Customer Retention Tips I’ve Learned From Working for Florida’s Favorite Grocery Store

In my time as a retail worker, I’ve observed what customers expect when they choose my store over our competitors. My first taste of the working world was just like that of many other Florida teenagers: bagging groceries and hauling carts out from under the hot summer sun. Just over two years later, I have working experience across four departments. I’ve helped open a new store and traveled to assist with the vacation rush at another, and I have the knowledge that dozens of managers have passed on to me. The majority of customers I have assisted will tell you that they knowingly pay our higher prices for the privilege of quality customer service and a clean, well-stocked store. I’ll get into exactly what that looks like and how I’ve watched my company hold on to its loyal customers. The importance of presentation “Presentation” means something different to every department. Fresh departments such as produce or the bakery are given rigorously detailed procedural guides written at the corporate level, with guidelines for how much yogurt should go in a fruit cup or how many ounces of buttercream frosting belong on a layer of cake. After unloading trucks and keeping product moving, the grocery department’s priority is blocking – the term for pulling all of the product forward on the shelf and straightening up the aisles. This emphasis on presentation in every individual task is what brings the shopping experience in its whole together. A customer can walk into any one of our thousand locations and expect the same high product and organization standards. It plays a huge role in what sets us apart from our competitors. We uphold our customers’ trust in the quality of the products we sell to them and their expectations for a presentable, well-maintained inventory. But with today’s unpredictable supply chain issues and subsequent shortages leaving shelves barren across several departments, we rely just as much on other methods to maintain customer loyalty. Happy employees make for happier customers Faking it can get a retail employee far, but it can cost them their mental well-being and grind them down. Genuinely happy employees will get farther. This circles back to presentation; it is abundantly clear to customers when things aren’t running smoothly, and that will impact their desire to shop at that location. The deli department is notoriously understaffed due to its high turnover rate, leading to a longer wait time for customers, a source of one of the complaints I take most often as a customer service staff member. For managers, it's important to keep employees feeling good about their job and to cultivate the sort of environment that will foster a tight-knit, well-coordinated team. I’ve worked in a bakery where I was trusted by my managers to get my half of the production list done and done well, and I trusted my partner to do his half of the list, and we worked together with our clerks to make sure our limited space was being shared fairly and used efficiently. I’ve also worked in a bakery where my managers nitpicked me down to the centimeter variance in my bread scores and our clerks were squabbling daily. There are many contributing factors, but one of those bakeries profited over a thousand dollars every week. The other was just as consistently at a net loss. Know your customer base Even with company-wide standards in place, catering to customers’ needs will look a little different at every location. An obvious component of this is knowing what will sell. At the store closest to the college campus, the bakery’s best-selling product was individual cake slices, a quick and easy treat for a student to grab with their lunch. At a store on the beach with no donut shops within a ten-mile radius, we did well to make sure we had dozens of donuts glazed and ready to go by seven in the morning. The customer base also affects what customer service looks like. Young adults in a booming city need to be approached differently than older folks in a retirement hotspot. Being attuned to the needs of the customer is key in keeping them coming back time and time again.

Customer Retention Tips I’ve Learned From Working for Florida’s Favorite Grocery Store

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