The process in the retail industry has been very clear over the past few years. Start with a smart, well-thought-out strategy across your entire chain, gather insights, and adjust as needed. The goal is fair: grow the chain using the best strategy possible. However, the problem many chains run into is that the results vary a lot between stores.
Why is that? Why does a strategy perform extremely well in some stores but poorly in others? The answer isn’t that complicated.
Each store has different needs
Although each store in a chain could be very similar in terms of product availability, pricing, and layout, they all serve different customers with different needs. A small store located on a busy street operates in one context, and a larger store in the countryside operates in another. All customers want a good customer experience, but to make sure your teams are using the right strategy for THEIR local customers, they need to adapt.
This means the strategy might only fit in the stores with the perfect circumstances. For example, one store might excel at greeting customers but fall short when it comes to offering help in the fitting room. Then it would make sense to have different strategies to improve their overall customer experience.
So what can you do to apply smart strategies without leaving any store to chance?
Collect local insights
Instead of casting a wide strategy net over your entire chain, you need to be more pinpoint accurate. You need strategies for each store, not just for the chain as a whole. Since each store’s visitors have different needs, you need to learn from each customer segment.
Rather than collecting feedback from all customers and combining the data into chain-wide insights, you can do this in each local store. You can, and should, get local and relevant feedback from every store to be able to act on what matters most for your focus areas and goals. Then you can train the store team based on behaviors and actions that actually match what their local customers want.
Engaged teams, higher sales numbers
What does this lead to? A couple of things, actually:
- Each frontline team will feel more engaged and energized because they receive more accurate feedback on their own performance and within their team.
- Store managers and their teams will feel more in control since they have their own strategy and don’t have to train based on input from a head office far removed from their reality.
- Senior managers can feel more at ease, knowing they have delegated more control to store managers, giving themselves more time to focus on other important questions and decisions.
- Each store will have a greater chance of reaching its full potential, and the performance gap between stores will eventually disappear.
What you can do now
We’ve been aware of this issue for many years, and it’s one of the main topics we discuss when meeting with retailers. It’s also the biggest reason why we created the Maze app 20 years ago. We wanted every store to thrive, and we wanted to eliminate the performance gap that haunts so many retail managers.
The Maze app does exactly what you need. It sends curated questions to each store’s local customers, turns the answers into local insights, and provides recommendations tailored to each team. Your teams will know exactly what to focus on and which behaviors drive the biggest results. And they’ll enjoy the process too! This leads to happier teams, more satisfied customers, and higher sales figures.
If you’d like to learn more about the Maze app, please contact us. We’d love to show you more!
