pre-packaged cuts, 58.82% of them explained that this was simply a matter of convenience. A very significant number, however (56.47%), also mentioned that they found the pricing of pre-packaged meat easier to interpret, and perhaps surprisingly there was a significant number of these respondents (38.82%) who had reasons of quality for choosing pre-packed meat – they felt it was easier for them to inspect the meat before choosing which package to purchase. These responses make it clear that there are actionable ways that retailers could try to drive traffic towards their fresh meat counter – facilitating more clearly priced meat and working with customers to allow them a proper inspection of the meat that they’re buying may go some way towards shepherding customers towards the fresh meat counter.
In terms of what retailers our respondents felt were doing the meat counter right – overwhelmingly they felt that local butchers were the most effective (69.26%), suggesting that major retailers have not quite managed to outrun the stigma associated with the meat scandals of recent times. Of the major retailers, Supervalu and Superquinn were the rated significantly ahead of the rest (18.85% and 16.6% respectively). The next highest rated of the major chains was Tesco, at 7.26% – a significant dropoff. In terms of the pre-packaged market, the breakdown was actually much the same. The single most trusted segment of our survey when it came to where our respondents were buying prepackaged meat was again the local butcher – 46.79%. After them, with an only slightly higher rating for prepackaged meat than they had for fresh, came Supervalu and Superquinn (21.58% and 18.07% respectively). Once more, the next closest of the major chains was Tesco, but again at a significant dropoff (12.76%).
So, it’s clear from our survey that when it comes to buying meat, people approach it with the ghosts of the scandals weighing on their mind – they still predominantly prefer their local butcher to the big chains. Even those chains that seemed to perform best in our survey (Supervalu and Superquinn) come way behind local butchers in terms of preference among the people we surveyed. Really, the only aspects of pre-packaged meat that really seemed to compete with the meat counter was the aspect of convenience – customers can walk in and pick it up with minimal fuss, and the price will be clearly labelled on the packaging – no requirement to discuss measurements with a butcher or do any mental arithmetic. These are the factors on which prepackaged meat manages to successfully compete with the fresh meat counter.

 

Banking For Yourself:

banking, self service banking, customers

Your Customers and Self-Service Banking.

In recent years, as we all know, banks have been in the headlines more than they would have liked. One of the reasons they’ve been subject to so much public discontent (not necessarily the main one, obviously, but one that does exercise people) is the issue of local branch closure. The closing of local bank branches around the country is obviously more symptomatic of a deeper problem than a problem in itself, but it is a symptom that can potentially affect customers in a very real and concrete way in their day to day lives (certainly it exercises people – for example see here and more recently here). So, because it’s our business, we’ve asked bank customers some questions about the relative importance of local branch services and self-service banking. Here’s what we discovered.

We asked a wide range of people across several age profiles about what services were important to them with regards to their banking. The largest age profile that responded to our survey was 19-25 years of age (they constituted over 67% of respondents). The first question we asked was the broadest (and probably the simplest): “Would you like if your bank had a retail presence nearby?” 71.65% of respondents in this profile answered a simple “yes”. In terms of what services were most important to this group, while 90.19% of these respondents advised that a point of contact for advice and support was either very important or somewhat important, an ATM (99.4% classifying it very or somewhat important) and Self Service Banking Machine (96.8%) were overwhelmingly the most important aspects of banking to which they wanted access. 90% told us they would be likely to use a local branch of their own bank if it was open in their area, however only 2.75% advised that they would be very likely to move bank to a bank which had a local branch. 46.67% claimed they would consider such a move, but 50.59% admitted they would not be likely to move bank for that reason.

At the other end of the spectrum, in the age range “61 and over”, 85.71% of respondents in this group told us they’d like if their bank had a retail presence nearby. 81.82% of these respondents advised that they wanted this as a point of contact for advice and support, but 90.91% advised the most important single service they required was access to an ATM. 86.37% advised a cashier/teller was either very or somewhat important to them, but 72.73% also advised that visible information on products and services was an important aspect of the services local branches provided. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the importance of self service banking machines was significantly lower among this age profile, but again, 72.73% regarded it as very important. 81.82% of respondents advised that if their bank had a local branch they would certainly use it, but only 6.67% of respondents told us they would certainly move banks for that reason (with 60% exactly saying they would not be likely to move bank for that reason).

