FAQs - Questions From Today’s Future Leaders - September

One Friday each month I dedicate the post to looking at some questions I have heard recently from developing leaders. Sharing those questions and my thoughts for them is a way for me to spread the information to as many leaders and future leaders as possible. If you have a question about leadership or just a situation you would like some additional insight on, please email me at Effective Retail Leader. Let’s take a look at this week’s question.

I am trying to improve my customer service scores, but don’t seem to be making much progress. What can I do?

Creating an outstanding customer experience should be the goal of every retail leader. Over the past decade, voice of the customer type surveys have continued to gain in popularity. I would wager that nearly every major retailer has some level of customer satisfaction measure within their business. In many of those cases that survey is measured and stores are provided a score. And then comes the follow up to that which is that everyone has to improve their score. Does that sound familiar?This is a common question I hear. My response almost always begins with, “it is not about the score.” It is sometimes too bad that the output of these types of surveys results in a numeric value. As retailers whenever we see a number, we feel the need to move it whether up to increase the sales, comps, or in this case CSAT results. If it is an expense, shrink, or payroll number we must reduce it. The fact about customer satisfaction surveys is the number has to represent a feeling from the customer.As a retail leader, you need to dig into the data you do receive about your store and look past the number in order to move the number. Customers respond to the environment of your store and the behaviors of your team. When you want to improve your results, those are the areas you must turn your attention to. I am going to avoid the idea of ‘focusing on service’ for many of the reasons I write about in the article, what I hate about the word focus. In simple terms, customer experience isn’t something to ‘focus on,’ it is something to sustain and make a way of life. It has to become the culture of the store.To create improvements, invest some time in analyzing the full details of your customer surveys. If you receive the comments for review, spend the majority of your time reading through those. Try to remove the emotion you may feel as you read these comments. Don’t try to justify or explain based on what you believe may have been happening within the store. Remember the customer is only sharing their point of view and perspective - it doesn’t necessarily mean it is 100% accurate, but it is what they experienced. Put yourself in their shoes and then challenge yourself to see what could have been different from the store’s perspective. When you can take that step back, you will dramatically improve the ability to start moving the experience forward.As a follow-up activity to reviewing the comments and additional details of your survey, spend time observing your team in action. You don’t have to be so close to hear every word, just watch from afar and pay attention to body language, time to engage, and facial expressions. Those three things typically will tell you everything you need to know about how the interaction is happening. Observations can feel awkward and time-consuming but are a necessary part of effectively leading your team. With the information you collect from those observations, you can coach at a higher level and provide meaningful feedback that can lead to breakthrough conversations and behavioral changes for your entire team.In the retail world today, the customer experience needs to evolve continually and improve for those shopping within it. A part of your role must be to raise that bar, not for a better score, but to ensure your customers will come back and tell others about how you made a difference for them. Take some time to understand the information you have available to you, including standing back and watching your store in action. Armed with that information and a desire to make a difference, I am confident that as you make your CSAT survey results less about the scores and more about the behaviors and experiences your team creates, you will see those results improve.What benefits do you think you can gain by spending time observing the experiences within your store? Share your ideas and thoughts in the comments.Join other retail leaders in continuing their development journey with Effective Retail Leader.com. SUBSCRIBE today to receive leadership tips directly to your inbox and monthly newsletters that provide many tools to help further develop your leadership skills. JOIN NOW!No spam ever - just leadership goodness.