Customer Service

To improve customer experience, increase departmental collaboration

Joe Schultz, vice president of sales at Harbor Retail, explains why retailers that provide exceptional service and experiences will encourage customers to feel comfortable visiting stores again and ensure long-term loyalty.

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July 24, 2020 by Joe Schultz — Vice President of Sales, Harbor Industries

With so much uncertainty on the horizon, it's a stressful — and perhaps even frightening — time for retailers. Today's retail sphere is more fundamental: With customers' worries about when, where, and how to purchase products, retailers must align with that behavior on the fulfillment side. Likewise, they should still maintain focus on encouraging seamless interactions.

Even though customers are more concerned about securing products, a positive shopping experience can certainly quell their anxieties. Moreover, only retailers that provide exceptional service and experiences will encourage customers to feel comfortable visiting stores again and ensure long-term loyalty. Most retail leaders are attuned to these shifting concerns. However, they're not necessarily doing enough to ensure standout service.

According to a survey by Bluecore and Forrester Consulting, 39% of retailers are prioritizing customer encounters, but only 12% agree they're very effective at personalized shopping for patrons. Typically, when talking about customer experience, most of the focus is on the front-end employees who interact with the customers — even if that's virtually. But the roots of solid customer experience go much deeper. That includes the store's everyday employees and the overnight janitorial staff.

Everyone serves a role, and if the chain of responsibility is broken, a large burden falls on the others. Case in point: If the stock person fulfills a buy online, pickup in store (BOPIS) order only to have it misplaced by a teammate, the customer is stuck waiting at the front of the store while employees search to find her order. What was meant to be a five-minute trip turns into a 20-minute excursion — and your customer's anxiety levels continue to rise.

Collaboration through trust

Solving this conundrum requires building a sense of collaboration and camaraderie across verticals, thereby destroying silos. For instance, 86% of individuals from companies that landed on Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" in 2019 said they could count on each other, and 91% expressed forming bonds with co-workers. Nevertheless, determining how to avoid clunky communications and incongruent touchpoints with consumers can be sticky.

Many business founders have clung to the notion that employees should focus on their core jobs, mainly because this worked for decades. For retailers to navigate the new atmosphere of selling goods, however, managers and executives can close shopper experience gaps by improving internal teamwork between disparate departments.

Sound tough? It's less difficult when higher-ups implement and support the following strategies.

1. Label each worker's role as necessary and explain why. If you firmly believe that all employees contribute to the success of your retail business, let them know. If you're recruiting and onboarding, talk about why each employee's tasks are essential as well as how everyone's to-do lists fit into the whole picture.

You need to be able to verbalize a connection between your company values and employees' jobs. For example, if your mantra is service from the moment customers step out of their cars into your parking lot, ensure your cart attendants know that they're the first and last contact with each customer. That's an extremely important role!

The more you transparently communicate what each team or individual does, the more likely that everyone will begin to see each other as vital colleagues. Workers will also recognize that when they drop the ball in one area, the ripple effect will be felt in another. Over time, your teams naturally will work together to meet short- and long-term goals. Likewise, they'll also appreciate the company's operational flow and uniform customer service expectations.

2. Cross-train team members to provide more flexibility. Whenever possible, cross-train employees so they can understand one another's tasks. Even though the worker might never perform the other responsibilities, having thorough knowledge surrounding co-workers' duties can inform her decisions.

How does this bring together your customer experience across multiple channels? Think back to the old 80/20 rule: You can realistically train someone for about 80% of the situations she'll encounter. What happens when she comes across a situation that falls in the murky 20%? She'll need to use her knowledge from prior and ongoing training and cross-training to solve problems confidently.

Ultimately, your next-level supervisors and C-suite members will come from talented employees who know what's happening in other parts of the organization.

3. Offer recognition to workers in all roles. Too often, managers get caught up in touting the achievements of only front-line personnel. Yet all employees deserve to be cheered when they do well. Rather than highlighting success stories from customer-facing employees alone, make sure to recognize others doing their best.

Sending thank-you emails, writing notes, and distributing gift cards will show that you value everyone in your company, regardless of title, and recognize the extra contributions that person puts in. This helps you cement an increasingly positive culture and quite possibly make online and real sales registers ring. As Gallup suggests, cohesive, engaging work environments can improve a brand's profits by 21%.

Historically, cross-silo collaboration hasn't been the objective of retailers. But to give shoppers the smooth customer experience they want, employees should start behaving like a well-oiled machine. Take steps toward team synergy today, and you'll be on the path to attaining true fans.

Joe Schultz is vice president of sales at Harbor Retail.