Take Individual Responsibility for Customers

In his 2009 book, The Mom and Pop Store, Robert Spector quotes Bill Kodilla, who was among the most prized employees in the butcher shop owned by Robert’s dad: “You never waited on somebody else’s regular customer…. I would never work on your father’s customer or Sid’s customer.”
     I don’t support the idea of refusing to serve a shopper or making them hang around for a long time to be served. But Bill’s approach is a nice reminder of the research-backed advice to honor relationships between a salesperson and a customer.

• Coach employees to use “I” instead of “we” when addressing customer questions and problems. “How can I make this right?” instead of “How can the store make this right?”
• Post photos of staff along with their names. You might choose to use just first names or names in the format “Ms. Jones.”
• Encourage employees to thank customers by name, using a credit card imprint, completed special order form, or bank check for information about the name.
• Provide business cards for employees to hand out to customers.

     All this is a quite different approach than that taken by Citibank when sending out customer service letters to credit card customers. A Wall Street Journal piece titled “Mystery Writer: Does Citibank's S. Larson Really Exist?” points out how for years all those letters have been signed in the neat hand of S. Larson, but with no more about S. Larson’s identity or role at Citibank.
     In my opinion, it’s okay that there’s no first name. I’ve consulted with retailers in the hospitality sector and in complaint resolution who find employees are concerned about security risks in revealing the employee’s full name. But with S. Larson, you can’t even get her on the phone when you call.
     The WSJ article was whimsical. Still, at least some recipients of letters from S. Larson seem far from amused by the lack of person-to-person communication. Here’s my adaptation of a comment posted on the WSJ article: “If you’re a disgruntled Citibank customer, you surely won’t get satisfaction by telephoning and asking for S. Larson. If you want to know why this is, consider that S. Larson’s supervisor is Mrs. Helen Louise Waite. Yes, if you expect Citibank to solve a credit card problem for you, go to Helen Waite.”

Click below for more:
Use Your Employees’ Favorite Words
Use Psychology for Shopper Crowd Management
Announce Commonalities with Shoppers