Tell the top the bottom line is happy shoppers

The truth is that we love shopping. It’s just that we choose shops that love us back. Our retailers are suffering not just because of price or digital dominance but because, too often, their workers don’t seem to care.

A study by the Disney Institute on why customers leave revealed that 8pc left for a better offer from a competitor, 14pc because they were dissatisfied with a product, and a sizeable 66pc as a result of the attitude or indifference of one of the company’s employees.

One solution is to hire people who naturally put others first. When a newly privatised British Airways wanted to recruit service-oriented cabin crew in the 1980s, they held career fairs with refreshments.

What applicants didn’t know was that talent spotters were watching through a one-way mirror. Those who poured someone else a cup of tea before helping themselves were presumed to have customer service in their DNA and were offered a job first.

That’s fine if you’re starting afresh, but for our established chains with over 100,000 employees it isn’t an option.

The forlorn leader of a great British retailer recently told me about a store visit where he asked a supervisor why the empty coffee cups in the cafe hadn’t been cleared away. “Oh, it’s not something that our mystery shoppers check for when they assess us,” the manager replied.

Depressing, yes. But big retailers don’t always realise they can recover performance by focusing on store managers.

In a study of 50 almost identical shops in a Dutch supermarket chain, the leadership style of the manager (measured by the employees) proved to be a significant predictor of net profit and controllable costs seven months later. Managers with more passion had happier teams and made more money.

Santander had one of the worst customer service records in UK. After an intensive nine-month programme focused on branch managers and their bosses – in which I must declare a Mind Gym involvement – the bank won “best branch bank in UK” two years in a row.

A “eureka” moment came when they realised that although they could not guarantee that customers got what they come in for, they could determine how the customer felt about the experience.

Amazon is often held up as the company retailers should learn from. However, it’s not their business model that offers the most valuable insight but how they treat their people.

Jeff Bezos, the CEO, has just launched “pay to quit” which offers unhappy employees up to $5,000 (£2,974) to resign. The bet is that they like working at Amazon so much that they won’t leave.

Price promotions and cunning digital strategies may soothe analysts’ nerves but salvation for our ailing retailers will come only from rekindling the passion and commitment of the shopkeepers themselves.

When they care about us, we’ll be back.

Octavius Black is CEO of Mind Gym (www.themindgym.com). Follow him on Twitter: @octaviusblack

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