I read this article in thisismoney.co.uk which may give another option as to how we can balance the arguement between agressive commission staff remuneration and a customer service mentality. This is an extreme case but it could be useful to consider a blannced approach.
Sean Poulter, Daily Mail
24 March 2006
SALES staff at a leading computer store chain will no longer be paid commission on top of their basic salary, to encourage them to give good advice rather than engage in hard-sell tactics.
PC World, part of the Dixons empire, says its employees will spend more time listening than talking.
Advice will be based on meeting customer needs, rather than which product offers the best commission for the shop assistant.
Traditionally, electrical store salesmen have operated on the basis that it is their job to harry customers into spending more than they had intended, thus generating more commission.
However, friendly and expert customer service is now being seen as the 'magic bullet' for High Street stores in their fight with cut-price Internet retailers. Under the new PC World scheme, labelled 'One Team', the store staff are rewarded for working together and offering good customer service, rather than the in-fighting caused by commission-based schemes.
The team bonus is based upon independent 'mystery shopping' surveys of customer services conducted weekly in every one of the 150 PC World stores.
Trials of the system in new PC World stores suggest that shoppers appreciate the change in tone. These found that 5% more customers were likely to make a purchase in a 'One Team' store. Managing director Keith Jones said: 'It required a leap of faith. But the sales data was so overwhelming it left us with very little choice.'
The scheme might be considered bad news for those salesmen who have done well under the commission system.
However, the blow has been softened by the fact that some 275 of these high-fliers have been appointed 'sales coaches', guaranteeing them a higher basic wage.
Under the new regime, staff in PC World's 150 stores can expect to earn £13,000 a year after 12 months' service. A team and store bonus is on top of this.
This compares with the previous system, where the basic salary was £11,000, plus commission worth up to 20% of pay.
Surveys of customer satisfaction at One Team stores give 8.3 out of ten, compared with the group average of 7.6. PC World's sister brands, Dixons, Currys and The Link, are expected to adopt the same regime.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Friday, March 17, 2006
What is 'Enough' Mystery Shops?
I came across this article by Dr Ujwal Kayande, a senior lecturer at the Australian Graduate School of Management which is a high level checklist of Survey Design.
Are you getting inconsistent data, do great stores all of a sudden become terrible? Then read on.
Survey design checklist
· Understand the purpose of doing a customer satisfaction survey – this is critical. Many companies collect data but don’t know what to do with it.
· Use the data you have already collected to determine what you should do in the future; this will make future data collection efficient.
· Ask questions that find differences and, therefore, give you a better signal (or reflection of the inherent variability of the retail outlets, branches or other units you are surveying).
· Watch out for indications of high unreliability in your benchmarking data. If, over a year, you find that stores drop in and out of being good at customer satisfaction when you would expect a consistent pattern, then you need to reassess the number of customers or range of stores being surveyed, or the type of questions you are asking. Another indicator of data unreliability would be a situation where the stores which do well at customer satisfaction are the ones that have poorer sales.
· Recognise that good survey design will, in most instances, result in a correlation between satisfaction and sales over time.
*Dr Ujwal Kayande is a senior lecturer in marketing at the AGSM. He received the American Marketing Association’s Donald R. Lehmann Award for best dissertation-based article in Journal of Marketing Research or Journal of Marketing (1998), and he was awarded Researcher of the Year by the Australia New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) in 2000. He is continuing to work with Australian and US professors on improving survey design methodology.
Are you getting inconsistent data, do great stores all of a sudden become terrible? Then read on.
Survey design checklist
· Understand the purpose of doing a customer satisfaction survey – this is critical. Many companies collect data but don’t know what to do with it.
· Use the data you have already collected to determine what you should do in the future; this will make future data collection efficient.
· Ask questions that find differences and, therefore, give you a better signal (or reflection of the inherent variability of the retail outlets, branches or other units you are surveying).
· Watch out for indications of high unreliability in your benchmarking data. If, over a year, you find that stores drop in and out of being good at customer satisfaction when you would expect a consistent pattern, then you need to reassess the number of customers or range of stores being surveyed, or the type of questions you are asking. Another indicator of data unreliability would be a situation where the stores which do well at customer satisfaction are the ones that have poorer sales.
· Recognise that good survey design will, in most instances, result in a correlation between satisfaction and sales over time.
*Dr Ujwal Kayande is a senior lecturer in marketing at the AGSM. He received the American Marketing Association’s Donald R. Lehmann Award for best dissertation-based article in Journal of Marketing Research or Journal of Marketing (1998), and he was awarded Researcher of the Year by the Australia New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) in 2000. He is continuing to work with Australian and US professors on improving survey design methodology.
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