Wireless retailers advised to emphasize great customer service

By Mark Hansel

Friday, Jan. 23, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The wireless retail seminar at the recent Consumer Electronics Show provided information that would have been valuable to just about any merchant.

Kristin Williams, a training and development manager for Celluphone, moderated the best in class seminar titled “A Look at How to Create the Dream Wireless Retail Experience for Your Customer.”

Williams has more than 20 years of sales, management and training experience, and it showed.

Retail seminars often deliver a similar message, with an emphasis on basics such as customer service, enhanced sales and warranty sales, but few examples of practical application. Williams went beyond the “what” and focused on the “how.”

Wireless retail is basically cell phones and accessories, so it would seem there are fewer opportunities to pad the purchase than in other stores. Williams, however, showed a plethora of techniques that can be used to not only get customers to buy more, but keep them coming back.

One of the biggest moneymakers for retailers is an extended warranty, but it is common just to offer the warranty to customers at the end of a sale.

Williams suggested creating a strategically located boneyard within the store with damaged phones discarded by customers. Showing customers real phones that have been dropped into a swimming pool or run over is effective and plants a seed in the buyer’s mind before the purchase.

Most customers treat the wireless retail visit differently than other shopping trips because they don’t usually window shop. They have a specific purpose for coming to the store, such as to get a replacement phone, and they are not always receptive to sales pitches.

One thing that Williams said all retailers can do to enhance the experience is offer customer service that goes beyond just greeting the customer and filling their immediate needs.

The challenge for wireless retailers is to make the experience so pleasant when compared with other retailers, that a store visit is no longer considered a chore, which should not be too difficult because as Williams points out, “In retail, the customer service bar has been set pretty low.”

Instead of steering customers to a person who can help with a problem, she said, it is better to cross-train employees so most customer service issues can be handled by whomever greets the customer.

“Customer service isn’t a department, it’s an attitude,” Williams said.

She pointed to a case study of a wireless retailer that instituted a “Wow” program that, as the name indicates, was designed to sweep customers off their feet.

One employee took the program literally by providing a chair for an elderly customer while another associate took care of her order.

Another component of the program included making sure that customers, especially those who did not appear technically savvy, understood how to use all of the features on the phone. The practice of using technobabble to explain features was replaced with simpler, easier-to-understand terms. Instead of saying a device had 200 gigabytes of memory, for example, an associate might say it is capable of holding about 50,000 songs or messages.

This also provided an opportunity to demonstrate accessories as a customer convenience rather than a sales pitch. Incentive programs for employees and customer perks, such as discounts on subsequent purchases for referrals, were also implemented.

The result was a dramatic increase in revenue, accessory revenue and warranty sales. Employee tenure also tripled and attrition dropped 30 percent.

In wireless retail, many stores look similar to other stores, so Williams said a retailer should strive to give the store a unique identity. Making sure all signage is complete and illuminated signs are working, keeping displays filled and current and creating patterns within the store that enhance the shopping experience are some things that stand out to customers.

“You have to look at your store like the customers do,” Williams said.

Downward spiral

A dismal year for the nation’s retailers ended on a sour note as December sales plunged even more than expected.

The advance monthly sales figures for retail and food services released by the Commerce Department on Jan. 14 showed sales in December dropped 2.7 percent from the previous month and 9.8 percent below the same month in 2007.

The numbers were adjusted for seasonal variation and holidays and trading-day differences, but not for price changes.

Retail sales dropped 10.8 percent from last year and gasoline sales were down a whopping 35.5 percent from the same period in 2007.

The automobile industry continued to struggle as motor vehicle and parts dealer sales in December plummeted 22.4 percent from 2007.

Mark Hansel covers retail and marketing for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. He can be reached at 259-4069 or at [email protected].