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:

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]

Reducing your customer churn rate by 5% can increase your profitability by 25% to 125%. [Source: Leading on the Edge of Chaos, Emmet Murphy and Mark Murphy]

A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect as decreasing costs by 10%. [Source: Leading on the Edge of Chaos, Emmet Murphy and Mark Murphy]

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]

97% of global consumers say that customer service is very important or somewhat important in their choice of and loyalty to a brand. [Source: 2015 Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report]

When it comes to sales, the probability of selling to an existing happy customer is up to 14 times higher than the probability of selling to a new customer. [Source: Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance]

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]

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]

36% of organizations surveyed, say their leadership development practices are still below average or poor. [Source: Brandon Hall Group’s State of Leadership Development Study April 2015]

Disengaged workers cost the US economy $350 billion per year in lost productivity. [Source: Gallup]

At Best Buy the value of a 0.1% increase in Employee Engagement in a particular store is $100,000 [Source: HBR]

Only 25% of organizations said they had a ready and willing successor identified for one out of 10 critical leader positions. [Source: Brandon Hall Group’s State of Leadership Development Study April 2015]

2/3 of employees admit that they are disenchanted at work and looking for a new job. Of those who stay, an overwhelming 91% say they plan to stay in their current jobs fewer than three years. [Source: Brandon Hall Group’s State of Leadership Development Study April 2015]

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]

35% of employees in the U.S. are willing to “forgo a substantial pay raise in exchange for seeing their direct supervisor fired.” [Source: Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time & Stanford Business School Professor]

Developing Future Leaders

We asked what are the most critical priorities for improving leadership capabilities over the next one to two years. The top answer (57%) was developing leaders to be effective development coaches. [Source: Brandon Hall Group’s State of Leadership Development Study April 2015]

83% said that targeted development for all leader levels is important or very important, yet a mere 5% have implemented solutions for all. [Source: Brandon Hall Group’s State of Leadership Development Study April 2015]

Half of organizations say their leaders are not skilled to effectively lead their organizations today, and a startling 71% said their leaders are not ready to lead their organizations into the future. [Source: Brandon Hall Group’s State of Leadership Development Study April 2015]

41% of organizations recognize the critical importance of defining leadership requirements. Yet only 8% have taken the time to define their unique leadership requirements. [Source: Brandon Hall Group’s State of Leadership Development Study April 2015]

Over the next one to two years, organizations say the top priorities for leadership development are closing leader-skill gaps (58%) and closing critical leader gaps across all leader levels (43%). [Source: Brandon Hall Group’s State of Leadership Development Study April 2015]

Only 10% of organizations feel that their efforts to build leadership capability support business goals. [Source: Brandon Hall Group’s State of Leadership Development Study April 2015]

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]