The Last Word: Customer Solutions Profit Ideas

Do you need to get your customer-facing employees delivering stronger value for your business? Listen as Dan Cosgrove, CEO of Mercantile Systems,  interviews Hal Moore, owner of Creative Concepts on the topic of improving customer service performance using practical training ideas. Hal is “trainer extraordinaire” on the topic of how to get the maximum value from customer-facing employees through consistent training and offers some of his insights.

The Challenge: Training frontline customer-facing employees to produce the most value from every customer interaction.

The Quandary: Challenging economy means it is imperative to make every customer count more than ever.

The Remedy: Frequent, consistent training and expectations setting informed by “indisputable data” on how employees are meeting your goals

Listen & Learn:

 

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The National Retail Federation just released their guidelines to help retail management prepare for an inevitable increase in mall shootings that spike during the holiday season. While I know that this is a tragic reality these days, I truly believe that any retailer involved in a violent crime would say, “Yes, now I see that there were early signs that this employee’s behavior had changed in a negative way.”

Very rarely does a person wake up one day and say, “I am going to go shoot up the mall (or) my workplace.” Yet often it is the final act of a person who has hit the wall in desperation.

As I wrote in a recent blog post on a serious related crime –employee theft (albeit with less finality) — “The impact of hard economic times on employees can translate into workplace theft, drugs, and even violence.”

It is critical that retail managers identify early signs of concern — unusual actions, changes in behavior, breaking of procedures while monitoring cash access points, and inventory of products, etc.

While not all violence starts with these early actions, many stem from the same core problems — issues related to unemployment in the household, personal financial crisis, depression, drug abuse, etc.

These real life issues cause stress, which can often turn to acts of desperation whether it is employee theft or those final devastating acts we have been reading about in the news lately. Employers are seen as a catalyst to the problems and often the employee rationalizes aggressive actions against their employer — when in fact their problems stem from deeper personal issues.

Employers should carefully monitor employee day-to-day performance around key performance indicators:

Procedures
Customer Interaction
Peer Interaction
Management Interaction
Monitoring of Employee Theft/Inventory Shrinkage

Monitoring, using these key indicators, will allow the observant employer to potentially recognize early signs of concern and changes in behavior. In many cases detection of early warning signs can avoid aggressive violence.

Why? Because a tightening economy means more of your employees will have their back against the wall and be willing to take desperate measures… employee theft is a crime of opportunity that is all-too-easy to take.

I know I probably sound like a broken record at this point (especially if you have read the string of blog entries over this last year), but costs continuing to escalate and spending continues to drop. This means it is virtually impossible to count on building the topline of your business – so, you must find ways to protect and build your bottomline.

One of the most direct ways to do this is to eliminate employee theft and shrinkage. Aggressively monitoring employees and integrating that with indicators of risk for workplace theft are a smart move in any economy – and even more so if you want to make it through these troubled times.

You need to tie these efforts to a fast-track feedback system that triggers closer investigation for hot spots/people that are discovered. Employees of concern must be managed through an appropriate HR process of employee theft investigation, confrontation, re-training, notification or immediate termination (depending on the data collected and severity of their actions).

Employee theft and shrinkage will continue to rise as employees grasp at ways to deal with personal economic challenges – and in many cases, attempts to maintain lifestyles beyond their earning levels.

For most of us, the thought of employees stealing is painful and/or infuriating. Infuriating is better place to be in as that is usually an emotion that fosters action. There are techniques you can implement – some of them yourself and some with the help of specialists in this area – that more than pay for themselves.

Unchecked employee theft typically spreads and creates a poisonous work environment. Nipping it in the bud and implementing a strong loss prevention program is something that you can control in these turbulent times.

I have talked to many companies who are, with obvious reason, greatly concerned about the health and ultimate survival of their business. For those of you who are not yet in financial crisis I strongly recommend that you focus on customer service and your areas of greatest profitability.

In times when you can not easily force or influence growth to the topline, YOU MUST focus on building the bottomline. That means tightening costs, improving customer frequency, reducing loss and building “average check,” or sales. The ways to do this include:

• Customer Experience Management: keep your customer service standards high and monitor adherence to your standards.
• Employee Theft Control: monitor for employee theft (cash and products) and install a thorough process of investigation and action around identified areas/employees of risk or concern.
• Stress Suggestive Selling: identify the top grossing products/services and train your staff to suggestively sell (they’ll thank you for that).

By being proactive and focused you will have a better chance of weathering the period of this economic storm. What’s more, focusing on what you can control will create a well-run business that will deliver better results in any economy.

This economic environment is of great concern to many industries, but the restaurant industry – which operates on narrow margins as it is – is definitely feeling the pressure.

In addition to the pressures on independent restaurant owners, franchisees are also feeling the pinch. I read recently (Wall Street Journal, “Credit Crunch Squeezes Franchisees,” September 29, 2008) that “lenders are tightening credit to restaurant franchisees.”

This will inevitably make it more difficult for owners to buy or remodel locations. But, what concerns me the most is that this trend will lead to fewer people being able to buy into a franchised business.

Franchising has been known as a way for people to step into business ownership by adopting proven operational concepts. Now, they have to come to the table with at least 50% of the costs in equities.

Internal Stress, Like Employee Theft, Should Also Be Evaluated

What I hope is that anyone considering the purchase of an existing franchise will investigate the current operational data – sales, performance, rank within the region (and overall network), staff assessment, cost percentages, shrinkage, employee theft, leases on property and equipment, etc.

In a troubled economy, you can expect to see instances of employee theft escalate. Look at how your candidate handles workplace theft during this troubled economy, whether they use suggestive selling techniques, etc. You may need to retrain the staff.

Another way of looking at is that their lax business practices may devalue the current performance yet offer you ample upside opportunity with better management practices. Bargain time, anyone?

Doing the due diligence and understanding the health of the operations is the only prudent approach to considering the purchase of a franchise these days. And, this investigation will help to successfully launch the business and maximize 90-day performance.