bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

We (my wife and I) were shopping over the weekend visiting (I’ll be honest) mainly ladies stores.

What I noticed is that most stores the attendant would come up and say hi, the most interesting was one who was on the phone wandered up said hi, shuffled two pieces of clothes and walked away to resume her conversation.

I thought that’s weird.  Then I remembered my friends (in retail) telling me that mystery shoppers come test you and score you accordingly.  One of those is ‘acknowledging’ every customer.

So what’s the shortcut to that? Saying hi by whatever means, even if it’s not helpful.  It’s a shallow performance measure and really the response to it reflects the culture of the store.

Not a good sign! A better measure in my mind would be to have a meaningful interaction with each and every customer.  And people are scored by customer satisfaction leaving the store.  Not being on the receiving end of forced communication.