In terms of gender breakdown, 43.28% of respondents were male, 56.72 female, but the survey seemed not to reveal any major difference in focus between the genders. There were only a handful of responses where there was significant (5% or greater) difference in the answers of the respective genders. The use of a local bank branch as a point of contact for advice and support was more important to women (91.19% of women found it important, only 81.5% of men), while, perhaps paradoxically, though 96.28% of women felt self-service machines were important, only 90.45% of men felt this way. Finally, while 85.71% of men advised they would use a local branch of their bank if it were available to them, 92.86% of women felt they would use one. As for changing banks if one opened a local branch? Only 3.59% of men and 2.84% of women felt they would be likely to, with 52.69% of men and 50.71% of women both feeling they would not.

So, what does this tell us about banks and their relationship to their customers? Well, first of all, while age does play a factor in how customers use their banks, it’s not as profound a factor as you might suppose. While self service banking machines were more important to the younger cohorts, even in our oldest age range (61+), almost three quarters of people described them as important or very important, with 93.81% feeling that way overall). Across the age ranges, ATMs were overwhelmingly the most important service customers felt their banks should provide – overall 93.56% of respondents felt they were very important, a further 5.23% considering them somewhat important. This suggests a high level of comfort with self-service banking right across the age ranges of our survey. Also, while 72.44% of people would like it if their bank had a retail presence in their area, it seems as if this is a largely sentimental notion – 51.59% felt they would not be likely to change bank based on such a factor, only 3.17% feeling they would be likely to. Age seems not to be a significant factor here; while the middle age ranges have mortgages and the associated financial dealing which may make switching banks a pain, even our youngest and oldest age ranges admitted to a reluctance in switching banks.

As such, it seems that self-service electronic banking are the key services that banking customers consider important to them, despite a somewhat insubstantial sentiment to the contrary.

Loving Your Customers on Valentine’s Day

Valentines Customers

What Your Customers Want on Valentine’s.

For the hospitality and retail industries, February 14th – Valentine’s Day – is one of the most important single days of the year. Your restaurant should be crowded, flowers and chocolates should be marching out of your shop. But how should you maximise the business potential of this day? How can you ensure that you get the most possible benefit for your business and give the most appropriate, sought-for product or service to your customers? As with so many aspects of business, here at Customer Perceptions, we can help. We conducted a survey to capture the attitude of the general public towards the most romantic day of the year, and their spending intentions for it! Here’s some of the results.

First of all, of our respondents, 73.12% were female, just under 28% were men. The largest single age group to respond to our survey was the 41- 50 band (constituting just over 28% of our respondents), with only just over 1% (1.07%) being under 18 and no responses at all from anyone over 70. It seems, according to our data, that Valentine’s Day tends to be most important for people between the ages of 26 -60, with that cohort constituting 82.88% of all our respondents. Of that group, the overwhelming majority were in a relationship (83.44%), with 50.98% being married and 66.46% being in a relationship for 5 years or longer. This is the shape of your Valentine’s market, and these are the respondents the remainder of our statistics are drawn from.

In terms of what this group of our respondents felt would be their ideal Valentine’s Day, overwhelmingly (49.35%) felt a romantic getaway would be their favourite option, with the next most popular option, a romantic meal, being chosen less than half that often (19.48%). In terms of actual expectations however, respondents seem to be slightly less ambitious. When asked what they’d like to receive for Valentines, almost two-thirds (60.78%) wanted a simple card, with 36.6% (the next most popular option) choosing dinner. The most obvious reason for the gap between the ideal Valentine’s Day and the practical reality was money – the most common budgeted spend for Valentine’s Day among our respondents was €20-€50 (28.57%), however the next most common budgeted spend was €50-€100 (22.08%), which is a reasonable amount of spending power into which your business can tap. Price wasn’t the only factor for most of our respondents, however. Given the age profile I’ve chosen to focus on it’s probably unsurprising that for several of the couples children was an issue – limiting the amount of social flexibility they have on the night, but for more still work played a role – several couples had at least one partner working on the night. It seems clear that for the people for whom Valentine’s Day is most important flexibility is a key issue – the actual night of the 14th of February may not be most convenient time for them to avail of particular Valentine’s services.

