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What Does Your Customer See?
Part 3
By Shawn T. Kiley
Is keeping your sales floor fully stocked, all gaps filled, front, faced and dusted a critical component to outstanding customer service? Well, considering that this is the very essence of your customers line of sight, you bet it is.
If youve ever been a stock clerk or worked in a convenience store, one of the first things you were taught was fronting and facing your product. This simply means that everything on every shelve should have the appropriate front part of the label showing. The oldest stock should be rotated to the front of your shelving or displays, and everything should be dusted, neat and clean and all times.
In the beer/soda cooler, not having an attractive, well stocked reach in can cause sales to drop. In the cooler itself, stocking of product should be easy for all associates to access. There should be an easy to read layout of where each item belongs fastened to each main part of the cooler that is visible to the employee from the back. It should be updated as changes occur and should also indicate what should take place of an out of stock item so that you never have a bare shelf.
Its great to have vendors help with stocking our coolers, but if they dont fill, front and face your cooler each day, and dont know the schematics of your cooler, they can make your associates job that much harder. Some vendors are notorious for overstocking a new item and taking shelf space that belongs to another product. This is why you should always have your buildup or stock sheets up to date and signed off by both the vendor and the clerk receiving the order.
There is nothing more attractive then fingerprint free, sparkling clean glass displays, completely stocked with all labels facing forward in symmetry. It increases brand awareness, helps sell new products and increases sales overall.
Facing, fronting and stocking should be on every shifts checklist as a top priority when your associates are not helping customers. Also, its important to lead by example. If your checking your store, and you walk down the aisle, passing by several shelves of product not fronted and faced, then you are sending the message to your employee that this is an acceptable standard for your establishment.
As a field manager for a company I worked for some years back, I would begin each visit by stopping to greet by name all of the employees who were working, and then, as I did my walk of the store, I would begin fronting and facing the entire store. It usually took ten minutes or so. Then, I would move on to the other business at hand. This sent a clear message to the crew that neat, clean, fronted and faced shelves were very important. So its good to lead by example.
Until next time... Shawn
November 17, 2008, TIPS
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