A while back my friend and client Donny said something quite interesting. Actually, Donny is usually saying something interesting, but this one in particular stuck with me.
In a conversation about taking the actions that make a specialty retailer successful Donny said, “Don’t underestimate what we in the stores take for granted.”
Bingo! It’s easy to forget that giving someone a bottle of water, holding the door, asking a customer her name, asking the person on the phone if we can put him on hold, carrying a purchase around the counter and presenting to the customer is something special. Something they don’t get most places.
That’s because after a while those things are no longer fresh….to us. Our customers never tell us they’re bored with or don’t appreciate them. No, we take it for granted and sometimes slowly drift away from what makes us special.
So how do you keep things fresh in a store? Here are a few ideas.
1. Leaders need to keep championing the things that differentiate a store or company. If we keep reminding people why we do what do and the impact those actions have on customers, it won’t be taken for granted. So it starts with us.
2. Keep improving what you do. Change and innovation not only helps us remain competitive, but those incremental improvements freshen up the routineness of retail.
3. Push your team to discover new ways to differentiate and improve your experience. Somewhere along the line, you or someone in your company came up with an interesting or unique way to improve your customer experience. You, or someone in your company, can do it again. Driving continuous innovation at all levels of the organization keeps things fresh and keeps the focus on the customer, and you never know where that next great point of differentiation will come from.
So let me ask, are you keeping it fresh
