‘Tis the season for jingle bells, hot chocolate, and gift buying. Where in previous years sales promotions like Black Friday took place on one day, now they all seem to be extended from the day of Thanksgiving onwards. There are lightning deals to catch and doorbusters to grab. As you well know, this can be both the merriest and most manic time of year for consumers—and retailers, alike.
Stay the Course
With all the stress that comes with the last five weeks of the year, let us gift some advice. Make sure you and your management team don’t take your eyes off the ball: customer service is still the most important product you have to offer, despite what your colorful banners read. With how hectic the holidays can be, don’t let your core competencies slip. Think about your sales processes, customer service steps, and your normal attention to detail, like store cleanliness and organization. Have the holidays distracted you from executing on these fundamentals? Has your staff entered into survival mode to just try to outlast New Year’s?
Take a breath. Now is the time to get the whole crew together and re-center yourselves. Remember what has made you successful to this point, and don’t stop doing it. You can’t make the calendar turn over any faster, so keep working on delivering the best customer experience you can. That means helping every customer with the same level of detail and respect as you would in July—the time of year shouldn’t matter. Game-plan for increased traffic. If you can boost staff coverage, great. Either way, make sure every customer is greeted and given as accurate of a wait-time estimate as possible so as to manage expectations.
Opportunity
Remember that customers are stressed out too. You and your employees are in a position to help offer a better experience than the zoo they’d find at the mega-retailers and big-box chains. If you want your business to stand out from the rest, make shopping with you a welcome relief from the rest of their errands.
Sometimes businesses think they should relax their mystery-shopping services in December because they want to avoid giving their employees another stress to worry about. We couldn’t disagree more. Now is the time to maintain discipline, to bolster your business’s reputation as well as maximize your profits. Mystery shopping shouldn’t be about stress but be about keeping your skills honed. Just because a chef is busy doesn’t mean he should forego sharpening his knives. Dull tools only make for harder and longer work.
Are you mystery shopping now? If not, contact us without delay. Let us work together to ensure your staff is performing at peak efficiency and quality during the most wonderful time of the year—and beyond. There’s no time like the present. And, lastly, don’t forget to stay safe and sane no matter how frenetic the pace seems!
