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MEMBERS of the Philippine Retailers Association Cebu Chapter have been urged to provide clean toilets as part of good customer service.
?For a good and satisfying shopping experience of your customers, you must also consider the restroom,? said Louis Frequin, PUM senior retail expert from the Netherlands, during his talk with the organization on Oct. 7.
He added that when he arrived in Cebu he immediately visited establishments and noticed that many had neglected their restrooms.
?Your sales people sometimes handle food and do you like them going to an unsanitary restroom and [then] serve your food?? he asked.
Customers would surely appreciate a good restroom and having one matters to many people, said Frequin.
?If you have good and clean restrooms people will remember that and will also take that as a consideration when deciding where to shop. So I suggest you put up a sanitary restroom, not really a fancy one. Just set it up like how you set up your restrooms at home,? he said.
Frequin also suggested training frontline people on how to communicate well.
?Communication is very important as it makes or breaks the sales,? he said.
?Design your stores with an 'eye level' law of sales and don't just put how much percentage is the discount. Write the price straight and make it visible to your customers at eye level. Don't make them look for it,? he said.
Sales people need to be empowered too, according to Belle Grandea of FrontGate HR Consultancy.
?If a customers asks for discounts, your sales people should be able to answer right away instead of saying, 'I don't know or wait lang sa ha I will have to ask my boss' which will make the customers decide not to buy and there you'll have a lost an opportunity for sales,? Grandea said.
Grandea also advised retailers to keep their family problems to themselves.
?Your people will surely know about this and will always talk about you; and, please, be even just a level higher than your managers. If they have a masters degree, get yourself one,? she said.
Grandea said that there are two types of employees, the Pedros and the Juans.
?Eighty percent of our employees are Pedros and the remaining are the Juans,? she said.
The Juans are those that owners usually promote to managerial positions because they excel and work hard.
She said that it's important to know who are the Pedros and Juans in an organization to know how to communicate and motivate each of them.
Based on a survey they did for 24 companies, rank and file employees are motivated with recognition: ?That's the number one for them; number two is clear systems and procedures,? she said.
For managers on the other hand, the top motivator is salary, then benefits and then tenure, she added.
