IF THE PRECEDING CHAPTER sounds as though merchandising is a matter of clever placement of high-margin goods … well, much of it is. But the human element ultimately dominates merchandising. The way a store treats customers on a personal level will do more to keep customers in—or run them out—faster than any other aspect of a store. A rude clerk can negate the benefits of knowledgeable merchandising. A helpful clerk can overcome poor merchandising, at least after the customer enters the store. In an effort to prevent mistakes and to ensure consistency, however, too many of the rules regarding employee behavior seem geared to produce robots instead of pleasant store personnel.

My son worked for a shoe store that required an employee to acknowledge every customer within 60 seconds of the customer entering the store. My son hated the policy. Some customers make it clear by their body language that they do not want to be approached. They bristled when he followed company policy and drew near. Another retailer requires its employees to stay within three feet of customers as they meander through the store. But few, if any, customers want a salesperson hovering over them constantly. Gap employees used to have a reputation for “pouncing” on customers as they entered, a behavior that the company has begun to rectify. Instead, the company is giving customers more help in the fitting rooms, where the attention is appreciated. For several years, Staples cashiers would ask every customer at the register, “Did you find everything you need?” Clearly some executive created this policy to make the customers feel attended to. But the right time to ask this question is when customers are shopping in the aisles, by employees circulating specifically to help. After a while, cashiers asked the pre-fab question with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. The rare time a customer said something like, “No, I couldn't find the bond paper,” then the entire checkout line shut down, inconveniencing other customers, while the cashier called someone to retrieve the product. Never ask questions you do not mean. And ask them when you are most capable of responding to them quickly. The last time I was in Staples, I could not find a certain kind of printer cartridge. After my second time down the aisle, an alert employee noticed and came out of his way to help me find what I needed. This was service at its best: unobtrusive, friendly, and genuinely helpful.

Customer service has a simple underlying premise: Put yourself in the customers' position. Begin by respecting their personal space. Customers let you know how they want to be approached. Someone with a specific need—a certain size of shoe in a particular color and style, say—comes directly to an employee and asks, or searches an aisle intently. Customers who are “just looking” do just that—idly working their way up and down the aisles. Customers who are interested in buying need a few minutes to make a preliminary mental sort of the merchandise. Suppose, for example, that a man is looking for a comfortable dress shoe. When he first enters the store, he requires a few seconds to orient himself to see where the dress shoes are. If he moves toward that area, employees should let him go unaccosted. If he looks lost, employees should spring forward to help. Once in the area of the dress shoes, the customer picks up several different styles, looking for the right combination of dress style, weight, and comfortable insole. Mentally, the customer picks out two or three pairs of shoes that he likes. At some point, he has questions, or he is ready to try on some shoes. When he turns to locate someone, an employee should materialize at his side, prepared to assist. If no employee is free at that instant, the nearest one should acknowledge him with eye contact and a smile, indicating with or without words that someone will be with him right away. Attentiveness is the order of the day, not stalking.

Employees at high-fashion shops linger over customers more, and employees at discount stores are few and far between. Customers understand these tradeoffs. A person who buys a $2,000 suit expects a cup of coffee and a lot of personal attention along with the suit, whereas a person who buys a $200 suit expects nothing but a suit (although a cup of coffee wouldn't hurt). In general, however, the timing and degree of interaction between employees and customers depend as much on the employee's instincts and basic courtesy as on the retail concept. Yes, eventually the browsers need to be acknowledged, but retailers should not send employees charging off to greet each and every person when they could focus on the people who show by attitude and interest that they are likely to buy or they need help now. Too often, customers feel besieged by employees when they do not want them and cannot find employees when they need them. The classic example is the grocery shopper who cannot find the last item or two on the shopping list. Grocery stores have express lanes to save customers a minute or two in the checkout line, but they never notice the increasingly frustrated shopper wandering their store for 20 minutes looking for the frozen orange juice.

If a suggestion of additional service personnel seems extravagant, consider the business advantage. The Westfield Shoppingtown family of malls offers valet parking, special parking for expectant mothers, package carryout for customers, and even concierges who seek out customers to assist with shopping. The Westfield Group considers customer service to be its primary differentiator in competing with other malls both for customers and high-quality tenants.

Courtesy is the first but not the only step toward great customer service. The greatest service that an employee can provide a customer is solid facts about products and services. This is also the greatest service the employee can provide to the retailer, because timely and personable delivery of meaningful information drives sales. Waiters should know not only the restaurant's specials for the night but also the unusual ingredients and how they compare with common ones. Employees of clothing stores should know the difference between knit and woven fabric, know that 100-ply thread is smaller than an 80-ply thread (resulting in a finer weave in a shirt or blouse), know any special care instructions for every piece of apparel the store sells, and know other details of the clothes-making art.

