Retail and the Community

In the 1890s Edward and Josephine Nordhoff started a Retail store called "Bon Marche" which was popularly known as 'The Bon'.  After her husband’s death, Josephine continued to run the chain.  In what I think is one of the rarest tributes to a 'retailer', on the day of Josephine's funeral, all the major retail establishments in Seatlle closed in remembrance of a person who had been known as Seatlle's most generous and beloved citizen.  She had supported many charitable causes and was instrumental in introducing 8-hour weekdays for employees in retail.  An important lesson to be learnt from the Nordhoffs is that one of the most fundamental building blocks of good retail is the standing that the store or chain has in its community.  This can only be built by treating its employees as family and by doing its best for the community it serves.  In an industry plagued with low pay and tough working conditions which results in low employee morale, devotion to duty and loyalty, it is no surprise that retailers are tortured by high employee turnover.   I remember being laughed at when, during the recession and pay cut years, I proposed that we look at introducing a 5-day work week.  Not only would the employees have felt better about the cuts thanks to the additional time off to spend with their families there would have been a feeling of security replacing the fear of being sacked overnight and the sense of doom that was all around.  

With cuts in budgets, reduced marketing expenses and low employee motivation, how was it possible to keep customers coming back?  We came up with an innovative solution – we filled our store calendar with events; activities for kids, book-launches and readings for the adults, competitions, performances and much more.  We then got aggressive in getting our customers in by using low-cost methods like emails, telephone calls, newspaper event listings and smses.  We put in place lots of compelling reasons for the customers to come and they came in droves, with family and friends.  The result was that we grew through the recession.

Large business houses that have entered retail like the Tatas, Reliance, Mahindras, Aditya Birla and the Future Group and the multinational chains of food and restaurant retailers such as McDonald's and KFC are uniquely positioned to impact the community positively through retail.  Instead of squeezing employee development costs if they work on leveraging their vast workforces to channel community development activities through their stores imagine its widespread impact.

If the Indian retailers were to increase the amount of time they spend in training and development 10-fold the business impact would 100-fold.  Training means improved knowledge and skills with a positive impact on attitude and performance.  Better performance means better results and better results ensure better pay.  It really is that simple. Immediate measures in basic skilling, higher educational opportunities for advancement in retail management careers are the crying need of the industry today.  As much as the focus on education, there is a need for improving the work-life balance, work-timings and working conditions.  This will ensure the creation of a passionate, competent and loyal retail workforce.

In terms of community building whether it is giving scholarships to local students or conducting art workshops, painting exhibitions or hosting an each-one-teach-one program or doing charity drives and collections, any  interesting socially responsible activity done with a genuine intent will bring customers thronging in.  If customers are made to feel passionately about the things that impact them and if they can be enticed to participate in the interesting activities that retailers do then any retailer chain can become a respected and loved part of the customer’s community.

What retail in India requires today is a lot of heart – approach the retail business with heart and success will definitely follow!

Knock your socks off - Training!

Retail frontline training has to be as interesting and well thought out as your customer service motto.  Great differentiated service is something that you can introduce only through consistent and simplified training!

Yawns, sleepy faces, zero energy – such a familiar sight in training programs!  I have pretty much felt like that in most programs I have attended – save a few great programs with a few great trainers…  Most people these days have a huge ADHD problem (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) when they are expected to pull back from their high energy, multi-tasking jobs and are brought into a training program.  So obviously they get bored!

A typical ‘Knock Your Socks Off’ Customer Experience program is aimed at store staff – who are typically working all day long, most often reactive rather than proactive due to the quantum of work that they handle and they do not come from backgrounds where they have spent too much time or energy learning…hence the teaching methodology one absolutely needs to follow with them is one I fondly call the E5 methodology!  Easy, Enriching, Electrifying, Energetic and Empathetic.

Easy – The training for frontliners or for that matter anyone in retail should be Easy – simple words, using a mix of English and the regional languages so that one can make ‘learning’ much simpler.  Pretty much use of the training techniques one saw in nursery and primary school – lots of pictures, lots of repetition, simple easy words and a lot of love!  Use of simple slides, workbooks with tons of exercises, videos, pictures, photos are the way to make a bit more of a lasting impression.  The other benefit is also that the output from this training at the stores also becomes easy to observe and measure from say a mystery shopper program!

