SmallBusinessNewz

I visited my favorite electronics store for citing as an example of what not to do with your sales staff, again the other day, and this time a whole new issue came up with regards to their employees. Incompetence.

This time, rather than being bombarded by numerous employees trying to "help" me, I actually went to one of them. The question was simple, "Where can I find the recordable media? The CD-Rs, DVD-Rs etc." The young lady whose sole purpose in this store (presumably) is to assist customers looked at me like I was Marty McFly trying to order a "Pepsi Free". She then directed me to the home theater department, which was most definitely not the right department. In fact, it was pretty much on the exact opposite side of the store. If I had been this person's manager, I would have been incredibly embarrassed. I decided to just look around until I found the correct department.

Ok, they still got my business that day, mostly because their location was in the general vicinity of somewhere else I was going (location can often play a huge factor in attracting customers). But this experience has further soured my already lemon-like opinion of this store's staff, and makes me want to resist going there in the future even more so.

So what lessons can a Small Business learn from this? The obvious is to make sure your staff (particularly the ones who deal with the public) are actually qualified to be doing the job they are supposed to. If they're not, it is not only harmful for your reputation as a business, but it's also a waste of money, because you're paying for incompetence.

It is the manager's responsibility to make sure that employees are qualified before they are turned loose with customers. Be sure they are well trained and test them to make sure they actually do understand what they are supposed to.

Of course there is the secret shopper plan that we discussed a few weeks ago. This precisely illustrates the point of such a program. There is hardly a better way to really get an impression of just how your employees really are handling your business when you're not there with them. It's also a good way to really evaluate who your key employees are, and whether or not it is time to make some adjustments to your roster.