The key to the success in any retail business is to develop a unique merchandising strategy and customer service based on a profitable business model.

Getting the visual aspects of the business right is often the easiest part.  Getting the customer service right is more of a challenge as you are dealing with people who have to deal with people.

The aim of a retailer, when it comes to customer service, is to find out what the customer expects when dealing with an organisation such as yours and then introducing a formula to exceed those expectations.

By achieving this, viral marketing, via word of mouth will take place; this is always the best marketing technique on offer.

Man businesses believe that the answer to improved customer service is to send the team off on a customer service workshop and all your worries will be over.

Alas, it is not as simple as that.  In fact, a customer service workshop, in some circumstances, could do more harm than good.  If you want to create customer service that is the talk of the town, then there is a process you'll need to follow.

Step One:  Write down what you believe in

The owner of the business sets the standards for the business. As an owner you should visit other retailers who your customers are exposed to and judge their standards of customer service.  The key to remember is that the customer probably will not shop around in retail stores that do what you do, so don't base your views on the standards of customer service in your retail sector.  You may be providing exceptional customer service for your sector, but only average customer service as experienced by consumers when they go shopping.

Next visit or read about retailers who provide awesome customer service, we all have our favourites and will all have different views on what is awesome service. 

Having obtained as full a perspective as possible on various customer service standards write your own standards.  Be specific on what you want to achieve.  I would encourage you to put some benchmarks down based on customer conversion rates and average sales per customer.

Step Two:  Recruit salespeople not product people

Successful customer service organisations recruit people with personality.  People enjoy interacting with people who like being with people.  People with a natural, open and friendly personality will make great salespeople.

Look for people who can engage strangers in conversation and are good listeners.  If they do not know anything about what you sell, it doesn't matter.

Step Three:  Build their confidence

Confidence comes once these people with personality understand the products you are selling.  By nature, such people will want to go on a fast track to learn about the product.  Your role is to provide a structured approach to learning about the product.  Make sure they can take time out each week to learn about the product and don't overload them with too much product knowledge at once.

There is no harm in such a person saying "they do not know" to a customer and then using that opportunity for both them and the customer to learn.

Step Four:  Now customer service training is relevant

At this point the customer service training is relevant.  The customer service trainer needs to have a written copy of your values in customer service to allow them to engage with your team at the standard you are expecting.  Such a trainer should also be able to add an extra dimension to the customer experience scenario.

Step Five:  Now empower the team

Once a team member has gone through the above process they are ready to exceed expectations on the shop floor.  They will only achieve that if the company has empowerment policy.  This is basically the ground rules in your business.  They need to know how much responsibility they have when dealing with the consumer face to face.

We have all come across retail situations where the salesperson says "Let me get the manager".  Both a salesperson and a consumer's motivation drops at this stage in the relationship.

Some retail businesses write down the rules of empowerment, whilst others communicate it verbally.  The key is that as a retail owner you have invested a lot of time and money to get a salesperson to this point in the process.  If you don't have an empowerment policy that the whole team is aware of, then the changes are that your best team members will leave and join a business that does.

Exceeding customer expectations is not difficult it is rarely achieved, mainly because as retailers we do not take the time to go through the process.  Spending time as a leader, coach and mentor your team will bring financial rewards to all concerned.

Source: by John Stanley Pet Industry News Summer 2007