As someone who spends lots of time in airports and airplanes, and as someone who has owned a retail store for many years, I find interesting overlaps in terms of employee training and behavior.
One such example occurred in the Minneapolis-St Paul airport when I returned a rental car. As I approached the rental station in the garage, I noticed a portable A-frame sign. Its message said that when you come to the counter, you would receive a receipt for the rental.
As with many businesses, the employee sat on a stool behind the counter, using their cell phone.
Handing in the key to the car, I asked for the receipt. “We don’t give receipts anymore,” the employee said, in a matter-of-fact manner. When I mentioned the sign and its message just beyond the counter, the response was somewhat similar to the original one. I wondered how many times that conversation was repeated with other customers, and why some rental car employee continues to put that sign out every morning. I wondered why the employee behind the counter didn’t go outside, pick up the sign and put it in some storage area.
Another example. A flight recently had a passenger listening to music on their cell phone. The problem was that everyone in the area was also listening to the music. Heads turned to determine who was the culprit. The music-loving person never looked up. What was odd was that this person was wearing headphones.
The flight attendant, sitting more than 10 feet away, noticed what was happening . Instead of addressing the issue directly, the flight attendant decided to address all 240 people in the place with a message about using earbuds or headphones when watching and listening to personal devices.
Perhaps the only connection between airports, airplanes and the liquor industry is the alcohol that’s sold and consumed. However, both do have employees and managers. The biggest difference is when trying to travel distances, there is little option. The airline industry has a captive customer. In the liquor industry, there are always alternative stores to do business with.
We can learn from these examples. Were they instances of employees who lack the initiative to properly take care of a situation? Any of the rental car employees could have put the irrelevant sign away. And the flight attendant could have walked over to the offending passenger and offered an explanation.
In our stores, do our employees just point a customer to a cooler or aisle in the store as compared to taking the customer to the location, talking with them and working to make a sale? Is this a lack of initiative?
What about the store in which an employee has been instructed to fill the cooler with a recently received shipment? While that may be the instruction, the store experiences a rush as many people walk in the front door. However, this employee was instructed to fill the cooler, so there is no looking up to see customers; no stopping to help a customer or offering to answer questions. This employee was told to fill the cooler and so ignores everything else. Is this an example of over-instruction?
If our stores do not offer an ongoing staff education program, how can we possibly think that the employee should know better? The employee likely came to us from another retailer where this “over-instruction” format was the standard operating procedure.
There is no absolute answer to the initiative or instruction question. Having good employees requires practice: ongoing practice that teaches how to think in various situations and how that customer is very important. While there are few choices in rental cars and airlines, there are plenty of choices when it comes to making a purchase in our stores. Make sure your employees let your customers know they are in the right place. •
Tom Shay is a lifelong small-business owner and manager. He has authored 12 books on small business management; a college textbook on small business financial management and co-authored a book on retailer/vendor relations.