In terms of a gender divide, there were some interesting results. For women in our chosen field, 26.09% were planning a romantic night in, while 29.41% of men were. In terms of an ideal, a romantic getaway topped the poll for both men and women (48.7% of women and 51.28% of men). This was fairly consistent across both genders, but while 4.35% of women were actually planning a romantic getaway, 8.82% of men were. While this might immediately beg the question “who, exactly, are all these men going away with if not the women?” it might also suggest that getaways were being purchased by men without the knowledge of their partners. Indeed, the gender breakdown of budgeted spend seems to suggest a pattern – take a look at some of a breakdown of some of the budgeted spend statistics we collected:

Women Men
€10-€20 12.28% 2.5%
€20-€50 22.81% 45%
€50-€100 21.05% 25%

 

So, on Valentine’s day, and perhaps contrary to what the expected result might be, men are the big spenders. Whoever is driving the choice of purchase, it is the men who will actually spend more money on this holiday.

So, the key things to take away from the survey – Valentine’s Day is most important for couples in longer term relationships, aged broadly from 26 and up (with a severe drop off once they leave their 60s) but despite that broad age range, there’s real consistency in what these couples are looking for. They’re all effected by the same things – work and children mean they require flexibility and convenience, they’re predominantly very settled, so mortgages and (again) children mean they require real value for money, and the price point is important. And finally, and perhaps somewhat surprisingly, for your big sales you’ll be closing the deal with the men, ideally – they’re willing to spend more and to be somewhat more extravagant for the holiday.

Coffee Drinking in Coffee Shops

Coffee Shop, Coffee brands, customer perc blog post

Why Your Customers Do It, And What They Want More Of.

The Background

Coffee in Ireland is a drink growing in popularity year on year.

The Irish Coffee Council is the voice for the coffee industry in Ireland in matters of growth, manufacture, distribution and consumption of coffee, and while even they accept that “we still drink far less coffee than our European neighbours – and remain at heart a “tea drinking nation”” (here), it is unquestionably true that coffee has been (and continues to be) a consumer good growing more and more in popularity all the time – value sales of coffee grew by 12% in 2014 according to Euromonitor International, with fresh coffee sales accounting for that growth (instant coffee sales are, in fact, consistently declining).

Here at Customer Perceptions, it’s our business to take note of trends in retail and hospitality, so we asked people about their experience and attitudes to coffee shops. This is how they responded, and some conclusions we can draw from those responses.

The Numbers

The first question we asked was very simple – how often do you visit a coffee shop? The largest single group of respondents (56.25%) visited once a week. After that the next largest segments were “a few times a week” (12.5%) or “once every two weeks” (again, 12.5%). Perhaps surprisingly, when we asked our survey respondents whether they preferred sit-in or take-away, fully half of our respondents suggested they preferred to sit in, with only 12.5% preferring take-away coffee (although 37.5% admitted to having no preference either way, which suggests that at some points they are sitting in to drink their coffee). When asked if they prefer large chain coffee shops or small independent establishments, the overwhelming response (50%) responded that they preferred small independent coffee shops. Only 12.5% admitted to preferring large chains.

In a very direct way, it’s not just about the coffee for people. The overwhelmingly vast majority of our respondents do not simply purchase coffee alone – only 12.5% bought nothing else, with 75% of people buying a pastry, cake or bun, or 31.25% (with some overlap, obviously) buying a sandwich. In terms of an average spend, only 31.25% of respondents spent less than €5, with the remainder spending between €5 to €10 per visit. In terms of what people find important when they visit a coffee shop, cleanliness came out on top, with 81.25% of respondents rating it very important, the next closest factor in their choice of coffee shop being staff friendliness (50% rating it very important). Price, perhaps surprisingly, was rated very important by only 37.5%, but 62.5% did rate it quite important.

Another possibly surprising result is that child-friendliness was rated not important by 62.5% of respondents, with only 12.5% rating it very important (below even free wifi, which 18.75% felt was very important). Quality of the coffee itself is also key, given that 87.5% of respondents considered either a very important or quite important factor. So, what conclusions can we draw from these figures?

The Conclusions

Given the background of a the coffee market in Ireland (sales of coffee increasing overall while sales of instant coffee decline) it’s perhaps unsurprising that the quality of coffee has become so important a factor – people seem to be becoming coffee connoisseurs, or at least consider themselves knowledgeable about coffee (this is also reflected in our survey, in that while 68.75% of respondents consider quality of coffee very important, only 37.5% rated price as important).

