PROJECT SUMMARY
This custom framing provider has locations in major retailers across the country. When they started to see signs that something wasn’t right in their stores they reached out to A Customer’s Point of View for help…
THE SITUATION
Managing multiple locations of any business is hard. You train your people and you monitor them…but you can’t be there all the time. This company operated the custom framing department for several major retailers. They were confident that their staff was excellent at framing, so they couldn’t understand why their sales were dropping.
About the same time, they started to get a wave of complaints about frames being delivered with the wrong materials. This led to some customers waiting up to another month to get their orders re-framed correctly.
They hired us to search out the root cause of these two major issues affecting their business.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
- Identified the source of repeated order fulfillment errors
- Uncovered correctable sources of declining sales
- Used data to reduce customer wait times and improve selling procedures
THE PLAN OF ACTION
The shoppers hit the ground running to find answers to two big questions:
Why were sales missing projections?
And why was the staff making so many costly ordering mistakes?
Our team showed up to stores with fabric samples and color swatches to ask for help customizing frames to match their homes.
They also had a list targeted questions to help them assess the staff:
- Were they friendly and welcoming?
- Were they helpful assisting you to find a frame that you liked?
- Were they using suggestive selling to encourage multiple purchases or add-ons?
- Was your picture frame finished correctly and on time?
Do you know why your sales are suffering?
ACPVIEW’s service has been an integral part of our Associate Training Program as well as measuring our performance
compared to that of other Concessionaires in the Airport
We have recommended their services to other Concessionaires within the Airport and without hesitation recommend
them to any business looking to improve as well as monitor their current customer service standards.
WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED
As a direct result of our project, the retailer instituted a new ordering system to cut down on mistakes and increase customer satisfaction. They rolled out a new training program focused on customer service, selling skills and decorating/design. And they revised their HR policies to include sales and customer service competency as part of their hiring process.
Our shopping research showed a few things:
- The staff lacked basic sales and customer service skills.
- Suggestive selling was not happening at any level.
- The “ordering errors” were actually fulfillment mistakes being made by the warehouse, rather than ordering errors by the sales staff.