Providing excellent customer service experience: the retail security guide, by Blessing Isaackson, pictured, BA (Honours) University of Keele, CeMAP, BL and a former Metropolitan Police officer.
The importance of providing good customer service in any industry cannot be over-emphasised and the consequences of poor customer care are particularly relevant to the retail sector which is customer oriented. Increasingly, the retail sector relies on external SIA approved contractors to provide security guarding services the market of which as at February 2013 was approaching £5billion.
The competition for business among retail security companies is intense. They therefore have everything to lose by providing poor customer service to their retail sector clients through the provision of security officers with inadequate customer service skills. This article examines how retail security companies can set themselves apart from their competitors by improving the customer service skills of their front-line security officers through creative training, and assisting retail organisations to provide excellent customer care experience on the shop floor and finally implementing a documented complaints handling system in their internal operations.
A security officer with a bad attitude and temperament may put off a customer from shopping in a particular store because of poor customer service from the security staff. The provision of bad service by security guards undermines the business of a store and security companies bear the brunt of the retail organisation’s anger. It is therefore important for security companies to train their staff on the virtue of good customer service and educate them as to why they must focus on customer care on the shop floor. Bad customer service on the part of security officers ultimately affects the financial performance of retail security companies and the job security of the security officer because if a security company loses the contract for a store the security officer also loses his livelihood.
How the retail security officer perceives management’s attitude to customer service will determine their perception of the level of customer service they believe should be delivered. Employers can build the perception that it takes customer service seriously by “equipping employees to ensure excellent customer service”. Retail security officers must understand four basic foundations for service: Warm greeting, provide what is expected, go above and beyond, and provide a gracious goodbye. These steps are not difficult to implement and should be adopted by security officers on the shop floor to improve customer service delivery to the retail security company’s client and to the retail organisation’s customers.
Warm greetings
Security officers working in the retail sector are more often than not, especially in smaller ‘express stores’, the first contact that a customer would have with the store, because they stand at or sit near the entrance. For those doing the eight or 12 hours shift whilst standing it might seem too difficult offering a welcoming smile. Smiling to some in the sector is the direct opposite of what guarding is about, but smile they must, because whether they know it or not when a customer buys a product from the store where they work a small fraction of what they pay indirectly goes towards their wages even if they do not work directly for the retail organisation but for an approved contractor employed by the retail company.
A simple “Good morning, madam” or “Good Morning, Sir” said while maintaining eye contact goes a long way to reinforce your professionalism and projects you and the company you work for in good light. It sets the tone for any future interaction that the security officer might have with that particular customer whilst he or she is in the store. By offering a warm welcoming smile at the door, you are making the customer visible. “When employees make customers invisible, they might actually become invisible”. What this means is that a happy customer is more likely to return to the store. If customers stop coming to the store, the security officer and his employer will have no store to guard! “The customer is the reason you have a job”.
Knowing the layout
Knowing the layout of your store and where to find merchandise are part of providing service beyond your call of duty as a security officer. Also, by providing service beyond what the retail organisation and their customers expect, you are assisting the company you work for enhance its professional image and differentiate itself from its competitors. The security guard working in a store must make an effort to study the layout of the store and know where to find the different products sold there. This is certainly not a difficult task and there are number of reasons why the knowledge of the layout of the store and the location of the products are important. When a security guard sees a customer who he assumes is behaving suspiciously and he pro-actively offers a polite “how can I help you, sir?” and the suspicious customer calls his bluff and asks to be shown where to find a tube of tomato paste. A security officer who knows his store’s layout and where to find his products is quickly able to show the customer where the product is. If his hunch is right, he would have left an impression on the suspicious customer that the security officer is watching, and if his suspicion was misplaced, he would have made a potential irritable customer happy.
There is nothing a customer hates more than a customer service assistant and, believe it or not, a security officer, who does not know where to find a product. Not all customers are aware that security officers work for companies other than the retail company. They assume, rightly or wrongly, that security officers are employed by the retail company and therefore reasonably expect them to know where products are located or at the very least find someone who knows where the products are in the store. A blunt “I don’t know where the salt is, sorry” is not good enough. The “sorry” at the end of a response helps but does not make things right. Customers rightly should expect a security officer to offer someone else who can assist them- “sorry, madam, I don’t know where the salt is, but I will get someone who can help you”. The latter response tells the customer you care about him and you are prepared to help even though you are “only” a security guard. If you know where a product is, do not point the customer to the spot, show them where it is.
