Footwear Insight

32 • Footwear Insight ~ September/October 2018 Miroballi Shoes The Sajdak family of Stan's Fit For Your Feet The Foot Spot Comfort One Shoes footwearinsight.com "Talk to your customers to get their feedback and be open to learning. If you ever think you know it all, something will come along and surprise you." — Nicole Brownell, manager, Feet First Tampa, Tampa, FL "Recently we did a customer survey — we sent out an email with Survey Monkey and asked what customer service means to our customer and asked what they think of Stan's and we received over 700 responses. We're still digesting the results." — Sajdak "We work with John Lees, a sales and customer service consultant for Vionic. He encouraged us to do a customer service panel with each of our stores. We had a set of questions and met with a group of our customers for 45 minutes. This meeting helped us gain a better perspective on what our customers see and want instead of what we think they see and want." — Ryan Richard, team director, The Foot Spot, three stores in the Greater Kansas City area "Good service isn't good enough anymore. It has to be spectacular service, with an incredible experience, so we commit to hundreds of secret shops per year. Every store gets multiple shops throughout the year. This has helped us pinpoint areas that needed improvement, but, more importantly, enabled us to reward publicly the members that are doing well in the secret shops following our ten step selling program." — Maurice Breton, ComfortOne Shoes, 18 stores in the greater Washington, DC area PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS When it comes to incentivizing service, money talks. "[Employees] who have achieved 90 percent or above on customer secret shops get to spin a wheel to get prizes at our monthly store meetings. If someone receives a 100 percent, they get to spin the wheel twice." — Breton "Our staff is always excited about striving for that [GMSA] perfect score and next year I'm going to give a $100 bonus to the staff member that gets us on the list, and a $500 bonus if that salesperson gets us a perfect score." — Steven Rueda, owner, Turnpike Comfort Footwear, Fresh Meadows, NY GO A LITTLE FARTHER Look for the little ways to make your customers feel taken care of — they're the ones with outsized impact. "We offer a cup of coffee or tea to each customer and this year we have added bottles of cold water for refreshments. Treat everyone with respect and friendliness — same as you would if they were guests in your home." — Scott Woldruff, owner, Woldruff's Footwear and Apparel, Goshen, IN "I want customers to be excited immediately, with displays that draw their attention, a selection that makes them a little bit nervous. We talk to the staff at end of each season [to evaluate the product mix] and ask them, 'What can you live without?' Or we say, 'I'm going to kill these five styles — tell me why I shouldn't.' The goal is to have the staff involved in what we bring in, what we keep and what we don't. Then they're excited about it, and they can sell and explain it." — Bryce Anderson, owner, Walking Comfort, two stores in Centerville and Draper, UT "When customers come in to try on, we slip in the back and polish their old shoes for them." — Skip Chandler, owner, Chandler's Walk Shoppe, Salt Lake City, UT "We have a kitchen area in front to the store where customers can help themselves to water, coffee, soda, beer and wine, and we have a hot dog stand we bring out every Sunday during football season and give out free hot dogs and put on the 1 p.m. game on our 60-inch TV. It's nice for the husbands "Good service isn't good enough anymore. It has to be spectacular service, with an incredible experience." Maurice Breton, Comfort One Shoes

• Cover