New Customer Needs - the New Face of the Store

Customers today would no longer feel comfortable in the kind of stores we remember from before the pandemic. No hand sanitizers, shopping without masks, waiting in a long line with someone behind us knocking into us with the things held in their hands - this is no longer imaginable. Under what conditions do customers now feel safe? What elements do they consider the most important for building a positive shopping experience?

In a report published by KPMG at the end of September on the topic of changing shopping habits of Poles, we read that the factor that has gained the most importance in the eyes of consumers during the pandemic is their own safety - the group of people for whom this is important has increased by 58%¹ The list of inconveniences appearing during shopping in stationary stores includes, among others, non-compliance with safety rules by other customers, long lines, lack of available personal protective equipment. This information is an abbreviated description of the reality in which traditional retail is currently trying to operate.

The challenge - feeling safe

Retailers today are facing a difficult challenge: to create a shopping atmosphere in stores that is calm, professional and trustworthy. Is this even possible in a world where, for the sake of health, we are encouraged to keep social distance, to shorten the time spent in stores, and where basic conversations can be awkward because it is sometimes difficult to understand the message coming from a mouth covered with a mask? How, despite the growing uncertainty, to ensure a sense of safety in the shopping process for both customers and employees? After all, the inconveniences resulting from functioning in a pandemic reality affect both customers and staff. And anxious, cranky staff certainly won't help customers feel good about their visit to the store, which, in turn, will translate into sales, overall brand impressions, the willingness to return, and so on....

Employees know

It's a long-standing truth in management that a company is made up of people. That they are the ones who need to be taken care of first. Of course, things can and do vary in organizations, but COVID-19 certainly made retail chain managers remember that the fate of global structures depends on locally operating employees. Store managers gained a new role. They became a source of invaluable information for the company practically overnight. They are the ones who know the realities in their regions, they see what is happening in the retail outlets in the area, they observe the reaction of the residents to new the rules, restrictions or relaxations of the sanitary regime. They talk every day with customers who share comments, express concerns, and ask for advice. In short, they know.

Employees are the hosts

Employees, not company management, have a decisive influence on how customers feel when they visit a store. In their role as hosts, they create the atmosphere. Some do everything in their power to make customers feel perfectly well-served, despite disinfection procedures, the obligation to cover faces and noses and to keep their distance. Others hide behind visors, counters, and shelves and send all kinds of verbal and nonverbal signals designed to discourage the customer from staying in their store even one minute longer than they need to. Managers have no direct influence on how fearful employees are of their health or how they behave. They do, however, have tools they can use to build an atmosphere of trust, a sense of security, and thus help shape a good store atmosphere.

Focusing on details, listening and responding

A clear policy on the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and all safety-related procedures are certainly essential to ensure that managers understand the seriousness of the situation in each outlet and are not indifferent to it. Procedures are a good starting point - they put things in order, which is especially important when the activity is accompanied by an unusual level of stress. However, they will not be respected unless a few important things are taken care of:

Supply of necessary materials - for example, there is no point in holding employees accountable for implementing a disinfection procedure if the means to do so are not available.
Monitoring the situation at individual outlets is essential. Are employees acting as we would like them to? To make sure your eye is on the ball it is definitely worth providing a friendly method of communicating routine information between stores and the management center. Companies use a variety of practices-from emails to instant messaging to shared documents to reporting applications-that make it easy to both capture and analyze large amounts of data.
Responding efficiently to changes and incidents is something that no company can function without anymore. We think of the epidemiological situation today in terms of counties, and we should go at least to that level when analyzing the situation of stores in chain stores. It is necessary to enable employees to share information with the management center about what is happening locally, whether there are new cases of disease or quarantine that translate into staff shortages, whether customers have important requests, proposals or questions, etc. Emails are definitely not enough. Many of them get lost, many remain unanswered, sometimes difficult to categorize. That is why very few signals from sales network employees meet with any response from the head office. Systems dedicated to collecting and analyzing distributed data from numerous thematic categories, such as c-How.io, are a great help. Notifications are grouped in categories and turned into tasks for people responsible for particular areas. An employee can check at any time what is happening with the issue or question they have submitted. This seemingly small detail makes people more willing to get involved. They know that the initiative makes sense and the information is not ignored. They feel co-responsible for the functioning of the company in this crisis situation, and after all, this is exactly what it is all about!

"Healthy stores"

Whether customers will want to visit stationary outlets depends largely on whether retailers succeed in creating "healthy stores", i.e. stores where both employees and customers feel safe. Only after satisfying the need for both parties to feel safe can there be any question of creating an atmosphere conducive to shopping. In this unique retail situation, where more attention is paid to the availability of disinfectants than to products and prices, only nimbly managed organizations will survive. Changes are needed in most processes related to communication, the monitoring of point-of-sale situations, and flexibility to respond to current events. We need to gain the ability to look at individual stores as microcenters of events rather than elements of a unified grid. See them as people, not jobs or segment representatives. Ask, listen, respond. Optimists try to find things for which they are "grateful to the pandemic." Perhaps encountering this new challenging situation will be inspiring for managers?

¹ J. Karasek, A. Musiał, K. Gaponiuk, The New Reality: the Consumer in the Era of COVID-19. How Have Poles' Shopping Habits Changed During the Coronavirus? KPMG, September 2020

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