At the heart of everything in retail – from conversion and sales to customer loyalty and brand reputation – is one essential, often overlooked tool: store associates. Customer service is a hugely important part of the customer journey. It can have a significant impact on store performance. It’s also a primary advantage of brick and mortar retail over online shopping: that irreplaceable human connection.
Customer service is especially important during the holiday shopping season, when stores are busy, products sell out, and shoppers are stressed. Let’s get back to basics with a few simple tips for improving the service in your store.
Hire Right
During the busy holiday shopping season, good employees can be hard to find. However, it’s important to hire store associates that fit and understand your brand, and that have the experience and positive attitude to weather the stresses of the season.
Conduct Comprehensive Training
It’s not enough to train employees about products and promotions. They must also be fully knowledgeable about store policies, such as those governing returns and exchanges. If employees aren’t able to speak clearly and confidently about those policies, customers may become frustrated or distrustful.
Focus on Positive Speech
It’s essential that customers are greeted with positive speech and body language at every point in their shopping journey. Incorporate them into employee training. Encourage associates to always be visible and available, use good eye contact, smile, and be as helpful as possible – to every customer.
Invest in POS Technology
The best employees in the world can’t overcome the limitations of a slow or outdated point of sale system. A POS system that is designed to meet the specific needs of your store will play a big role in customer satisfaction. Contact Retail Tech to learn how we can help your small business today!
Retail Tech carries a wide variety of new and refurbished point of sale hardware and equipment. We offer installation and staging, POS printer repairs, and more. If you need help choosing a hybrid POS system, contact our POS systems specialists for help finding the perfect point of sale solution for your retail store, restaurant or other small business.
