Stores Pitch Service : Customer Is Always Right, Again
Dennis Spivack turned to five women on the top floor of the Bullock’s store in Westwood, smiled, and asked, “What do you really hate when you go shopping?”
“Not being able to find help,” Linda Horvath complained.
“Having a sales person who doesn’t know about the product,” Maryellen Mahar added.
“Being pounced on the very second you’re in and asked, ‘May I help you?”’ chimed in Tracie Markson.
These were no ordinary Bullock’s shoppers. The women were training to be sales associates, and this was part of the lesson on customer service. “All those things you hate,” Spivack, the store’s training director, intoned in his most earnest manner, “remember them when you’re on the other side as a sales associate.”
Big Department Stores
It isn’t just new sales clerks who are learning about customer service these days. It’s some of the big department stores themselves.
Mention customer service and shoppers inevitably talk about Nordstrom, a chain known for coddling its customers. But now stores such as Bullock’s, Broadway, Robinson’s and May Co. say they are dusting off a concept many customers thought the big retailers long ago had forgotten.
Things had gotten so bad, acknowledged H. Michael Hecht, Broadway’s chairman and chief executive, “there was no perceived lack of service, there was no service.” But in the past year, Broadway and its competitors say they’ve begun quiet but determined efforts to wipe out customer dissatisfaction.
“I would like,” Hecht said, “to have all customers in Southern California call a store manager if they are not greeted the right way, find help right away or their transaction is not handled courteously.
“Complaints are golden opportunities for us to make it right.”
Crucial to Doing Business
Across the country, department store executives say they have found that it’s not enough anymore to put out the merchandise and let the customers do the rest. They say they have rediscovered that catering to the needs and whims of customers is crucial to doing business--more business--in the 1980s.
“If you take care of the customer’s needs by suggestive selling and proper information, the sales check is bigger,” explained Joe Laneve, senior vice president of stores at Robinson’s.
Nowhere is the trend more evident than in Southern California, one of the most competitive retail markets in the United States. For shoppers, the change is supposed to mean that they will get more attention.
But executives acknowledge that it will take more than lip service from the executive suite to get help in the dressing room. As a result, the stores say they are investing more time and money on hiring, training and rewarding employees in hopes of restoring a high level of customer satisfaction.
Among other things, Robinson’s is attempting to make store personnel more knowledgeable about what they’re selling. Bullock’s has doubled the time it spends training new sales associates. Broadway cut its headquarters staff and sent more executives into the stores, and May Co. has improved its complaint policy.
Today, customer service does not necessarily mean one-on-one sales help as in years past. Indeed, the challenge is to help shoppers without bothering them. Surveys of shoppers show that today’s customers want quick, efficient, knowledgeable and courteous help--but at their discretion.
Worst Experience
More often than not, a lack of service turns into a confrontation between a salesperson and customer. Ken Stovitz, an attorney, said one of his worst experiences occurred when he returned a gift--a Ralph Lauren shirt--to Bullock’s in Westwood.
Stovitz had no receipt, and when he got to the store, the shirt was on sale. He said he was willing to accept the sales price, but still found the salesman difficult. “He sounded like he was doing me the biggest favor in the world. Finally I said, ‘I can’t deal with you any longer.’ Something was really wrong with his social skills.”
He insisted on seeing the store manager, who asked the salesman to apologize. The salesman refused, so the manager apologized instead. Stovitz said he still shops at the store because he likes the men’s clothing selection there.
Service Has Eroded
But others, such as Ruby Johnson of Inglewood, said they will boycott any store where they are not treated well. “I don’t care how bad I want something, if the service is bad I’ll leave,” she said.
Customer service has slowly eroded over the past 30 years because of pressures and changes in the retailing industry, according to Philip M. Hawley, chairman and chief executive of Carter Hawley Hale Stores, which owns the Broadway, Neiman-Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and other chains.
Some of the nation’s best-known chains were built on providing premium customer service and satisfaction. Stores such as Marshall Field’s in Chicago and Neiman-Marcus in Dallas were founded by charismatic entrepreneurs who were shopkeepers in the true sense of the word.
Selling Was Personal
They were out in their stores--typically located downtown--every day, spending hours taking care of their customers. Selling then was more personal. Many credit Nordstrom’s strong customer service to the fact that the Nordstrom family--a third generation--still runs the company today.
But then came the postwar spread from single downtown stores to multistore outlets in suburban shopping centers in the 1950s. Department store chains became part of huge retail conglomerates, which tend to be run by merchants who emphasize numbers and performance.
“A typical merchant philosophy,” explained William T. Parsons, president of Senn-Delaney Management Consultants, a Long Beach firm that helps retail stores become more productive, “is if you buy right, present the merchandise properly, price it correctly, it will almost sell itself. So the chief executive officer of every major department has a merchandising background but not much store and customer service experience.”
Revolving Executive Door
Some small independent merchants, such as Edward Poritzky, believe that the revolving executive door at the big chains also is part of the problem. “New people, new brooms sweep clean,” observed Poritzky, who founded Wright Shoe Store 40 years ago in downtown Los Angeles.
“They swept out the whole attitude of person-to-person help. It is such a small thing to be kind and considerate and to pay a little attention to the customer. . . . We’re a little more intimate. The customer doesn’t look like a dollar sign to us,” said Poritzky, whose son, Mark, now owns the business.
