The Retail Disconnect

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The Retail Disconnect

Sometimes during the course of reading or researching a topic I think is relevant to our industry I come across really interesting and important statistics. The challenging part is seeing that this information is so available to us but we are (a) lacking the ability to identify these challenges could apply to our organization or (b) recognizing that they do, but we are unable to create an effective plan and currently do not have the leadership capability to elevate the results in the company in learning & development and bottom line impact through customer experience.

These gaps are definitely an opportunity for most retail organizations and we need a strategy around them to improve and deliver needed development to bring our business in-line with the future growth and brand reputation. Customers and employees no longer have to adapt to companies they way they once did. Employees have lots of options in the marketplace to work with the people they want, in the environments they expect, with the available tools, resources, and amazing brands with leadership that supports real growth and development for their future successful career path. Customers, too, have lots of options and their biggest one is if they don’t get the experience they expect, the product they love [at the right price], and the support they want – they can effectively render a retailer obsolete. Here is some food for thought:

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Customer Experience Statistics

  • 80% of companies believe they deliver a “superior experience” to their customers. Customers of those same organizations said that only 8% of companies were really delivering. [Source: Bain & Company]
  • By the year 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. [Source: Customers 2020 Report]
  • Just 26% of companies have a well developed customer experience strategy. [Source: E-Consultancy]
  • 45% of customers can’t remember having a recent successful customer experience. Most failures were related to disappointing customer service: 30% said the employee they interacted with was poorly trained; 31% said the employee wasn’t empowered to help; 29% of customers received inaccurate or conflicting information from company representatives. [Source: SDL 2015 The Global CX Wakeup Call Report]
  • Only 1 out of 26 unhappy customers complain. The rest churn. A lesson here is that companies should not view absence of feedback as a sign of satisfaction. The true enemy is indifference. [Source: Huffington Post]
  • 70% of companies that deliver best in class customer experience use customer feedback – versus industry average of 50%, and 29% for laggards. [Source: Huffington Post]

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Employee Support & Engagement

  • 59% of employees would be “delighted” if managers dealt with problem employees, but only 7% of those responding to employee surveys believed their companies were actually doing it. [Source: McKinsey]
  • Based on empirical research, the 70:20:10 framework argues that improving workplace performance happens through three kinds of activity:
    • 70% is experiential learning – learning and developing through day-to-day tasks, challenges and practices.
    • 20% is social learning – learning and developing with and through others.
    • 10% is formal learning – learning and developing through structured modules, courses and programs. [Source: Pluralsight]
  • At Best Buy the value of a 0.1% increase in Employee Engagement in a particular store is $100,000 [Source: HBR]
  • 90% of leaders think an engagement strategy has an impact on business success. But barely 25% of them have a strategy in place. [Source: Accor]
  • When employees were asked if they feel motivated to give their best to their leader, 37% said only sometimes or never. [Source: DDI World]
  • 34%  of employees said they don’t consider their manager to be effective at his or her job. [Source: DDI World]
  • 43% of employees say that their bosses rarely, if ever, explain the rationale for their decisions. [Source: DDI World]
  • When asked if their leaders handle workplace conflict effectively, 42% of employees surveyed for our study responded either only sometimes or never. Similarly, 35% responded only sometimes or never when asked if their leaders listen to their work-related concerns. [Source: DDI World]
  • Only 56% of employees reported that their current leader helps them be more productive, whereas 79% reported that their ‘best-ever leader’ helped them be more productive. [Source: DDI World]

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Developing Future Leaders

  • 40% of organizations don’t have a leadership strategy, and 36% don’t have a leadership development strategy. Of those that have one or both, 54% said their business strategy and leadership development is aligned to only a small degree or not at all. [Source: Brandon Hall Group’s State of Leadership Development Study April 2015]

About

Founder and Editor in Chief of Excellence In Retail and 18 year retailer. I am a passionate and creative leader and coach committed to inspiring thought, action, truth-telling, solution-seeking, and dialog about how to maximize talent through identifying and creating a process around critical success factors, workplace culture, signature leadership practices, productivity, profitability, alignment of employees and company vision & values, and workplace happiness inside all retail organizations. I help create healthy, vibrant, high-performing, and highly-productive organizations that are talent magnets and focused on delivering the highest level of customer experience that will differentiate them from competition and result in long-term growth and sustainability.

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