Keep the smile on

Most retailers have come to realize the importance of customer service and are being proactive in removing barriers to delivering a superior shopping experience, according to a recent benchmark survey, The State of Retail Workforce Management, writes MarketingCharts.

The survey was conducted by Retail Systems Research (RSR) and sponsored by Kronos Incorporated (via MarketingPilgrim).

Some 66 percent of the 160 global retail executives and managers surveyed said they are focused on providing a high-touch customer service strategy, and skilled employees play an important role in doing so.

An additional 24 percent agreed that employees, regardless of skill sets, play an important role in customer service. Only 9 percent said they offer a low-touch customer service strategy in which employees play a supplemental role.

"The survey results clearly indicate that the days of the low-price model in retail are numbered," said John Anderson, global practice leader of retail at Kronos.

"The future of retail lies in customer-centricity, and creating and sustaining customer satisfaction will ensure differentiation and success in the long term."

He added, "The workforce plays a huge role in this customer-centric journey. What retailers need are satisfied and knowledgeable employees consistently doing the right thing in the right place at the right time."

Additional findings from the study:

• Quality and consistency of customer service (cited by 61 percent), and driving store sales (cited by 51 percent) are the top 2 of top 3 business issues they are looking to improve via workforce management technology.

• 59 percent of respondents stated that over the past three years, the amount of work sent to stores by corporate and field management has increased, yet 73 percent agreed that there is a lack of integration between task and workforce management systems.

• 90 percent of the respondents considered analytics a relatively important component of workforce management. However, analytics solutions are still at a premature adoption stage in the current retail environment, with only 10 percent of the respondents having fully deployed labor analytics tools.

About the study: The State of Retail Workforce Management survey was conducted online by Retail Systems Research on behalf of Kronos in August 2007 and September 2007 among 160 global retail executives and managers.

Participating retailers operate headquarters and presences in Asia/Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and/or Africa, and North America.