Further eroding customer service has been the trend toward customer self-service, which Hawley said is “really euphemisms for the diminishment of customer service.”
“There was kind of a standard comment that everybody operated under: ‘Well, with wages and salaries going up, stores can’t afford to provide the level of service that they used to. So therefore you, the customer, have to expect a lower level of service, and we’re going to design departments with racks and fixtures so you can select your own merchandise.’ ”
Stores Cut Back
So down went the number of sales people, and stores cut back even more under the inflationary pressures of the 1970s because reducing store payroll was one of the easiest ways to cut expenses.
Stores are now returning to customer service because of new pressures, executives say. Department stores are trying to get away from the frenzy of price-cutting of the past few years by offering service instead.
In addition, chains can no longer grow simply by building new stores because of high costs and fewer choice locations. “Today no one is building stores like they used to build,” said Donald Abrams, vice president of stores at Bullock’s. “The challenge for most of us is to get greater productivity out of existing space. The country is over-stored. . . . That’s probably why there is such a universal crusade in customer service on the part of so many retailers.”
Formidable Task
Providing customer service, however, is a formidable task and requires instilling a new and well-defined attitude among thousands of store employees and executives.
It is a task, store officials say, that takes an enormous investment of time and money in extensive training programs that do not have an immediate pay back. Most important, customer service requires constant surveillance and reinforcement with incentives and awards.
“You just don’t make a decision and write a memo,” said Hawley, whose six department store divisions are on customer service programs. “People have to understand that it is not a fad or passing fancy or something that is this year’s mission. . . . It is really a permanent decision to turn the clock back.”
New Customer Service Program
At Carter Hawley’s Broadway unit, where a new customer service program was begun last October, the headquarters staff, including executive positions, has been cut and the funds reallocated to store training and incentive programs. The company also announced last week that it hired an additional 400 Broadway salespeople in May and plans to add another 200 to improve customer service.
Connie Stephens, who has been selling at Broadway for 25 years, said she spends more time with customers now and less on filling empty shelves, counting merchandise and keeping up on other housekeeping chores in the children’s wear department at the Huntington Beach store.
“The store is still looking its best,” she said, “but it isn’t finished as soon in the morning as in the past, when we did it immediately until it was done.” Now she said she does the stock work in between waiting on customers.
Changes Behind the Counter
“There was a period of time when it was, let the customer do their own thing and let them look around even after they’ve been greeted,” Stephens said. “Now customer service is to help them, suggest something to go with whatever they picked out. If they pick out a dress, find out if they need stockings to match or maybe some jewelry to go with the outfit.”
To accommodate shoppers, stores are also making changes behind the counter. They are hiring more full-time sales help and implementing programs to reward employees who do a better job.
Many are following Nordstrom’s lead in paying sales associates on a commission basis instead of an hourly wage. That means the more that sales associates sell, the more they earn.
Bullock’s is testing such a commission program at its Westwood store; Robinson’s at its newly opened Escondido store and all 42 of Broadway’s stores are implementing similar programs.
Restore Sales Skills
In training sessions, the chains say they are attempting to restore sales skills that have been proven to enhance sales. Store training officials say that if shoppers are acknowledged or greeted with a nod, hello or eye contact within three minutes after they enter a department, they usually will linger and browse. They will even wait 10 to 15 minutes for help when a department is busy if they are acknowledged.
A shopper typically will not make a decision about a purchase unless nudged, according to consultants. So they say it’s up to the sales staff to initiate the closing of a sale by asking if the purchase will be cash or charge.
And then there’s the return policy. Often, consultants say, a store’s staff can inadvertently sabotage what usually is a very fair return policy. Employees are being taught to think of returns in terms of exchanges, and are shown how small a percentage of merchandise is actually returned.
Responsive to Complaints
The chains are trying to be more responsive to complaints. May Co.’s California stores, for example, now forward all complaints to the chain’s director of customer service. Chairman Edgar S. Mangiafico said the centralization enables the chain to get a “better view of where the problems are.”
The biggest endorsement of whether a store is doing a better job at customer service, according to executives, is word-of-mouth. Some shoppers are apparently noticing some change.
“I was very disgruntled with the Broadway,” said Jack Evans of Los Feliz, who stopped shopping at the chain a few years ago because the sales staff had an “indifferent” attitude.
But he recently changed his mind a bit after visiting the Broadway in Glendale. “It just so happened I needed luggage. I wandered over there and golly I was shocked to find someone trying to make a sale instead of ignoring me.”
‘That Impressed Me’
When Evans couldn’t locate what he wanted, the saleswoman brought in her supervisor for some help. Evans described what he wanted, but couldn’t find it.
“The next minute he was gone and pretty soon he was back with a garment bag, just about exactly what I was looking for. It seemed like he went into the bowels of the store to look for it. That impressed me. My God, it was sort of a revelation.”
Meanwhile, business goes on as usual at Nordstrom, where executives appear somewhat amused at the competition. Jim Nordstrom, president, said: “I can’t imagine they’ve only discovered it now. It’s like keeping your head down when you play golf. You’ve got to keep your eye on the ball. The first thing is to take care of the customers.
“I don’t think they realize how hard they will have to work.”
