The best offense is a good defense, but a bad defense is offensive. – Gene Wolfe
“We want our people helping customers, not doing back office tasks.”
This seems to be the prevailing wisdom in retail these days, particularly since Amazon became a significant threat to brick and mortar retailers.
This view is backed up by many articles that have made their way to my inbox and LinkedIn feed recently – retailers need to be doting on their customers, going above-and-beyond, providing an experience, etc., etc…
As I read these pieces and hear the arguments, the words all make sense to me, but they tend to make me feel a little out of touch. As a customer, I generally know what I want. If I need product knowledge or advice to choose between options, I turn to Google, not retail sales associates.
In other words, when I shop in person, I just want to be left alone. My idea of a spectacular shopping experience is walking into a store, finding everything on my list and leaving in record time, ideally without any human interaction aside from some pleasantries with the cashier.
After doing a bit of research on this, I began to feel a bit less isolated. Here’s an excerpt from Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers, published in Harvard Business Review in 2010:
“According to conventional wisdom, customers are more loyal to firms that go above and beyond. But our research shows that exceeding their expectations during service interactions (for example, by offering a refund, a free product, or a free service such as expedited shipping) makes customers only marginally more loyal than simply meeting their needs.”
And another from Your In-Store Customers Want More Privacy, also from HBR in 2016:
“Shoppers want a certain level of privacy in a store — and they want to have control over that privacy. In other words, people generally prefer being left alone, but also want to be able to get help if and when they need it.”
These references are a bit old, so I conducted my own (informal and definitely not scientific) survey in the Consumer Goods and Retail Professionals LinkedIn group. Here are the results:
So, the respondents who wanted to be left alone outnumbered those who wanted interaction by a factor of 6. And while LinkedIn’s rudimentary polling feature doesn’t accommodate deep dives on the responses, I would hazard to guess that a majority of the “It depends” respondents probably only want to talk to someone if they can’t find what they’re looking for – that is, the experience has already turned negative and the customer is hoping they can find someone to – hopefully – make it slightly less negative.
Even if I’m wrong about that, answering “It depends” doesn’t indicate that those folks are exactly yearning for staff interaction as an integral part of their shopping experience.
To be sure, there are certainly cases where interaction with knowledgeable staff is a necessary part of the customer experience – e.g. if you’re looking for a luxury watch or need help designing a custom home theatre for your basement – but what percentage of your total retail transactions does that represent?
It’s time for brick and mortar retailers to drop their somewhat defeatist attitude – “We can’t compete with online sellers on convenience, so we’ll compete on service.”
Firstly, for most customers, convenience IS the service they’re looking for.
Secondly, yes you can compete on convenience – by getting better at those mundane “back office tasks” (like stock accuracy and speed to shelf) that puts stock at customers’ fingertips.
There are a lot of low maintenance customers like me out there who just want to interact with your cash register. We are better served by finding the products we want in your aisles, more so than your staff (no matter how friendly or helpful they may be).
Just make it easier for me to do that and I won’t be a bother, I promise.