Self-service
In the current economic climate most retail companies have had to cut back on staff and most store managers have to work on very tight budgets, especially those managing smaller retail outlets. It is therefore not surprising that customers who use self-service machines do so with little or no assistance when glitches occur. The self- service machines are quite intimidating to nervous and older customers and can be very frustrating to most customers who use them. It is common for the machine to reject a £1 coin. From my experience, a customer who has had a tough day at work who is using a self -service machine because they believe it would offer quicker service, soon lets out his frustrations on the nearest member of “staff” they can see and that is usually the door supervisor. All it takes to correct this problem is to change the £1 coin for two fifty pence coins. Without collecting the coins, there is nothing wrong with a security officer informing a customer struggling with that problem what they need to do to resolve the glitch. Offer a solution, “Madam, you probably require two fifty pence coins because the machine sometimes rejects £1 coins.” Or draw the attention of a customer assistant or team leader to the customer. Assisting to solve little problems ultimately helps to avoid bigger ones.
You can feel the tension and the frustration of customers who stand in front of the machine trying to cope with never ending series of information coming from the programmed voice in the machine. “Please use alternative mode of payment”, unexpected item in the bagging area”, “please scan your coupon”, “put your items in the bagging area”, cards only, no cash accepted”.
A customer who believes he has money in his account to pay for his transaction does not understand why the self-service machine wants an alternative mode of payment. All it takes is to explain to the customer that what the machine would prefer is cash payment. This information can be conveyed as discretely as possible without embarrassing the customer. Alternatively, just call the attention of a customer assistant or a team leader. Simple tasks like these establish long lasting relationships with regular customers and they provide the experienced security officer with the opportunity to discreetly scan the self -service screen with their eyes and match the products on the scale to ensure there is no shoplifting taking place.
Be polite
Customers are human beings and have problems too. Sometimes a regular shopper would have an off day and wants to have an unsolicited conversation. Listening to a customer is part of providing good customer service. It does not harm you or your company to pay attention and listen. Often that is all a customer is looking for. Someone to speak to and when you find one who is just rambling on endlessly try to end the conversation politely without hurting their feelings. Never judge a customer based on his or her looks, and remain objective at all times.
Closing time
This is a major source of friction between customers and the retail security guard. It is often a frequent cause of customer complaint. Customers want to come in after the store has closed. The retail security officer needs to explain why the door must be closed at a particular time. If you tell a customer that the store is only licensed to be open up to a certain time, they do understand. This is much better than just saying “we are closed!”
Customer care training
“The only way to truly satisfy customers is to know how to satisfy them”. Retail security companies, their professional clients and retail security officers share the responsibilities in delivering excellent customer care training for front-line security officers. The retail sector must make clear what their expectations of retail security officers are and it is those expectations that should guide retail security companies in structuring appropriate customer care training for their retail security staff. The retail security officer who wants to perform at the highest level must take control of their training needs because they are the ones at the front line and they know what customers need and what is required to meet those needs. I would repeat the apt advice of Renee Evenson in her book titled “Award-winning Customer Service: 101 ways to guarantee great performance”.
•Tell your company what your training needs are by making a list of them.
•Tell them what you need to learn to make you an effective retail security officer?
•Make clear the technical knowledge you require to be effective at your job? A knowledgeable security officer is more likely to be confident and offer better customer service.
From the view point of the retail security company, it is important for trainers to be creative in educating security staff on how to deliver excellent customer service. This might involve texting or sending emails on customer care information to them. Customer care training need not be classroom based learning. Periodically, test the knowledge of retail security guards. This can also be done by way of texting or email and the feedback from such exercise will provide useful training guide to the employer.
On their own part, employers should find out what their professional clients want and how they can work to improve customer experience through security officers delivering excellent customer service on the shop floor.