People are willing to spend more for quality. However, the rise in consumer coffee sales also means that people are frequenting coffee shops for other reasons – proximity to home or work was rated “not that important” by 43.75%, with only 25% rating it “very important”. The comparative lack of importance of child friendliness and price tell the other half of this tale. Coffee shops (especially with sit-in business) is seen as a small luxury – an escape from the responsibilities of daily life (81.25% responded that atmosphere was important or very important).

This is key for any coffee retailer – a 2011 study by Bord Bia found that overwhelmingly people felt coffee was not a luxury item, and that good quality coffee was available from inexpensive discount retailers like Aldi and Lidl – it was part of their daily lives. Our own survey shows that coffee shops specifically are not part of that trend. Atmosphere is important, quality of coffee is important, having to travel to the establishment isn’t, nor is any coffee shop’s catering for families.

This is what coffee shops are competing on – not on producing a product that’s already been cheaply stocked up on in your customers’ own homes, but on a relaxing atmosphere, a quality product and a reprieve from those very homes, just for a little while.

Your Customers’ Moments of Truth- Guiding Them Through

Customer business

A customer’s “Moment of Truth” is the crucial moment at each step of their dealings with your organisation, so a customer might have several Moments of Truth before they enter your premises, make a purchase or decide to return again!

Have some of your managers, staff or even a few friends complete a quick Moments of Truth audit when they have a moment. You’ll need to adjust the specifics to your own business, but it should look something like this: 

Pre-Engagement                                                                                     Score 1 (low) – 10 (high)

 

  • Website/Brochure/Advertising/ Prospective Customer Communication
  
  • Telephone/ Email Enquiry Communication
  
  • Convenience of Location and Access (Parking, etc.)
  
  • Experience/ Perception/ Reputation/ Word of Mouth
  

 

Engagement                                                                                          Score 1 (low) – 10 (high)

  • Ambience & Atmosphere, Lighting, Colour, Décor, Music, Hygiene, etc.
  
  • Store Layout, Store Flow, Signage, Ease of Navigation
  
  • Staff Appearance, Uniforms, Personal Presentation, Name Badges, etc.
  
  • Staff Pleasantness, General Customer Service Disposition, Attitude
  
  • Customer Needs Investigation Skills, Product and Technical Knowledge
  
  • Selling Skills, Closing the Sale Skills
  
  • Ease of Payment and Exit
  

 

Post-Sale Engagement                                                                       Score 1 (low) – 10 (high)

  • “Purchases to Destination”, Delivery, Installation
  
  • Product and Process Instruction/ Ease of Use
  
  • Supports/ Help & Assistance
  
  • Warranty/ Guarantee
  

 

                There’s a long list of potential moments where your customers could be swayed one way or the other by a whole host of possible factors. The idea here is to get people – your managers, your staff – to think about when and where those moments may occur, and how best to address them – to make sure that the customer is swayed one way rather than the other.

Once your staff are in the habit of thinking in these terms then new Moments of Truth applicable to your own business will suggest themselves, and with proper engagement by your managers and staff (and a little bit of imagination), you’ll find concrete improvements in your business performance in every category!

Goals and Achieving Them! 4 Simple Steps to Improve Your Business Performance

Achieving Goals

What goals have you put in place for your business to achieve this year? In these competitive times, the everyday activity of your business can become all-consuming. As you know, simply supplying your product or service to your customers requires a huge effort of planning and activity. With that in mind, it’s easy to put certain things on the long finger, to focus your attention on what needs to be done today, and simply never to get around to a proper analysis of your strengths and weaknesses. At Customer Perceptions, we’ve work with thousands of clients, and we know that putting in place a proper analysis of your business performance and staff behaviours, arriving at an achievable but ambitious set of goals is an exercise that often never moves off the to-do list. In this article, we have some simple tips to help you implement a proper set of business goals and targets, and to achieve them!

Try this simple and effective performance enhancing exercise:

1)      Monitor the number of visitors you have engaging with you, visiting your business. Set a goal for an achievable improvement in this number within a fixed period, eg: increase new visitor numbers by A% in B months.

2)      How many of your current visitors purchase/buy from your business? Again, set a goal to improve this ratio by C% in B months.

3)      What is the average value of a sale? Again! Set a goal to improve this ratio by D% in B months.

4)      How many customers return to your business? One last time, set a goal to improve this ratio by E% in B months.

These are four very simple-to-do techniques, they cost nothing to implement and they could end up making your business money, right? Well, yes and no. Each step on the chain requires certain specific things:

1)      Increasing new visitor numbers requires examining and improving your marketing communications and social media activities.

