Page 225 - DMGT553_RETAIL_STORE_MANAGEMENT

Retail Store Management

Notes
Is sufficient staff available to help?
Is the staff approachable?

2. Enquiry service: Are colleagues offering the right level of service to customers if
they have a query?
Do staff members greet customers?

Do they take customers to the relevant aisle?
Do they stay with customers until they have what they need?
3. Goodbye and lasting impressions: Do customers leave with a strong impression?

Are sufficient tills open to fulfill demand?
Are customers greeted in a friendly manner?
Is the transaction processed smoothly?
The Mystery Shopping Programme is a key tool for stores to use to improve the service
they offer to customers. Scores achieved by a store also act as the trigger for the Homebase
Retail Staff Award; a quarterly bonus scheme paid to store staff achieving certain criteria.
Additionally they count towards the management annual bonus scheme.
Using a range of research tools to find out about customer satisfaction is important to
Homebase. For example, different Mystery Shoppers will visit stores over a period of
time and the results will be compared. In addition the results of customer surveys can be
compared and contrasted with the results provided by Mystery Shopper Reports.

Empowering Staff to Plan and do
Empowerment is the process of giving greater responsibility to everyone that works for
an organisation - it literally means giving power to make decisions. Empowering members
of an organisation is a tremendous motivational tool because they feel that they are
contributing, through their own initiative, to improving performance and achieving better
results.
Homebase employs a teamwork approach in which everyone counts and adds value to
their team. All employees are given an opportunity to voice their ideas and opinions. At
Homebase employees are organised into teams with a team leader. Team meetings are
held on a regular basis called ‘huddles’. Huddles frequently involve team building exercises
and fun activities such as quizzes and competitions (such as trolley dashes to locate stock
in a store).
In addition the huddle is a way of encouraging everyone to contribute to developing ideas
for improving processes within the business. For example, the team leader may identify
an area of weakness that has come to light as a result of a visit by a Mystery Shopper or
from the customer satisfaction survey. The team leader might read out comment cards or
relay verbal comments. Individuals are then invited to suggest ways of improving customer
service in the coming week. Team members are encouraged to suggest ideas for a range of
ways to improve business such as how to improve sales, and general processes.
Senior managers at Homebase recognise the importance of empowerment because
grassroots employees are best placed to understand and be able to respond to the needs of
customers at a local level – for example by being able to cater for regional differences.
Empowering staff involves encouraging employees to make appropriate ‘on-the-spot’
decisions such as offering to help a customer take and unload a trolley of goods to their
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