Dissatisfaction guaranteed

The sales associate shifts her gaze off to the side just as the customer approaches. Suddenly she is intent on restocking merchandise or discussing when she will take her next break, anything to avoid actual contact with a shopper. It’s the type of behavior that galls customers and dominates the list of complaints cited in the second annual Retail Customer Dissatisfaction Study conducted by Wharton’s Jay H Baker Retail Initiative with the Verde Group, a Canadian consulting firm. The study found that disinterested, ill-prepared and unwelcoming salespeople lead to more lost business and bad word-of-mouth than any other management challenge in retailing. “There are a variety of different triggers for having a bad shopping experience, including things like parking or how well the store is organised. Some of those things retailers can do something about and some of them they can’t. But frankly, a very important part of the retail experience is the interaction with the sales associate,” says Wharton marketing professor Stephen J Hoch, director of the Baker Initiative. In a telephone survey of 1,000 shoppers who were asked about their most recent retail experience, 33% reported they had been unable to find a salesperson to help them. Many of these shoppers were so annoyed by this one problem that they said they would not return to the store. According to the Wharton analysis, sales associates who are missing in action cost American retailers 6% of their customers. Add to that the 25% of consumers reporting they were ignored outright by sales associates — no greeting, no smile, not even eye contact. This lack of engagement turned off 3% of customers to the point where they said they would permanently stay way from the store in which they encountered this behaviour. Hoch remains puzzled by sales associates who retreat from potential customers. “You would think that if these sales associates are spending the whole day interacting with people, they would be a lot happier in their own life if they were friendly. Instead, they pull into their shell. What’s wrong with saying, ‘Hi, how are you doing?’” According to Paula Courtney, president of the Verde Group, survey respondents were not frustrated by sales associates who seemed overworked or outmanned by shoppers. It’s the “conscious ignoring” that irritates them, she says. “Customers would walk into a store and the store representative would see them and continue to put items on the shelf or watch the cash register or do administrative work — absolutely ignoring the fact that an actual person was in the store.”
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