Magazines Archives - 2010 February

Singapore retailers push on to improve service standards
Story 4 - Focus

Nothing makes a consumer more willing to part with their money than encountering a sales staff
with adequate product knowledge, the right attitude, and a warm smile to boot. Increasingly, retailers here are coming around to the fact that aside from the product that they merchandise, customer service is the lifeblood of any business.

Yet, consumers remain hard-pressed to find retail sales or service staff who deliver the experience, let alone the service that they have been promised, as evident from a recent Customer Service
Satisfaction Index conducted by the Institute of Service Excellence at local tertiary institution, Singapore Management University. According to the study, now in its third year, customer service in Singapore’s retail sector dropped 2.3 points last year, the highest decline of the eight sectors surveyed.

Retailers and experts here concede that there is room for improvement in customer service standards in Singapore, especially in the retail industry.

According to home furnishing and electronics retailer Courts Singapore Pte Ltd’s regional HR director, Kiran Kaur, and customer service director, Christina Oliver, in general, “some retailers have
got it right, [while] in some stores, you walk in and still no one makes eye contact when they are serving you, they don’t seem to want to answer questions and to get a smile is hard at times”.

Angie Tang, senior lecturer in the School of Business and section head for marketing and retail at the Singapore Polytechnic (SP), also notes that while most retail staff here are courteous, as most retailers understand the importance of customer service, “there is still room for improvement”.

“Customer service goes beyond being courteous. Retailers need to be proactive in removing barriers to their ability to deliver a superior shopping experience,” she points out.

While the economic turmoil over the past year has taken its toll on the retail industry, Tang observes that “although the retail industry [was] flooded with promotions and discounts”, the focus on maintaining good customer relations, which may have been compromised, still plays an important role for shoppers when deciding where to shop.

“Thus, retailers should continue to build on customer service to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Good customer experience will enhance brand equity, a source of customer loyalty and
assurance of future success,” Tang notes.

Tracy Kwan, divisional director of Human Resource at fashion apparel and lifestyle retail group FJ Benjamin, which manages global brands such as Guess!, Banana Republic, Gap, and
its own home-grown brand Raoul, also points out that during the downturn, retailers faced the challenge of balancing costs against “the need to maintain high service standards”. “It is tempting
for retailers to cut training budgets to reduce overheads,” she admits.

However, Kwan maintains: “Generally, customer service standards have improved over the past few years with initiatives such as Go-the-Extra-Mile for Service (GEMs) and the SingaporeWorkforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ).

The government has also helped retailers by subsidising staff training courses through the Skills Development Fund (SDF). While all these initiatives have helped, there is always more that needs
to be done.”

Also keeping retailers in check these days is the growing use of social media and online communities, which SP’s Tang cautions should not be “underestimated”.

“Social media gives peoplea platform to voice their praise or criticism, and such views and information
can be shared among a global audience.This means that retailers, more than ever, must provide stellar service and positive customer experience if they want to compete and survive. No longer
can they merely pay lip service to being customer-focused in their mission statements and marketing. They must back up such claims with best practices in customer care,” she reiterates.

Kwan agrees, noting that the emergence of social media, has transformed customer service from a “monologue” into a “constant dialogue between customers and retailers”.

“Poor or excellent customer service standards then become greatly amplified. Therefore, service recovery needs to take place in both the digital and traditional media space. This also means
that the consumer’s voice becomes more valuable and powerful with regards to the business,” she adds.

As such, training continues to remain vital to ensuring optimal customer service standards, Tang states, with equal opportunities to be extended to both full-time or permanent staff and their
temporary or part-time colleagues.

“HR [departments] should not abandon in-house training, an important source for employees to understand the past and future directions of the company … Training programmes should
include not only selling techniques, but also merchandise knowledge and interpersonal skills,” she continues.

FJ Benjamin’s Kwan shares that despite the downturn, the company continues its investment in training.

“Training spend per employee [rose] 69% from S$320 (US$228) per employee in 2007 to S$540 in 2009,” she reveals, adding that their efforts have paid off in terms of recognition from local
industry bodies such as the Singapore Retailers Association (SRA).

“In the latest SRA Mystery Audit, both GUESSKids and Banana Republic have won the Premium GEMs,
while Raoul won the Service GEMs.

Since our first audit, six of our brands have won a total of 10 Premium and Service GEMs,” Kwan elaborates.

FJ Benjamin also has taken its customer service training a step further by ensuring its trained sales staff “add value” to their customer’s shopping experience, providing “input on the fashion trends”, and “advising customers what items look best on them”. “In addition, in a bid to better communicate
with the growing tourist arrivals from key markets, we have trained our staff to be conversational in foreign languages like Mandarin, Arabic and Russian,” she continues.

As an added incentive to providing better customer service, Kwan reveals the involvement of the company’s top management in their training and service excellence initiative, wherein its CEO,
Douglas Benjamin, personally meets the staff who have topped the bi-annual service audit conducted by the SRA, presenting them vouchers for their efforts.

“All complimentary letters from our customers are circulated internally to give due recognition to the ones who have gone the extra mile. We believe that apart from providing our staff the tools
to succeed, it is even more important to mark their successes,” she states.

Meanwhile, at Courts, Kaur and Oliver disclose that the company has engaged an external consultant to help Courts drive an in-house initiative, dubbed ‘Connecting with Customers’.

“It is a two-year project, of which training sessions are mapped out in phases for the entire operations team. The purpose … is to sustain a sales-and-service culture through regular monitoring, coaching,
mentoring and assessment [and] to measure the effectiveness of this project, there will be a post-project review after the completion of the roll-out,” they explain.

Aside from in-house training, government initiatives, such as GEMs, CCI (Customer-Centric Initiative), Service Star accreditation and the WSQs, continue to lend their support to retailers here. While these are currently voluntary initiatives that offer guidelines to retailers, SP’s Tang thinks mandatory accreditation here may result in an “engineered (mechanical and soulless)” service rather than improving the standard of service. “Providing good customer service requires genuine personal touch and comes from the heart. It also requires commitment from the management. At the end of the day, it may be good to let customers decide on the success or the failure of the company,” Tang maintains.

“[And] in the long run, retailers must strive to create a service culture that inspires graciousness. Retailers must demonstrate a commitment to employee development and training. Walk the talk; take this seriously and stay committed to it. Create a culture of trust, development, customer focus
and fun,” she concludes.

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