We are delighted that already, hundreds of people have downloaded Conversity’s free white paper on the future of retail, brands and telco. All along, we wanted professionals working in retail, telco, and brands (or simply those with an interest in how technology is shaping the shopping space) to have a no-nonsense report, full of realistic and actionable points on how to better their working practices to get ahead in 2018, and it seems from the reaction that we might just have cracked it.
We’ve just finished publicising the key findings from the second trend within the report, and in our minds, it’s a big one. The focus? Employee engagement. Simply put, we’ve tried to explain how ensuring your workforce is as content and productive as they can be is as simple as rewriting the employee rulebook with the Millenial generation in mind. Your employees are now also your customer, and as such, they demand on-the-go, fingertip resolutions.
Here are some of the top trends and tips, pulled directly from the trends whitepaper, which you can download in full, HERE.
SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE
Your team maketh your customer experience. Don’t believe us? Take a look at the top 10 customer centric businesses and then check out just how relentless they are when it comes to providing staff satisfaction. The stats don’t lie. But what do today’s employees need and customers expect from them?
Fact File
“Core ingredients of excellent customer service are employee competence, attitude and behaviour… offering a straightforward, personal, seamless and quick experience’’
Source: The Institute of Customer Service 2016
PICKING YOUR TEAM
Remember how savage it was when you had to pick the best players for your team in school? Well it’s time to tap back into that scrupulous part of yourself when you choose the finest people to help you create an exemplary retail environment of best customer advisors. So, who to select first…?
Digital Natives and Millennials
Chances are that these guys already know you want them on your team. They probably read about it on Facebook. Brought up in a digital, media-saturated world, their use of technology clearly sets them apart. Millennials, born a little later, are sub divided into ‘digital immigrants’ who have adapted to tech and ‘natives’ who were raised with it, both are critical to success.
MIX IT UP
Make sure you have a team that has a fair representation of tech savvy natives and digital immigrants, balanced with late adopters that customers can also relate to. This way you’re sure to appeal to those who have total affinity for the digital world and those who are still getting to grips with it. Remember, tech savviness does not replace customer centricity. Recruiting & training customer friendly teams with the best interpersonal and communication skills is always the way to go.
BEWARE OUT OF DATE RETAIL OPS
A tech-savvy workforce expects access to information, fingertip resolution, mobile on the go multi-tasking. If your standard operating model dictates they have to ‘walk to the office’, ‘call customer services’ or ‘wait in a queue’ they are just as frustrated as your customers and will not tolerate it.
MAKE THEM BETTER
Digital Natives and Millennials are so important to the future of retail because they are both the employee and the customer. They see customer and employee innovation going hand in hand and seek to deliver a hassle-free, unified experience.
Feeling valued and ‘belonging’ to your community is of huge importance to them.
WHAT LOYALTY
This digital generation are the most diverse and the most educated to date. They have the lowest loyalty and the highest expectation of flexible working.
Their childhood experience with technology shapes their behaviours and attitudes in the workplace. If your culture isn’t what they dreamed of, they’ll drop you like a hot potato. You’ve been warned.
DO AS NORDSTROM DO – EMPOWER YOUR TEAM
For years, Nordstrom’s Employee Handbook was a single 5×8” grey card containing these 75 words:
Welcome to Nordstrom
We’re glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them.
Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.
Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or division general manager any question at any time.
FOUR STEPS TO BUILDING THE BEST TEAM FOR RETAIL, TELCO AND BRAND SUCCESS
- Balance your team with tech-savvy Digital Natives, Millennials and late adopters with customer-centric attitudes
- Equip them using the technology they are familiar with
- Empower them through great leadership principles
- Guide them through intelligent guided selling and service models for consistency, speed of induction and training
We hope this has given you some inspiration for your future roadmaps, and there’s still three more trends to come. If you can’t wait, then simply click here and download the full white paper, which was written in collaboration with retail consultant, Sarah Cameron.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts.
The Conversity Team
About:
Dave Stark is the CEO of Conversity one of the UK’s leading intelligent guided selling platform providers for retailers, telco & consumer brands. They focus on supporting and providing solutions for companies who have an urgent need to make the complicated, simple. The main aim is to address complex product and service offerings and help to x inconsistent & fragmented customer journeys.
Implementing guided selling is one of the biggest opportunities for retailers in 2018, and with 10 years of customer journey experience built in, Conversity’s RIPPLTM platform is incredibly well placed to provide a best practice digitised customer sales journey. RIPPL allows retailers to become obsessive about their customers, combining highly personalised data and guiding them to the best fit product or service, every time.