Case Study
Retail
Motto: "There's only one boss - the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."
- Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart
Our philosophy: We achieve improvement. Everywhere.
It is well known, that increase of sales can be attributed to a number of various factors and conditions.
To reach company goals with any measure of ambition it is absolutely necessary:
- to know the experience of the customers who get into interaction with the employees of the company, and
- to increase their level of contentment,
- to continuously improve the performance of the employees, and
- to measure and to track these processes in order to provide useful feedback for innovation and for decision-making.
The realisation of these facts, and the willingness to invest will result in a definite advantage over competitors.
A Client of ours operating in retail has established a Mystery Shopping Program that has proven successful ever since.
Since the start of the program in 2005 both the network and traffic has increased threefold. The well-operated, still ongoing Mystery Shopping Program has been playing a significant role in the success of this expansion and innovation.
First, when the program was about to start, we defined research areas, their specific problems and needs of improvement, and also the Key Performance Indicators (KPI). KPIs are in fact standards set to quantify the success rate/realisation of the organizational goals. For example the size of the profit may be such an indicator of performance, since the increase of profit itself is a company goal.
One of the most important parts of customer service is selling which at the same time requires the most personal efforts. Its prerequisites include appropriate indirect services such as decent environment, polite and helpful demeanour towards customers.
Direct service - surveying the customer’s needs, recommendation based on those needs, in short: selling – is the part of the process that requires the utmost care and improvement. First of all the customer wants to buy, therefore he/she really needs us to sell. On the other hand, we, as merchants, want him/her to actually purchase and not merely window-shop. Consequently our sales assistants are expected to take active part in the selling process - their job is not merely to provide an enjoyable shopping environment. Under optimal circumstances – using a game-theory term – this is a win-win situation for both buyer and seller.
The development of Salesmanship Skills, that is, the elements of proactive salesmanship are treated with special attention in the course of the Mystery Shopping Program. As it is visible on the chart, the starting point of reference showed a value of 30%, which is stunningly low even among circumstances of the Hungarian market.
It is clearly visible that a steady improvement got underway, despite natural fluctuation. It is especially spectacular, if the trendline is straightened by quarters or years. It is also noticeable, that for example the post-holiday season at the beginning of each new year usually results in lower performance.
The chart also indicates the points where new phases of the program came into action. At each of these points a definite, almost outstanding improvement could be observed.
Due to careful preparation and the determined, but flexible execution of the program, every identified and examined area (KPI) shows growing trends, that is, improvement has been achieved. Development in Salesmanship Skills especially proved to be successful, which nowadays hardly produces results below 80%. Sales assistants of the retail-network use the expected selling techniques 2 times more regularly than before the program. According to the company director, this is also confirmed by the basket value index.
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