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What Does Your Customer See?
Part 2
By Shawn T. Kiley
We discussed in our last regular edition of TIPS that your customer may be seeing more than you want them to see. Line of sight is a very important part of providing great customer service and is one of the things that is regularly evaluated by on mystery shopping evaluations. Today I will offer some very simple, if not obvious, solutions to some basic line of sight issues.
- As an owner or operator try to enter your establishment each day with a fresh pair of eyes. Try looking at everything from the parking lot to the all that the customer can see inside from a customers perspective. One thing that may help is to draw up a quick checklist of things that are pertinent to your organization and keep it handy each day when you arrive for work. Make a note of anything on the list that is a continual problem and solve it.
- Sometimes it helps to bring a spouse or a friend in. Ask them for an unbiased and objective perspective on how everything looks. You may be surprised by what they have to tell you.
- Its a worn clich, but clean as you go should be the rule of thumb in any establishment, especially the restaurant industry.
- Study after study has shown that the top two areas customers evaluate the cleanliness of service establishments on are the cleanliness of the bathrooms and the cleanliness of the floors. These two areas should be closely monitored daily and a regularly scheduled routine maintenance should be established so that neither is ignored.
- Employees should be trained to always look professional and to pride themselves on their appearance at all times, not just while in the customers line of sight. A customer should never be able to see an employee smoking, eating, talking on their cell phone or god forbid, not washing their hands after using the restroom!
- Retailers should never underestimate the power of fronting, facing and dusting. This gives your store the appearance of being well stocked, pleasing to the eye and clean. Well talk more about fronting and facing in the next TIPS.
- All areas around the cash wrap or counter should be free of clutter. POS displays should be neat and attractive. Employees should never have personal belongings out for the customer to see.
- When restocking shelves, keep pallets and large orders to a minimum on the sales floor. They look bad and create a more challenging shopping experience for shoppers to navigate around.
More next edition.
Until next time... Shawn
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