Whether the concept is outdoor sports or interior furnishings, the salesperson should use the customer's needs, usage, and abilities to sell the appropriate product—not just the customer's price point. I am fond of asking salespeople whether buying the most expensive product means I am paying for the best product or just a fancy label. I phrase the question so that they know that I am depending on their honest recommendation. What, I ask, is the difference between the high-priced item and the medium-priced item? At one athletic shoe store, the employee looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “Well, this one here is more expensive.” At another athletic shoe store, the employee launched into a description of the superior outer sole support, inner sole comfort, and overall resistance to wear of the more expensive shoes. Guess where I bought the shoes, and guess which pair?

Instead of insisting that employees use superficial actions or words intended to fake a concern that is not there, hire and train individuals who like their jobs and respond to genuine customer needs, and give them permission to make good business decisions. Customers know the difference. Residents of the Northwest are familiar with Les Schwab Tire Centers. When you pull into a Schwab dealership, customer service personnel come a-running—literally. Even the company's ads feature employees on the run. Les provides all kinds of free services, such as rotation, swapping of summer and winter tires, and repair of flat tires, but it is the attitude that brings customers back. His employees are just not going to send you on your way unless you are happy.

Contrast this approach with an experience my wife and I had returning on Delta Airlines from the East Coast. We had had a long and tiring trip, so I tried to upgrade to first class for the five-hour return trip home. The ticket agent checked our tickets and said, “I'm sorry, we can't do that. Special fares can't be upgraded.” I asked, “Is first class full?” “No, sir.” I offered to pay the difference between our discount tickets and regular coach tickets and then purchase the upgrade on top of that, so that Delta would receive all the revenue it should have. He could not do it, he said. I went to a supervisor, who gave me the same story. “These are discount tickets,” he said, as if certain fares were purchased only by undesirables. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You have empty seats in first class and a customer willing to pay the full value for the difference between our tickets and first class, and you can't do it?” “No, sir.” At this point I was pretty steamed. “Name your price,” I said. He again declined. The tickets were not upgradeable, period. The flight departed with four vacant seats in first class, a full coach section, and some standby passengers left at the terminal.

Passengers who have paid less than other fares should have a lower priority for seating or upgrades than other passengers, and upgrade prices should be adjusted for any differences in fares. But in this instance we were the only ones who wanted the better seats, and we were willing to pay the full value to trade up. The airline turns down revenue while infuriating a customer. The business logic escapes me. Perhaps this scenario helps explain why Delta was teetering on bankruptcy. The one action that would have benefited both the company and the customer, the employees were “not allowed to do.”

Customer service starts at the top, in one of two ways. The first involves process, the idea of “insert Tab A into Slot B” quickly and efficiently. A company must put in place the systems to have the right products in the stores, to ship products quickly as needed to customers, to make exchanges painlessly, and to repair or replace products—all the things that keep a business humming. In Delta's case, the problem with the upgrade could have been a computer system that was too inflexible. No doubt the employees lacked a special code for this unusual transaction. But that lack of capability demonstrated an underlying attitude that upper management, at a great remove, should make all decisions involving customers. This attitude makes sense on issues involving flight safety and security, but not for pleasing customers at the gate.

Rather than enforcing rigid rules, retailers must enable their employees to make smart business decisions, especially decisions involving customer service. Then retailers should hire good people, train them to think, and insist that they use their own good judgment in dealing with people.

The second aspect of great customer service is the attitude of management toward its own people. One retailer understands inventory management and financials, but he will never create a great retail service organization because he is a commander instead of a team builder. Another retailer is a rah-rah people person. His staff loves him; his operation runs like a happy family. However, he has absolutely no knack for the operational and technical systems necessary to grow his few stores into a major chain. As you probably learned in a psychology or business management class, most people tend to be like these two individuals, either task oriented or people oriented. Studies show that the best leaders score in the middle on personality tests, reasonably good at both. (And some chains now give personality tests to prospective managers to determine their leadership traits.)

Growth of a field organization requires managers who have focus, who understand systems, and who can impart enthusiasm for doing the routine well. But great service also requires managers who create an environment in which people matter, which means listening to their ideas and feedback and folding their concerns into company decisions. People in the field also have to understand that in most retail organizations promotions often come from building teams that “love” you. When a job becomes open, store employees, store operators, field-service people—all are eager to tell management who they would like to see in that role. How do these issues relate to customer service? The attitude that managers show toward customers becomes ingrained in the corporate culture, and employees treat customers exactly the way managers treat them. One of my colleagues once worked two jobs to support her family. After struggling for some time, she went to her boss and asked to work fewer hours to better meet her responsibilities at home. Although the company frowned on it, the manager agreed. The manager's thoughtfulness made my colleague, in her words, “want to be the best salesperson on the floor.” The company benefited, the employee benefited—the customer benefited.

If such considerations seem a touch too warm and fuzzy, they have a direct bearing on the bottom line. One national chain examined the relationship between store financial performance and management turnover. The chain discovered that every time a store manager changed, store revenues dropped an average of three percent, and it took a year for the store to recover. The same thing happened with an entire region when the regional manager changed. Store sales related directly to customer service, and customer service related directly to the attitude, enthusiasm, and experience of the leader.

The following Chapters, 8, “Blueprint for Execution,” and 9, “Taking Your Organization Long,” explain the ways to build systems and develop the human side of the retail organization to achieve customer satisfaction.