When someone links technology with an improved retail customer experience, most people naturally think of websites and automated speech applications – technology-driven extensions of the traditional brick-and-mortar store.
But technology has an essential role to play in improving the in-store customer experience as well. In fact, by powering innovative training programs, technology can address critical gaps in employee responsiveness to help ensure a consistently superior customer experience.
The importance of that role is highlighted by the results of a major research program, sponsored by Convergys Corporation in the fall of 2008, which explored customer expectations and the customer experience in a number of industries, including retail. The study is unique in that it explores the customer experience from all perspectives, including those of front-line retail employees and executives.
Is there a customer experience gap?
In a word - yes.
The study revealed that top attributes customers seek when they visit retailers – all listed in the top five by at least two-thirds of the customers surveyed – are, in order:
1. Knowledgeable employees
2. A good value for the money
3. Courteous employees
4. Treats me like a valued customer
When these same customers were asked how well retailers were performing in each of these qualities, they gave the lowest marks for – you guessed it – “knowledgeable employees.” In other words, the very quality most often identified as important to customers suffers from the biggest gap between customer expectations and retailer performance.
This gap between expectation and performance may contribute to the number of bad experiences shoppers reported in the survey. Almost half of the customers in the study – 48 percent – reported having had a bad experience in a retail store.
Front line retail employees surveyed in the study seem to recognize the problem. When asked if they agreed with the statement, “I am provided tools I need to develop and advance,” only 39 percent of retail employees agreed compared to 60 percent of employees in all the industries surveyed. Moreover, when asked if their company provided job-related training tools, retail employees as a group were significantly less likely than employees overall to respond affirmatively.
Taken together, these results suggest that retailers need to do a better job of providing opportunities for employees to improve their knowledge and skills, and become those “knowledgeable employees” customers are seeking.
For merchants, though, adding to development opportunities using traditional instructor-led training is a challenging proposition. Employees are scattered across vast geographic areas for national retailers; even in a metropolitan area with a concentration of stores, employees are widely dispersed.
Moreover, work schedules are highly variable, not only from employee to employee but also from week to week. Finally, because of the relatively high levels of turnover typically experienced by many retailers, employees at any one location are likely to have widely varying training needs.
Fortunately, current learning technologies address all these challenges.
Self-paced e-learning programs allow each employee – working with their manager – to select and complete individualized learning modules whenever they have the opportunity. Modules can be developed to meet employees’ individual needs, whether product knowledge, store procedures, sales effectiveness, or any other professional development topic.
These programs can be accessed any time, on demand. Because they’re delivered via computer, they can be completed at virtually any location – or started at one location and finished at another – allowing store-based employees to conveniently complete the learning on their terms.
Moreover, today’s e-learning programs incorporate highly effective learning and curriculum design approaches. For example, performance-based learning programs align the content with the nature of the delivery to help learners practice and master skills that are essential to real-world job performance. By linking practice and theory to drive more effective education, such programs result in measurable improvements in employee skills and on-the-job performance.
Learning programs can also incorporate sophisticated scheduling capabilities linked to a retailers’ work schedule system, allowing the system to automatically suggest learning programs based on each employee’s actual hours. In contact center applications, the tool can even monitor call traffic in real time. When call volume is low and agents are less busy, the tool automatically triggers an invitation to begin a learning module on the agent’s desktop screen!
Learning systems also track employees’ progress through recommended learning modules. The system keeps tabs on which modules an employee has successfully finished, and which they still need to complete. This capability can be linked to the scheduling tool, allowing the system to propose specific programs for each different employee, based on their own learning record.
Finally, results for each employee’s training can be automatically provided to both store and learning managers, to facilitate additional coaching or other direct assistance if needed – and ensure that self-paced learning does not end in self-defeating frustration.
If your company has not yet established an e-learning program, the transition can be greatly simplified by turning to a learning outsourcer. A competent provider can convert traditional classroom and other training materials into effective online courseware using pre-existing courseware structures. This approach delivers finished e-learning tools on an accelerated time-line, and at the same time reduces costs by leveraging your existing learning investment.
Similarly, if your company has not invested in a learning management platform with the kinds of advanced capabilities described above, a full-service learning outsourcer will be able to offer a robust system to host your program – at the same time relieving you of the need to maintain and update the technology.
And if you do have such a system, a learning provider can assume responsibility for the platform, freeing your staff from the ongoing work of maintenance, upgrades, licensing fees, and so on.
When one national retailer replaced its traditional classroom-based training with a self-paced e-learning program, the results included not only increases in sales and sales productivity, but significant reductions in training times and training costs.
And that’s while helping increase the number of knowledgeable employees on the floor – the ultimate benefit for retailer and customers alike.