State That Status Shouldn’t Affect Service

Effective salespeople adjust their approach to each customer’s characteristics, and highly skilled salespeople use observations of each customer’s appearance to assess those characteristics. Still, none of this means your store’s salespeople should treat low-status shoppers shabbily.
     Researchers at Catholic University of Eichstaett–Ingolstadt and National University of Singapore analyzed how frontline employees handled angry complaints from female customers about flawed service. The researchers defined high status customers as those wearing business dress and having professionally styled makeup and hair. Those wearing the equivalent of jeans and a T-shirt and not appearing to have professionally styled makeup or hair were defined as low status. The researchers found that, compared to the treatment of the high status customers, the low-status angry complainers were less likely to be offered restitution to compensate for the dissatisfaction and were more likely to be yelled at by the employee.
     But this difference reliably occurred only in businesses judged to have an overall poor service climate. In the businesses with a high service climate, customers with angry complaints were handled adequately regardless of apparent status.
     You should not tolerate mistreatment of your employees by angry customers, no matter how bad the service transgression. However, yelling at the customer is not a proper response, and the response should be based on respect, concern, and empathy regardless of the social status of the customer.
     It is important for everyone on staff to be clear in words and actions that all shoppers are to be treated fairly. Discrimination in retailing is often subconscious.
     Some frontline retail staff carrying biases against minorities operate on the assumption that it’s only the minorities who are disturbed by discriminatory behavior. Since the prejudiced staff member decides consciously or subconsciously that they’d prefer not to do business with minorities anyway, they resist changing their behavior. But studies out of Clemson University and University of North Carolina-Wilmington saw how discriminatory behavior has more widespread effects on customer goodwill than those prejudiced frontline staff acknowledge. Many white shoppers became as outraged as blacks when the white shoppers observed a black customer being treated in a discriminatory way. All the customers are watching.
     Discrimination on the basis of race is illegal. Subtler forms of discrimination may not be against the law, but they’re still bad business. Michigan State University and University of Notre Dame researchers found that physically unattractive shoppers are frequently targets of rudeness and exploitation.

For your success: Retailer’s Edge: Boost Profits Using Shopper Psychology

Click below for more: 
Compare Notes on Body Language
Show Complainers Respect, Concern, & Empathy
Cool Down Customer Temper Tantrums
Watch Out for Discrimination
Look Out for Ugly Shoppers!
Confirm the Status Lift from Nonconformity