By Well Sewn Staff
I believe that everybody has pet peeves… it is just a given in the world. Certain things will annoy you at best, or grate your mind to a halt at worst. For me, one of those – one that I’m willing to bet that you share – is modern retail sales techniques. I don’t know what manager thought this up, but a pox upon their house. You know the type, especially if you’ve ever worked in retail. You must greet every customer you come within 10 feet of – or six feet, or eye shot, depending on your manager. Don’t matter that, after the second hello, the customer likely feels harassed, sales techniques say you have to constantly be ‘engaged’.
You must always try to upsell, because the customer who just needed a pair of shorts really might not have thought about the fact that they needed to buy ten thousand dollars-worth of wardrobe today, but thank God – the salesperson was there to remind them! You must always be busy doing something, because woe be unto him who might be seen as being, I don’t know, available when needed, instead of dusting a counter for the 457th time. And, of course, you must be sure to push the store’s credit card, get the customer’s email address for marketing, ZIP code for tracking, phone number for (I don’t know, dating?), height and weight for astronaut training, and on and on, no matter how many times they’ve exasperatedly said ‘no, thank you’ over and over again.
Of course, retail stores continue to push this asinine philosophy in training, and pretty much daily, on their staff. I truly, passionately, deeply, do not understand why. Ask around… odds are very good that for every one person who might have bought something extra because of one of these sales techniques, you’ll find ten who walked out of a store because they were tired of being asked over and over if they needed help, or never went because they didn’t want to be strapped to a chair and electrocuted until they give up their life story during checkout.
Asides – This is not the only example of a poor philosophy that continues to hold sway no matter how little it works; another is the loathsome ‘open plan offices’ concept that, far from dying, companies continue to embrace. This is the idea that, rather than enclosed offices and/or high-walled cubicles and private spaces, offices should be made up of low-walls, few private spaces, group workstations, etc. Going back to the 1960’s, ‘open plan office’ space was, it was believed, a way to increase collaboration between coworkers, and spark creativity. After all, if there were no physical barriers – if everybody could see, hear, and interact with one another – there would be no mental barriers to cooperation! Corporate management ate it up, and implemented it with great gusto.
Even early on, and certain decades later, it has been shown, rather than to foster collaboration, rather to create tension, massively increase stress levels, reduce job satisfaction, increase turnover rates, and increased employee blood pressure. Productivity drops to as much as 1/3 of comparable work in non-open plan spaces, and, ironically enough, people tend to avoid open communications and face-to-face interaction more in open plan offices than their non-open counterparts. Oh, and let’s not forget, they also increase the transmission of illnesses in the workplace.
Despite all of this, senior managers and executives continue to push for more open plan offices, presumably because someone else told them that they had heard from someone else how they improved employee… something. They apparently never both to look at the massive number of studies that prove otherwise. The latest example of this has been the push, post-COVID, to force people back to offices that are otherwise able to work remotely. The number one reason cited for this is ‘collaboration’. Managers seem to think that putting employees together in a confined space means that people with be ‘having impromptu meetings at the water cooler’ to discuss critical issues, despite, once again, all studies showing the opposite. But I digress.
As you can see, management’s experience, and their own training, often does not sync with the realities of the places that they manage. Day to day, in retail, this continues to be blatantly apparent, as I still cannot go to a department store without needing Captain America’s shield to push my way through associates asking me if I need help. What makes this worse? When it comes time to check out, and I actually need help – not someone to show me where something is, or hold my hand, but just to, you know, actually operate the register – I cannot find someone to save my life. They’re all either busy asking random people near the entrances if they need help, or dusting/organizing/stocking things that they don’t really need to be, but have been ordered to stay busy… and therefore are not actually at a register.
The point of all of this is that people, and your interaction with them, can massively influence your experience, with a store, with a brand, with almost anything. Department stores, most of them, I can’t stand anymore just because of how the staff has been trained – forced – to treat me, as a customer. I am more than just my wallet, and a salesperson should be more than a glorified mugger. Even if they have something I desperately want, I will go elsewhere, pay more, or go without, rather than support that kind of behavior. That’s one of the ways in which the retail market works.
There is, on the far side of that pendulum, though, the stellar personal, or personnel, as the case may be, experience, and I want you to keep this in mind, both as a consumer and in whatever role you may have in your own career. Just as bad employee training, or simply a bad employee, can ruin something for you, a good one can bring a customer back… sometimes even if the product does not, and that is a fact that no amount of marketing can buy.
For example, I had an experience a few years ago with a Japanese shirt company called Kamakura Shirts, at one of their stores (sadly since closed) in New York City. The staff there was either extraordinarily well trained by personnel in Japan, or they were themselves Japanese, because they understood and embodied the culture quite well. They were helpful without being intrusive, they were exceptionally knowledgeable of their shirts, from cut to material to sizing, and all things regarding their brand. After I made a purchase, they presented my receipt – along with their business card – with both hands and a bow, a gesture that you will hear more about in coming articles regarding cultural norms.
A few weeks after my purchase, I received a handwritten note in the mail from the staff, thanking me for my purchase. Truly, it is the little things. There was no coupon, nor push to buy anything else. Just a simple, human, thank you.
My first Kamakura shirt was a great fit, and very comfortable, a soft cotton cashmere blend… but after a few washes, it started to pill, terribly. It if had been many other places, that would have completely eliminated any consideration I would have had for the brand, as, I imagine, it would have for many people. Nevertheless, the exceptional behavior of the staff, and all that they did, before, during, and following my purchase, was enough for me to give them a second chance, and I’m glad I did. My first shirt, I believe, I just had the misfortune of getting a shirt from a bad fabric batch; that or my dryer gremlin decided to do more than steal my socks. My second shirt was a perfect experience.
As a second example, and one that shows a potential pitfall, one of my favorite niche fragrance brands, Kilian, has their flagship US store in New York City. Some years ago, the manager at that time struck up a nice conversation with me, and helped me get to know niche perfumes better. I was still fairly new to perfumes at the time, so I wasn’t buying, but he helped me with everything nonetheless. He helped me every time I was in the store, buying or not. When I was debating between two purchases, he was able to warn me which to get, because it was being discontinued.
More importantly, at one point, I called to order a particular, limited edition, perfume. I loved it (I still love it), I had to have it. When I told him, he said to me ‘I’m going to set the bottle aside for you, but wait one week and call me back, because they are about to go on sale.’ That was phenomenal. He had no need to do that… I was calling to buy at full price, and I wouldn’t have known about the sale even if I had purchased. But it was amazing, and personal, service. Some (likely managers) might say ‘that was terrible, it costs the company money! Well, not really… because do you know happened? Any time I needed anything from that brand, even if I could get it locally, I would call and speak with him. That was money direct to the company instead of third-party retailers. Any time a friend needed a gift, or wanted to buy, I’d put them in touch with him. Those were sales that wouldn’t have happened at all otherwise.
Unfortunately, two or so years later, when I went to the store, I found that he was no longer working there, and the new manager was far closer to the department store type than the man I’d considered a friend. The new manager wasn’t particularly helpful, the knowledge wasn’t there. And if I’m honest, as a result, I haven’t purchased from the store since. Moral of that story, if you are a good employee, absolutely keep up the good work, and if you have a good employee, keep them! Because letting them go might mean letting go of a swath of customers, and you never know. Some of them might offer advice to other people about their experiences!
