Treat Your Customers Well (Take a lesson from Julia Roberts)
In yesterdays post, it was determined that dressing rooms are places that women generally dread, even hate.
The message that most dressing rooms send to shoppers is this: We dont care whether you buy anything or not. You are not important enough for anybody who works in this store to take time to assist you. Youre on your own. And, dont steal anything because we know that is your real reason for going into the dressing room.
My contention is that retailers could net more sales if they would stop treating their dressing rooms as (a) an afterthought and (b) a place where criminals go to hide goods in their purses.
Here are some suggestions as to how to upgrade the state of your dressing rooms:
1. Paint them a bright, happy color.
2. Put in soft lighting.
3. Place a three-way mirror close by so that customers trying on clothes have only to step just outside the dressing room to get a full view of themselves in your clothes.
4. Add more hooks. And after youre done, add more hooks.
5. Talk to your customers who are trying on clothes. Use some of the following phrases.
May I bring you anything else?
Could you use a different size in that?
Did you see that other rack of white blouses over near the blue jeans?
Are those jeans fitting? Did you see the new stretch jeans near the back of the store?
That outfit looks really nice with this sweater.
6. Finally, assign one employee on every shift the responsibility of helping customers who are trying on clothes. Train them to not only assist the customer, but also to be polite and treat that customer as if she is going to spend $500 in your store. Who knows? With the proper assistance, she just might.
When all else fails, make your employees watch the two scenes in the movie Pretty Woman, when (a) the Julia Roberts character still wearing her streetwalker clothes is shunned and treated rudely by two snotty clerks; (b) she returns, dressed to the nines, looking fabulous and loaded down with shopping bags to tell the two rude clerks that if they are working on commission they made a very big mistake when they shunned her.