Hardware Retailing The Industry's Source for Insights and Information
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By Kate Klein, kklein@nrha.org
Prices and product quality are a big deal to consumers, but positive interactions with employees are also highly important for keeping them loyal, according to research from PwC.
Accounting and consulting firm PwC, also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, surveyed 4,000 U.S. consumers about customer experiences.
Approximately 80 percent of the study participants ranked efficiency, convenience, helpful employees and friendly service as most important for good experiences with a business.
On the flip side, nearly 60 percent of PwC’s survey respondents say they would stop doing business with a company they love if they have multiple bad experiences.
The customer experience problems that would be most likely to end their loyalty to a business have to do with employees—bad attitudes, unfriendliness and lack of knowledge.
Applied to Retail
Good employees are among your best assets for retaining customer loyalty, so hiring carefully and training well should always be more important to you than getting new people hired quickly. Visit nrha.org/online-training for help from the North American Retail Hardware Association (NRHA).
Your busiest seasons, when you’re relying the most on part-time or temporary help, may seem like bad times for careful interviewing and thorough training.
However, your employees can make or break customer loyalty, so each customer interaction is important. That means every employee’s people skills and attitude toward their work matter, no matter how long they work for you.
Take the time to host group interviews to see how friendly, engaged and polite prospective workers are when interacting with each other. When hiring, keep in mind that friendliness and good attitudes can be more important in an employee than product knowledge or prior work experience.
