Your front line staff are your brand

At the CIMTech conference recently, one of the speakers said:

If you wanted to learn which was the best TV or Hi-fi to buy, where would you go? My bet is that you wouldn't’t go to Dixons or Currys*. You just won’t get the information you need from the staff there.

He was explaining how much front line staff have been de-skilled of over the past 10 years.

Staff in call centres follow prescribed speeches and look for options on a screen for what to say next. Sales staff in shops are not educated in the products that they sell. Indeed, as a consumer, there are few places where front line staff are more knowledgeable than they were a decade ago.

Yet these are the people who are the public embodiment of the brand.

To me this is a no-brainer – it is near impossible to create a great customer experience without investing in front line staff.

There are 4 things that I think companies should do:

1. Hire people who are interested in the products and services they are being asked to sell
2. Give them the time and information they need to stay on top on the products you offer and of general developments in the market
3. Empower them rather than make them follow pre-determined scripts
4. Make ‘making customers successful’ their mantra

I often hear how difficult it is to differentiate your business. This is a really simple way.

* For those on the other side of the pond, Dixons and Currys are the UK’s largest high street electrical retailers.

Comments

[Ty]

"Yet these are the people who are the public embodiment of the brand."

This is the critical thing to remember. The relationship between a brand and its marketplace is fundamentally a relationship between customer and employee, two human beings, each representing one side of a value exchange which both consider to be important. What happens between these two representatives is hugely indicative of a brands relationship with the whole marketplace.