4 Customer Service Tips for Retail Staff

Retail is one of the fields where good customer service is vital. Dozens (or possibly more) customers come in and out of shops daily. Each of them has the potential to be a returning customer, provided they are treated right.

So in this article, we will be looking at 4 customer service tips when working in retail. These are tips to help you and your staff make the most out of customer interactions and hopefully encourage them to come again.

With no further ado, let’s begin.

1. First Impressions are Vital

First impressions can make or break the rest of the interaction with the customer.

Most of the time, someone will form their first opinion on a store within seconds of entering it. As such, it is important that they are greeted with the best your shop can offer right off the bat. This can include things such as the decorations or aesthetic choices, how organized the products are, and the mood between staff in the shop.

When making a good first impression, the conversation staff have with the customer is not where it starts. It starts from the moment they enter your store.

2. Attentiveness is Rewarding

This next one is easier said than done. To get the most out of customer interactions, one must be attentive to them.

Being attentive is not simply a matter of listening to what the customer is saying. It is also being available close at hand for customers should they need to. Being attentive also includes knowing the acceptable boundaries and not being too overbearing in an attempt to help customers.

The real trick here is to be attentive without being too intrusive. But once that balance is established, you will find that you are able to deal with customers a lot better.

3. Positive Responses are Key

This next point can be misleading but let’s go through it carefully. The basic idea here is that instead of saying ‘no’, ‘I don’t know’ or any negative responses, consider trying positive responses.

What is misleading here is the fact that ‘positive response’ does NOT mean always saying ‘yes’. Sometimes, you don’t have some products. Sometimes, you don’t know some information. However, instead of verbalizing this in a negative way (eg: ‘we don’t have it’), consider focusing on what CAN be done to achieve what the customer wants.

This means ‘I don’t know’ becomes ‘I can find out / look it up for you’ and ‘no’ becomes ‘let me check’ and so on. The idea here is that negative responses end conversations and chase customers away so try positive responses to keep the conversation going.

4. Reduce Response Times

One of the things customers hate the most about service is being made to wait. Unfortunately, due to technical limitations, not every store has an excess of staff to throw at every customer.

That being said, there are things that can be done to reduce this response time. First and foremost, you can make sure that someone is handling responses to any online queries in a timely manner. Secondly, you should focus on the process of making a sale in the store and see where you lose the most time. This is where you should focus on to make improvements or changes.

Additionally, incorporating technology or digital solutions that can help with age-old retail problems such as counting stock and keeping track of sales can help your staff greatly reduce response time.

Customer service is a very important part of the retail industry. However, it is often observed that the busy nature of retail and repeating tasks such as adding stock often splits the focus of staff.

As such, perhaps it is time to consider a digital solution to your problems. We’d like to put forth Ewity as one such solution.

Ewity is our easy-to-learn, easy-to-use, cloud-based POS system. It comes with many features designed to help you and your staff with your store. Ewity also comes with a robust inventory system that can handle variant products with ease.

If you’d like to learn more about Ewity, please head on over to our website today!