Continuing along my recent theme on Customer Service, there is an excellent tool to enable great customer service. This is the detailed analysis of one’s catchment area.
It is also one of my favourite training sessions, which is a big hit with participants as this topic can be conducted as a conceptual program or a action plan oriented workshop. Till date I have conducted this session for the staff of several Retail organisations.
Recently I witnessed a store staff lose out on one such opportunity to create customer WOW and gain further loyalty. I have written an article on this topic, which has been published in “The Hindu Business Line”.
Please do share your comments about the article.
3 comments:
Wish you could have carried on writing an written more on the catchment analysis bit. Nevertheless, awesome piece !!
This is true that catchment analysis is very important. No body knows it better than the neighbourhood Kiryana store. I am amazed how they come to know about our even small needs and carry that stuff which the big supermarkets skip conveniently. They are lean and fast and still keep inventory in control. To give you an example, to cater to the labour population, these store carry the type of rice they require, they also carry the Basmati rice required by one of the bigger stores. Customers are loyal to such stores and willing to wait even if there is a crowd. Think of buying milk, these stores carry two!! or more brands of packaged milk. I wish the big chain stores should take a cue from them and made their assortment more relevant to the catchment area. Thanks
the idea of Indian stores encouraging customers to competitor stores does seems a little too far fetched at this point. yes its shows great customer service, and makes a good story relating to delivering exemplary customer experience. However, the fact is, Indian retail chains as they stand right now are scarce on confidence on who they are, and how much they are capable of. customer service of the level mentioned above comes from strong values, and a core believe in your retail set-up, and its attractiveness for the customer. retail chains then need to educate employees at each level about these values, so that at each level of customer interaction, the idea of your retail chain gets reinforced, and distinguished in the customer's mind, something that doesn't seem to be the priority of many big retail chains in India, as of now.
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