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Tuesday, July 20, 2010, 8:37 PM
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Being in the retail industry such as Charles & Keith, service quality is very important as sales assistants in the shops meet and interact with different customers every day.
Therefore, customer service strategies must be defined by the top management and set all employees of the company in the same direction towards providing service.
We have concluded that Charles & Keith adopts both the standardization and personalized approaches as their strategy and here’s our explanation:
Standardization approach
When frontline employees undergo their training, they are taught to go by a set of procedures, also known as SOP (Standard Operating Procedures), when serving customers. The procedure starts once a customer steps into the shop and lasts till the customer makes payment at the cashier counter and walks out of the shop. A simplified SOP may look something like this:
| When a customer walks in... | Service Provider: “Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening Mdm. Welcome to Charles & Keith!” |
| When a customer starts to look around the shop... | Service Provider: “Mdm, can I help you look for anything?” |
| When a customer stops and picks a pair of shoes up... | Service Provider: “Would you like to try it on?” |
| (if the customer agrees, then service provider will lead her to the seat) | |
| | Service Provider: “What size would you like to try on?” |
| After the customer tries it on... If the customer says no... If the customer says yes... | Service Provider: “How was the fitting?” Service Provider: “Would you like to try a size bigger/smaller?” Service Provider may give relevant opinions |
| When the customer wants to buy item... | Service Provider leads her to the cashier counter and pack item into dust bag and paper bag. |
| After customer has made payment... | Service Provider: “Thank you very much. We hope to see you again! Have a nice day.” |
When employees follow the SOP, they are only providing the basic standard of service. It is not enough to exceed customers’ expectations, only meeting them.
Personalized Approach
However, employees at Charles & Keith are strongly encouraged to provide personalized service to meet the customer’s personal needs. To achieve this, firstly, all employees have to have a customer service mindset that is to serve customers with sincerity and provide a total customer experience for them. The more the employee is instilled with the right mindset, the more he or she is motivated, which will result in him or her wanting to provide individual customer service.
As a successful shoe brand in Singapore, hundreds of customers visit one outlet every day which means that there are plenty of opportunities for employees to provide personalised customer service as all customers vary in their needs and wants. Instead of just wanting to close the deal, the staff can start a conversation with the customer and give extra opinions and recommendations, according to the customer’s need.
It is always important to listen to the customer intently. Good customer service means having the ability to satisfy a customer's wants and needs to the best of the retailer’s ability.
Providing customer service means taking ownership of a customer's account and resolving their problem promptly.
In Charles and Keith, the sales person have always treat customers with courtesy and respect. Staffs in the shop will approach the customers to see if they need any help and the ambience in the shop has always been great, with the bright lightning and unique store designs. The staffs are well dressed too in manner to be approachable.
In Charles and Keith, the main job of the sales assistant is to help the customer to get the size of the shoes they want and answer their enquiries. Staffs in the shop have always been quite attentive to the customer needs. When approaching the staff for help, they will usually promptly assist the customers. The staffs will immediately go to the storeroom to get the size the customer wanted. The staffs are required to have ample of product knowledge and are also willing to help customers check for the availability of stocks in other outlets.
Although Charles and Keith fulfil the basic requirement for good customer service, much improvement can still be make, especially during weekend, when the shop could get quite crowded. The staffs at this period could be very busy in serving customers and their enquiries. The store could be quite messy too, as customers will tend to leave the shoes on the floor after trying it, leaving piles of shoes lying around the sofa and end up sometimes blocking the way. Sometimes customers will have to wait for a period of time to get help from the staffs as all of them are busy tending to each different customers. They could improve on this customer service through:
• Hiring seasonal staffs especially during the peak period
• Train staff in doing multi-tasking as to meet all the customer's wants & needs
• Provide programs such as GEMS course as to further improve on their customer service
• To be more efficient in serving each different customers
• Provide positive interaction with customers at all times
• Provide a post-purchase feedbacks for customers (so as to further improve their products & services)
Overall, Charles & Keith can better improve their customer service so as to be able to retain their customers and provide a good shopping experience for all. By having positive word-of-mouth could benefit the store in the long run and minimize on their advertising expenses as referrals are made by previous customers who had a good shopping experience in the store.
The table below is a customer service evaluation made by us when we did a mystery shopping in Charles & Keith. We did this table to conclude their level of customer service that we personally receive. Our overall service with Charles & Keith shows that they have a lot to improve on in order to retain their customers and increase their sales in the future.
