Help Yourself: Customer Service in a Downturn

Closed Door Service: A telling reminder that the bad service continues even after the store is gone

I work with a lot of clients who are even more overwhelmed when it comes to invigorating their customer service profile. Yup, even in the middle of a truly depressing retail climate, stores are still littered with yawning-iphone texting-personal support grouping-employees who somehow forgot that “customer service” means: Me = Customer. You = Service.

Meanwhile, men’s fashion magazines have finally figured out that their entire raison d’etre is to offer amazing information about how to dress and behave. They’ve almost picked up the slack for what’s missing in the store when it comes to customer service.
U.S. men’s magazines, from Details to GQ to even the Jugs-obsessed Maxim, have taken a fresh approach to their editorial. Where once it was photographs of the usual T&A, or worse — stuff most men wouldn’t be caught dead wearing — it’s now all about mentoring men in their sartorial pursuits with simple, clear solutions and proven trend-spotting — “see, guys really are wearing it!”.

The now-defunct Cargo magazine was the first to experiment with gimmicks once found only in women’s magazines like Lucky: things like stick-on tabs to mark the “must haves.” Ariel Foxman, Cargo’s former editor-in-chief, said “it’s not about prescribing things you have to buy to be cool or fine-tune your persona, but about providing information and making suggestions so that men can be self-assured in their purchases.”

So if a magazine can offer such a distinct point of view, why can’t a store? Maybe because so many stores still haven’t figured out that building a great brand – especially a men’s wear retail brand — is about offering an authentic service experience that goes beyond selling. It’s about making customer service the key driver in communicating both the product and the store’s distinctive ethos.

In The Marketing Power of Emotion, John O’Shaughnessy and Nicholas Jackson O’Shaughnessy write: “whatever the case may be, brand images can evoke emotional bonding with the customer, creating trust and arousing loyalty.” For that to happen, though, customers must first establish a bond with the store in a meaningful way, and this is why the employee is so critical to making that happen. While customer surveys can help to understand a shopper’s motivations, what they overlook with regard to the men’s market is that “satisfactory” tends to merely mean “no serious complaints” instead of an experience that is about a deeper emotional connection– the prime goal if a store is to secure a loyal customer. The male consumer is more or less used to being a second-tier customer well behind the female shopper in importance. But there is no more challenging or more loyal customer than a man — once a meaningful connection has been established.

In research by Deloitte Consulting, so-called “customercentric” companies are 60% more profitable than those that are not, and they have lower over-all operating costs. Deloitte defines “customercentric” as “a systematic process that sets objectives for customer loyalty and retention, and then tracks performance towards these goals.” It is possibly the most critical factor in positioning any store but, surprisingly, it continues to be one that is consistently overlooked. Bookstores brim with titles that offer solutions to invigorating employee performance. Books with titles like All Business is Show Business, The Power of Nice, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless But Customer Loyalty is Priceless, and How to Win Customers and Keep Them for Life (note to self: if you ever plan to write one of these books, make sure the title is long enough to cover the entire book jacket).
To the casual shopper, customer service can seem to be dependent on how much one is willing to spend — the more one spends, the better the service. And that’s on a good day, because sometimes not even that makes any difference. I have spoken to many men who claim salespeople are “sizing up” their appearance, in terms of how much they think they are worth: “Gucci shoes, Gap pants, ugly sweater, Velcro wallet = $75.00 – $100.00. Prefers to buy on sale.”

Which is why I use the hospitality industry as an important benchmark in developing almost any retail customer-service component. The hotel’s goal is certainly about selling rooms, but the bottom line is about serving the customer regardless of his or her social status, brand of shoes, and so on. Conrad Hilton was famously one of the first to build a template for customer service that would be consistent in each and every hotel bearing his name. Similarly, a great store should be operated like a fine hotel or restaurant. When the customer is treated graciously as a guest, he or she returns again and again. Staff training becomes integral to making this happen, so that employees truly reflect and enact the standards of the hotel. Alan J. Fuerstman, chief executive of Montage Hotels and Resorts, says the investment in staff training can never be underemphasized. “ We are very big on offering all employees extracurricular educational opportunities that can be applied in or out of our hotel. We sponsor leadership trainings based on ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.’” Montage employees also receive intensive training in “Listening and Language” and a class in “Wow” — which they consider a “spontaneous, personal gesture.”

A store that is more-than-a-store offers a total experience much like a great resort hotel, spa, or first-class cabin. It begins with employees that genuinely reflect the brand and its philosophy, making for a “magical” customer experience. It is magical because the factors that compose the experience are invisible and seamless to the untrained eye. But these factors are in reality the product of a union produced by great merchandise, inspiring store design, and the knowledgeable and approachable employee. Kenneth Kannady, a CRM consultant identifies this magic as “the feeling that customers develop about themselves as a result of interacting with a company through its people, products, processes, or services. Empowerment is what differentiates a repeat customer from a loyal customer.”

The venerable San Francisco boutique retailer, Wilkes Bashford, puts it this way: “Ideally you have a diverse set of staff who satisfy and can communicate with different demographics and personalities. They need to be able to be able to guide the customer and really listen and hear what their needs are. They also need to be sophisticated. A customer wants someone who knows and appreciates the world they live in – even if it’s far above theirs.”

Along with a sophisticated employee, a superior retail experience is dependent on giving men the opportunity to dream and discover who they might be. The power of clothes — especially fine clothes — can indeed be transformative. Says Bashford, “Once they experience great tailoring, they see how it frames who they are. A great suit, fine tailoring — it not only changes how you look but how you feel. Once a man understands that, he’s bought into why clothes are so important.” The store is a place to experience, imagine, and discover just how the clothes can indeed make the man. The sales associate is both guide and accomplice in that experience.

Take an imaginative leap: what if a men’s store had sales associates who were all women? Remember that the majority of men still go shopping with women, or entrust shopping to women. With the right female sales associate, a man might feel a greater level of validation than with a man. At a Gucci trunk show, a male customer I observed could barely make eye contact with the salesmen, let alone the male model the store hired to show the season’s latest looks. He awkwardly looked at the clothes on the racks, reaching for the familiar basics – jeans, t-shirts, a leather jacket. The one female employee working the floor not only got him to try on the jeans, but some of the new season’s more fashion-forward items too. While many men still trust salesmen for advice, it’s not too far-fetched to envision a store whose “hook” would be that it was staffed exclusively by attractive, smart, young female sales associates – a kind of Hooter’s approach to fashion retail — albeit one with a more sophisticated wardrobe than a set of double D’s in a baby-t.

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