2)      Increasing your customer purchase ratio requires improving your customer engagement and identifying more specifically customer needs.

3)      Increasing the average value of a sale requires improving your staff selling skills and a commitment from them always to “sell up”.

4)      Increasing the number of customers returning to your business requires improving customer service skills, staff attitudes and behaviour and driving relationship-building with your customers!

The point, ultimately, is that goals and a plan won’t on their own help your business – it requires a serious commitment on behalf of your managers to implement the processes necessary to achieve them. It requires a sincere attempt at understanding what your customers really think about doing business with you, and how your staff feel about working for you. Finally, it also requires excellent communication, training and involvement at every level of your business.

And here’s the thing: all of the above, when you’ve planned it out, done it, achieved every goal – all of it’s nothing more than a good start. This process is ongoing forever, it doesn’t end ‘till your business ends and amounts to nothing more than a relentless drive to achieve a never-achievable state – Perfection.

Career Opportunity – We’re Hiring!

handshake

Client Account Supervisor Role

The Company:

Customer Perceptions Ltd. is a rapidly growing Consumer Research Company, based in Dundalk, Co. Louth since 1995. Our specialist services include: Mystery Shopping Programmes, Client Satisfaction Surveys, Web based Surveys and Training (primarily Customer Service programmes). We work with clients in the Financial, FMCG, Hospitality/Tourism, Telecommunications and other service sector businesses.

You can learn more about us here.

The Job:

The Client Account Supervisor reports directly to the Customer Perceptions’ Managing Director and is responsible for the efficient & effective working of the Account Management Team.
Responsibilities include:
• Supporting the Account Managers in managing consumer research projects/ mystery shopping programmes.
• Following up with all relevant parties to ensure deadlines and output targets are met.
• Assisting in the recruitment of new field researchers/mystery shoppers.
• Assisting and enhancing in the quality process i.e. proofing reports, analysis, systems etc.
• Generally contributing to the business management of the Consumer Research Division.

The Candidate will have…

• A 3rd Level qualification in a Business or Research related discipline.
• Considerable experience of building and managing a team in a B2B, office environment.
• Excellent communication skills (oral and written).
• Strong career track record of success and achievement.
• Experience / knowledge in using excel, word, outlook and PowerPoint.
• Basic IT skills in media / graphics / ability to make client presentations.
• A car with a full driving license and ability to travel to Dublin or Belfast on occasions (expenses reimbursed)

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The Person will be…

• Ambitious, Motivated, Innovative and Career focused
• A strong team player and who can also work unsupervised.
• Able to accept responsibility, take pride in achievement and meet deadlines / output targets.
• A good time manager, organised and disciplined in their work.
• Have the ability to cope with a busy and sometimes pressured work environment

The Reward…

Customer Perceptions provides a pleasant and dynamic work environment with very significant opportunity for career advancement. Salary will be commensurate with the selected candidates’ experience and competencies.

Applications… please send your CV and relevant information by email or using the contact form provided to emma.harte@customerperceptions.ie  before 30th January 2015.[/one_half]

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Please attach your CV below:

[contact-form-7 id=”2543″ title=”job app”]

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Making Your Customers Comeback Kings!

boomerang customers comeback kings

Most businesses spend a lot of time trying to attract new customers. Advertising, promotions, social media – you’re probably doing it all. It’s necessary, of course, and no organisation should neglect trying to attract new customers who might be interested in doing business with them. Here’s what they might be missing, though, in the headlong rush to attract new customers.

Try this exercise:

  1. Calculate ALL the costs associated with attracting new customers every year (advertising, online, etc.)
  2. Divide that number by the number of new customers who engaged with you this year.
  3. This is your new customer acquisition cost.

 

Depending on how much (or little!) a new customer spends in doing business with you, you may actually LOSE money on doing business with some of your new customers!

There is a type of customer, however, that doesn’t incur these costs: a returning customer. Every returning customer starts as a first-time customer, obviously, but an exercise like this one helps to focus the mind on exactly why it’s so important to build a relationship with each and every one, and keep them coming back!

Consider this: we here at Customer Perceptions have reported on over 350,000 “consumer engagements” over the past 19 years of our existence: again and again, year after year, we are amazed at the vast investments made by the retail and service sector in premises, facilities, fitouts and furnishings, technology, stock and wages – all while ignoring the key factors that annoy customers and have them spend their money elsewhere, and that should be the key consideration. Remember, a returning customer isn’t arriving into your business with a negative euro amount hanging like a cloud over their heads!

