Report cites importance of training employees: Findings indicate few
retailers give necessary guidance.(EMPLOYMENT)(SALES)
Victor Godinez

12/17/2000
The Dallas Morning News
Page 11L
Copyright 2000 Gale Group Inc. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT 2000 The
Dallas Morning News, L.P.


Employee training can help retailers improve their customer service, but
few companies invest enough time and money in those efforts, according to a
new report.


"We were actually pretty stunned and amazed by the insights regarding
retail," said Tom Casey, the executive in charge of the talent management
practice for Unifi Network , which released the report.


The report, based on a Unifi survey, noted that only 41 percent of retail
customers surveyed said they are satisfied with their shopping experiences.
And only 11 percent said their retailers did a good job of retaining their
best salespeople. An overwhelming 71 percent of shoppers told Unifi that
it's important to them to see familiar faces behind the counter.


Mr. Casey, whose company is a division of PricewaterhouseCoopers, said
there are three main reasons why customer satisfaction was so low in the
survey:


*The tight labor market has caused many retailers to relax their hiring
standards.


*Busy managers don't think they have enough time to carefully train new
hires.


*Many retailers are simply paying lip service to the concept of customer
service.


"You can't say because of the low unemployment, we're going to have to take
shortcuts on the customer and expect to be well-positioned as a retailer,"
Mr. Casey said. "So what we've found is that the focus of the good
retailers, what they're focusing on, is very aggressive training, very
aggressive retention."


The Container Store, a Dallas-based retailer that Fortune magazine
designated this year as America's best workplace, is practicing what it
preaches when it comes to training and retaining employees, said vice
president Melissa Reiff, who oversees the training program.


"Every first year, [a] full-time employee receives approximately 235 hours
of training," she said. "But that's really just the beginning, because you
can't just do that and then stop. It's got to be ongoing training, and we
continue to provide that for our employees, which, of course, benefits our
customers."


Ms. Reiff said she understands why so many customers hold retailers in such
low esteem when it comes to customer service. And retailers, she added,
need to realize that poor customer service hurts their bottom line.


"I'm a typical consumer, and I know that if I can go to a store where it's
the same product, the same price and I can get excellent customer service,
it's going to be my first choice," Ms. Reiff said. "As a matter of fact,
even if it's a little more, I'd go there if they had great customer
service, because it's tough out there to get somebody to wait on you who
knows what they're talking about."


Joe Eulberg, executive director of human resources for 7-Eleven Inc., said
the Dallas-based company now relies on computerized training programs in
the stores' back offices.


"Any kind of training program in the service sector has got to have a
combination of back-of-the-house as well as on-the-job training," he said.
Mr. Eulberg said he was not surprised at Unifi's findings because many
retailers have failed to realize that employee training and retention are
crucial when it comes to customer service.


"I think that customer service is going to be one of the big
differentiators of the winners and the losers in the next decade," he said.
Mr. Casey said many retailers have been able to gloss over customer service
and employment concerns because customers are spending freely in the strong
economy.


Eventually, he said, there will be a backlash.


"You can't have 89 percent of the people saying that they don't think their
retailer does a good job at keeping people," he said. "If you're not
feeling the pain because of it, stay tuned."