Challenge FLEs to Embrace Shopper Demands

In getting their needs satisfied, consumers often become demanding of frontline retail and service employees. Those FLEs who respond to the demands primarily as challenges to be met offer advantages for their employers over FLEs who respond to the demands primarily as hindrances to be avoided.
     Studies at Ohio Northern University, Oklahoma State University, and University of Tennessee verify that those advantages include better job performance as a result of higher task engagement and lower job turnover as a result of less work stress. One message for managers from these findings is to recruit and hire FLEs with prosocial motivation, intrinsic motivation, and tendency to take on challenges. Another message is to develop these characteristics in current FLEs.
     Regarding the first message, the researchers recommend that marketers carefully maintain and demonstrate the desired approach to challenges and that prospect screening include use of scenarios in which the candidate is presented with sample demands. Regarding the second message, the researchers point to training modules which specifically build awareness of how FLEs’ actions affect customers, managers, and others. Also recommended are organizational practices which offer employees task variety, remind employees of the significance of their work, and empower employees to make decisions.
     But, in my opinion, don’t fully empower every FLE to make every significant decision. There are those who are better able to make the right decisions than are others. Much of it has to do with amount of experience and the training you do. If your employees do go beyond what the store policies say, they must let their supervisor know so the issue can be discussed.
     Research findings from Loyola Marymount University, University of Alabama, and University of La Verne indicate that the types of training which result in higher customer satisfaction have to do with fuzziness.
     Some consumer entreaties are outside store policy, yet not blatantly wrong. The shopper who looks familiar comes in as soon as the store opens, asking for the sale price which expired yesterday. The customer who doesn’t look familiar comes in at a busy time asking you to teach his wife right then how to use the technology he purchased.
     If the customer gives the impression of dominating rather than collaborating, the FLE often subconsciously labels the fuzzy request as illegitimate. Train your employees to instead stay open-minded. These should never become moral issues, where the objective is to punish the customer.

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