Shop floor
Shop floor confrontations unfortunately happen for a number of reasons:
Electronic article surveillance alarm (EAS)
Security officers must never assume the worst when the EAS goes off. Often this happens because a customer service assistant has failed to remove the security protection sticker (tag) or the customer has not removed the tags after completing their purchase at the self-service. There is nothing more embarrassing to a customer than being stopped by a security officer after a long day at work and made to look and feel like a criminal just because the EAS was activated. Instead of being confrontational security officers should smile and immediately apologise to the customer. Ask if they have a receipt and invite them to return to the store to de-activate the tag. Customers are generally reasonable if you treat them with respect.
Incidents such as this can be reduced when retail security officers receive adequate and continuing training on how to approach customers when they activate the electronic article surveillance alarm (EAS).
Tail-gating the customer
I will describe the practice as following a “suspicious” customer too closely in the hopes of deterring them from shoplifting. Part of the retail security officer’s job is to offer visible deterrence, but there is a thin line between deterrence and intimidation. Tail-gating is a major source of friction on the shop floor and evidence of poor customer care. If you must follow a customer keep a reasonable distance and make yourself invisible.
Learn from complaints
Complaints about a security officer might come from the store manager or from a customer through the SIA. Neither is good for the security officer or the security company. A complaint from a retail sector client or from a customer or the SIA must start a complaints process based on the ISO standard 10002. The ISO 10002 sets the standard internationally for handling customer complaints. The guiding principles set out in ISO 10002 are:
•Visibility and accessibility-the public must know how and where to complain.
•Responsiveness- complaints must be dealt with speedily.
•Criteria for complaints handling framework- the infrastructures that a company needs to have before a functional system of complaints can be said to exist were set out under this framework:
•The company must show strong commitment to the complaints process;
-The process must be centred on the customer
– The role of all those in the process must be clarified.
Planning and design of the system;
•The objectives, activities and resources to make the system functional.
Operation of the system;
•There must be effective communication of the process to the public.
•Set out clearly what happens when the complaints is received.
• Deal with how to track the complaint
•acknowledgement of the complaint
•assessment of the complaint
• resolution and investigation of the complaint
•decision and action
•feedback to the customer
• customer response and survey
Maintenance and improvement;
•information and improvement
• monitoring of the complaints handling system
•analysis and evaluation
• review and audit of the system
• Management and improvement of the system
Constant complaints about a security officer from customers or from the retail organisation should naturally raise concerns about the performance of a security officer and whether the security officer needs further technical and customer care training.
Every security company should keep a log of complaints the store manager or directly from retail Company’s customer service department. The log should be analysed at some point and used as a learning tool to correct recurring customer care issues.
Effects of reprimand
Research has shown that where customers complain about bad service, a reprimand of the offending staff goes a long way to reduce anger of the complaining customer. A retail sector client will feel a lot happier that a security company takes its concerns about customer service issues seriously if the security company serves the offending officer with a written reprimand and keeps a verifiable record of how it deals with poor service from its frontline security officers. A reprimand clearly shows the security company’s zero tolerance to bad customer care from its officers and shifts blame to the security officer rather than the management of the company. The records of complaints provide a learning tool which is used by the security company to train its staff and avoid recurring customer care problems.
Customer retained
Adherence to ISO 10002 standard benefits the company, the customer and the security officer if he is retained by the company at the completion of the complaints process. It has been shown through research that maintaining a documented complaints handling process leads to customer retention. In other words, a retail security company that has a robust documented complaints handling system is more likely to retain its retail sector clients. There is also evidence in support of the proposition that companies with stronger documented complaints handling system not only retain customers they improve the performance of their staff and ultimately have better financial performance . A robust documented complaints handling system “enhance the ability of an organization to identify trends and eliminate root causes of complaints, and improve an organization’s operations”.
A documented complaints handling system also has a positive impact on a retail security company’s business because it gives the retail company the opportunity of tackling the causes of the complaints and consequently recover unsatisfied clients as well as give the company the chance of analysing data on past complaints, learn valuable lessons and make sure the mistakes of the past are not repeated.
Conclusion
The provision of excellent customer service does not come naturally to most people. Customer care skills like any other skills are learnt and practised over and over again. Employers rely on their staff to project a positive image of the company and that comes partly from the positive feedbacks from happy customers. Technology has advanced to the point where employers can offer creative customer care training to their staff. A workforce with strong customer care skills generally leads to customer retention and ultimately better financial performance for the retail security company.