Enriching – An obvious ‘E’ would have been educating – however training a working salesman/woman has to have something more than the knowledge that ‘you’ want or need them to have.  You have to be able to make the connect between the knowledge and the training program to what is in it for them?!  As kids we could be forced into learning, there were marks and future at stake.  So what does an individual look at from the program – my experience is that they come in expecting a good lunch and nothing else.  What I sell them though are ways to get ahead in life, ways to improve their self-worth, their relationships and ways to better manage their time!   This puts them in the driver’s seat as far as ‘learning’ is concerned and makes them more alert and participative, as the stake is now that much higher and important to them!

Electrifying – A prerequisite to great selling is being really charged up and motivated!  If you cannot charge them up in a classroom you will not charge them up on the shopfloor.  Techniques must be used to get the best out of your team in a classroom scenario.  You have to get them up and excited about everything you do, the methodology has to be fun and something that totally charges up the participant and gets him awake, alert, hungry for more and excited about learning.  This is of course easier said than done – sometimes I take just minutes to thaw an audience and sometimes it takes up to half-a-day – but it is energy well-spent – as the ‘learning’ is far more effective only after this…  The good news is that no matter how tough the audience is – when you decide to ‘electrify’ you will eventually get there.

Energetic – The first 3 points are more to do with the participants and what motivates them – however this and the next point are more towards what the trainer must do at his end!  The trainers for retail training must be highly motivated and energetic!  The energy that they bring to the program will carry forward and build the energy with the staff that they train.  This energy is not built overnight, a lot of work goes into this one.  As a trainer you need to eat right, workout a lot to be able to bring that stamina to the classroom!

Empathetic – The lives of frontline people is extremely hard!  They work long hours, and they travel great distances to come for your programs!  Chances are that 9 out of 10 times they don’t even come from the socio-demographic background that you come from…so you must understand them and relate to them.  Spend a lot of the breaks, lunches and dinners just getting to know them better!  A better understanding of your audience will help you be more successful with the programs you deliver and   the way the content you deliver is absorbed.

Your training program has got to be just as interesting and delightful as the service you want your staff to deliver.  Remember the good old concept ‘Moments of Truth’, almost all of customer service is centered on this very concept…  The concept says that at every point that you interact with your customer you are forming impressions – for good service you need to ensure that each of these impressions are fantastic.  Now I say that your training programs on this subject also need to follow the same rule.  Your entire interaction with retail frontliners must be exciting, enriching, alive, fun and should knock their socks off.

Bring in the age of collaboration!

Why are people being so secretive about everything? Doesn't everyone know that you could have the sales report, the business know how, the financial backing and all the great intentions of your key competitors and still not be able to replicate what has been done. If it was that simple you would have a zillion hotel chains like the Taj, you would not have a market leadership in watches like Titan and you definitely wouldn't own and operate a unique books, movies, music and gifts store like Landmark...


Curiously enough all the above mentioned retail chains belong to the Tatas! I have found the them to be one of the most open groups - they are both open to learning and they also are quite comfortable with sharing! About 7 years back when Retail was not yet a buzz-word I was with Titan. One of my more brilliant bosses had the idea that we should benchmark our practises with best in class examples we could find in the market. So we met Jet, Indian Airlines etc. (don't think Kingfisher was around yet) to benchmark loyalty programs, Barista and Coffee Day and some 5 star hotels for customer service, we even met saree shops like Deepam for customer interfacing and shopfloor treatment of customers...it was a great experience - everyone was so open. The exercise definitely led to our improving our practises - we were inspired by what we saw around us and super charged.

Fast forward to the years 2006-2009 - we find giants on the scene - companies that have amazing track records in business - but the sad part is everyone is trying to reinvent the wheels of retail excellence, privately in their own corporate boardrooms. People are hardly outsourcing functions like training, CRM etc...and they are all trying to build their own systems and processes for the same...little realizing that the moment you isolate the experts in the required fields to particular formats or organisations you are literally killing motivation, initiative, opportunities for inspiration. Moreover a lot of people making the 'hiring decisions' seem to be blind to the fact that they will get 'retail oriented' talent amongst a younger age group.

I have seen vast differences between say a 25 year old who has worked in a pantaloons and maybe an ad agency or two vis a vis a veteran of 20 years who has just worked as say a business manager for a brand. The youngsters are better networked with 'relevant' people - come any problem they seem to pick up the phone or blog their problems away - whereas a veteran would mull over the problem and hope business environment changes will blow the issue away.

I have always found talking about business dilemmas and airing the challenges you face, out in public - presents you with a plethora of solutions.

Currently there are far too many challenges we collectively face as new retailers in a new India. We must come together to discuss our issues and sort out our problems together so that we can take a giant leap forward. Believe me - the fundamentals of quality retail really do lie in building learning organisations and the only pool of knowledge that exists out there, is in the experience of thousands of retailing professionals who are all fumbling in the dark.