The great Sam Walton probably said it best:

“There is only one boss and that is the customer… he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

A new customer is a great thing, folks, but a returning customer is better. Find out what they like. Find out what they don’t like. Find out what they want more of, and give it to ‘em!

3 Key Moments in Transmitting Product Knowledge to Your Customers.

Product Knowledge and your customer

The importance of product knowledge is a feature of your customer service that it may be easy to overlook. We don’t think you should, and here’s why:

At Customer Perceptions, it’s our job to figure out what your customers are thinking, to pick up on the things you may not. With that in mind we recently conducted a survey on the Retail and Food & Beverage industries. We asked YOUR customers what they felt were the key elements in determining a positive experience in a retail store or restaurant. There were some interesting results that might help direct some of your energies going forward.

The top result in the retail sector was perhaps obvious: 99.7% of respondents rated friendly and courteous staff as either important or very important. What may not be as obvious was the second most common result: 99.3% of respondents rated knowledgeable staff as either important or very important. Even in hospitality, 98.6% of respondents cited knowledgeable staff as important or very important. That means in hospitality, while it was regarded as less important than hygiene (rated 99.3% important or very important) or clear menu and pricing displays (99.7%), it obviously still represents a hugely significant element of the customer experience. That being the case, it’s worth spending some time considering how best to communicate product knowledge to your customers.

Moment 1 – Clear display

The survey underlines a difficulty inherent in all customer service – different people want different things. One customer suggested “I feel that Staff (sic) should be trained on approach to customer and staff should be willing to engage with customers…”, then the next suggested “I prefer to ask for assistance than to be badgered about whether I would like assistance…” Even in the hospitality sector the same grey area was in evidence: one respondent suggested that “Servers should be attentive without being annoying”, and another wrote “Never leave customers for too long but don’t be over at the table every 2 minutes…”Obviously these are judgement calls for your staff, and what constitutes badgering for one customer might for another customer constitute lack of attention.

It’s therefore important to emphasise the significance customers place on clear display of prices and product range, etc. This was especially true in hospitality, where 99.7% of respondents selected it as important, but even in retail 98.3% suggested that attractive display and clear pricing were either important or very important. Therefore the first and potentially most important way to impart product knowledge ought to be by display. There’s very little detail possible by this method, but key elements like price and range can be imparted to the customer in this very effective and direct way, and our surveys confirm customers like and actively look for it. It has the added bonus of taking some pressure off your staff – if customers find the information that they’re looking for right out in front of them, it may help your customer service or waiting staff judge better when their attention is required.

Moment 2 – Staff interaction

The second avenue through which product knowledge can be imparted is the most obvious and the most important – your staff. The percentage of respondents who rated it important or very important (99.3% in retail, 98.6% in hospitality) was enormous. Even in the comments section, 62 of our 281 respondents mentioned product knowledge again specifically for retail, and 59 for hospitality. When a customer reaches an impasse and can’t find the information they are looking for they turn to the staff, and almost 100% expect the staff to be able to answer. The importance of training your staff in the products or services you provide cannot be over-emphasised. Your staff must understand the products they are selling, or at the very, very least be able to lead a customer directly to someone who does.

Moment 3 – Returning Feedback

So far, so obvious! There is one final step to consider though. It may seem redundantly obvious to say that customers want to feel confident in the knowledge and expertise of your staff, but how obvious is it to your staff exactly what product information is most important to your customers? Only a small amount of product information can go on display, so make sure you’re catching the customers’ imaginations with what you put up there. When a staff member is asked about a product or service, what are the key points that they should hit to engage the maximum number of customers possible? By far the best way to gauge that is through your staff- what are customers asking about? What are the aspects of this product or service (or indeed any other product or service you may provide) that most effectively meet these customer needs? The most attractive displays are useless if they’re not displaying the information most relevant to your customers, and likewise staff that can ream off a list of product features are not as effective as staff that can identify what specific features will be of interest to your customers.

The product knowledge process should be seen as a circular one, where information is not only presented outward to customers, but returned from customers also. It’s a process that requires some investment of time and consideration not only in your in-store marketing/display and staff training, but also in a willingness to adapt and change in response to the feedback you’ll certainly receive.