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18 | SPRING 2018 | retailer
Why it is time to focus more on Employee
Intelligence in retail
Nina Kitching
Retail Account Director
Questback
HOW YOU CAN IMPROVE HOW YOU LISTEN TO YOUR
PEOPLE AND BENEFIT THE BOTTOM LINE
In competitive times, when retailers are battling rising costs, new
entrants and more demanding consumers, it is tempting to
concentrate solely on digital channels and the benefits that new
technologies such as artificial intelligence bring.
However, this shouldn’t be your only focus – large retailers have
thousands of people in their stores, constantly interacting with
customers, essentially collecting a huge amount of data. And as
humans, they have the soft skills to understand what customers
are looking for, what annoys them and what they like and don’t
like about your brand and experience. They are datapoints, just
like the information you collect from consumers on the online
customer journey. Are you making best use of what they are
saying?
Adopting a continuous listening strategy isn’t
just a ‘nice to have’, but directly benefits your
bottom line.
What retailers need to do is listen to the feedback and insights
that their store colleagues can provide, and then analyse this
vital information and use it to improve how they operate. As
well as dashboards showing online performance, retailers need
an equivalent for in-store staff, with metrics showing their
feedback and insight. It is about employee intelligence, as well as
artificial intelligence – you need both to get a rounded picture of
what is happening to your business and how you can improve.
Overcoming the barriers to listening
What is stopping retailers from listening to their store
colleagues? To begin with, they can be difficult to reach – they
are geographically spread across the country and often work
shifts, while churn and the sheer number of them makes it hard
to engage with them individually. That’s why many retailers rely
on annual surveys, listening once a year and then acting on the
insights months down the line.
In today’s fast-moving world, this is not enough – retailers need
to take a fresh look at how they collect and act on feedback
from colleagues if they are to truly benefit from their people and
their ideas. They need to adopt a continuous listening approach
that goes beyond the annual survey, covering four key areas:
1. Always-on feedback
Retailers increasingly provide customers with the ability to
share their views when and where they want – from leaving
reviews online to clicking happy or sad faces on terminals as
they leave a store. Extend this so that you are also capturing
feedback from employees at all times – make it easy for them
to contribute their opinions, and ensure that you have the
processes in place to quickly respond to every suggestion,
however it is delivered.
2. Pulse surveys
Waiting a year to give feedback is clearly too long in many
cases. So invest in smaller, more targeted, regular pulse
surveys. These could focus on a specific geographical area, a
particular business process or be run after a major corporate
change. Pulse surveys provide actionable insight that can be
put into practice quickly to improve the business and how it
operates.
3. Listening across the employee experience
The feedback that staff provide, and the issues they raise, will
vary depending on where they are in their career with you.
That means you need to listen to them at key milestones, such
as during recruitment or when they are in the first months
of employment – what can be improved? What should be
changed to ensure that they stay and you retain their skills –
and those of others in the same situation?
4. Online communities
Like all of us, your people are used to sharing their feedback
online – whether through social media or review sites. That
means they’ll naturally be looking to give their opinions about
working for you, either via sites such as Glassdoor or to friends
and family on Twitter and Facebook. Ensure you are capturing
their feedback through online communities where they can
share their thoughts with the company and colleagues in a
more structured, yet accessible way. People want to talk –
make sure that you make it easy to talk to you.
Adopting a continuous listening strategy isn’t just a ‘nice to
have’, but directly benefits your bottom line. By listening to staff,
and acting on their concerns, you increase engagement and
reduce churn rates, bringing down recruitment costs. If people
feel valued they will stay longer, meaning that their experience
and knowledge benefits the business. There is also a clear link
between engaged colleagues, greater productivity and an
improved customer experience – happy staff equals happy
customers, leading to higher sales and revenues.
“What retailers
need to do is
listen to the
feedback and
insights that
their store
colleagues can
provide, and
then analyse
this vital
information
and use it to
improve how
they operate.”
retailer | SPRING | 19
Your store colleagues are on the frontline, interacting
with customers every day – they knowwhat makes people buy.
Listening to your people also helps unlock innovation and fresh
ideas. Your store colleagues are on the frontline, interacting with
customers every day – they know what makes people buy, and
what makes the process harder. Their insight will enable you to
fix issues and improve your business operations, and also
encourage blue sky thinking around new products or services
that you could introduce.
It is easy to be swept away by the possibilities that digital
technology such as artificial intelligence offer. And retailers
definitely need to embrace the innovation that AI can drive.
However, don’t neglect the thousands of store colleagues you
have and the insight that they can bring to your business. To
succeed in turbulent times, you need employee intelligence and
artificial intelligence if you are to truly thrive.
NINA KITCHING
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