It’s Bob Negen. And in this episode of Real Retail TV, we’re going to explore the experience gap and three ways to close it.

I think we can all agree that expectations are up and loyalty is down. And as an independent retailer, the single most effective way, the single most efficient way for you to keep those, expectations, keep meeting the expectations of your customers, keeping them more loyal, spending more money with you, is to give them a consistently great experience.

Yet it doesn’t happen a lot. And the, experience gap is that gap. It’s that space between the experience an owner wants their, customers to get or, expects their customers to get or thinks their customers are getting and the reality of the customer experience. There’s a gap between what the custom what the owner thinks is happening and what the customers is actually experiencing.

Think about this. Think about your experience.

It’s happened to me dozens and dozens and dozens of times, and I’m sure it’s happened to you. You go into an independent retail business, and the the the outside looks great. The signage is great. You go into the store, and it looks great.

It feels great. The merchandise mix is spot on. Everything about it is nice. You go, wow.

This store is something special. I can’t wait to shop and buy.

And then the team member lets you down.

They can be indifferent.

They could be surly.

They could be, what we call my friend Lewis calls a Roomba employee. You know what a Roomba? Roomba is the, robot vacuum cleaner that go goes out of a dock, vacuums your floor, and then goes back into its dock. Lewis says a Roomba employee is somebody who stands behind the counter, and then when a customer comes in, comes out from his or her dock behind the counter, goes to the customer, says, may I help you?

And the customer says, no. Just looking. So the Roomba employee, assuming they’ve done their job, then goes back and docks themselves behind the counter. This happens all the time, doesn’t it?

The expectation is that, wow, this is a great store. I’m gonna have a great experience. And the reality becomes, oh, this is a good looking store. The experience is lousy.

That’s the expectation gap.

Now let’s talk about the three ways to close that gap. The first way to close the gap is to have great people.

It’s not hire and hope.

You cannot have a great team if you don’t have people who care, if you don’t have people who want to help your customers have a great experience.

You know, I talk about this thing called good chicken. In fact, there’s a real retail TV about good chicken. And in the Megan house, we love to cook. And when we were, raising our boys, we wanted them to be self sufficient.

We wanted them to cook. They needed to help us cook. We were busy so, we started to teach them to cook. And one of the lessons we had, what we taught them is the quality of the ingredients has a direct impact on the quality of the food that you eat.

And so the the joke become became, how do you make good chicken? And the answer is good chicken. You can’t make a good chicken dish with lousy chicken, and you can’t have a retail superstar if the person isn’t good chicken. So by the way, the next time you interview me, somebody look at them and say, is this person good chicken?

But good chicken, you need good chicken. You need people with potential because if they don’t have potential, they’re never going to become the great team member you need to give your customers the experience they deserve in your store. So number one, hire good people. It’s not hire and hope.

Number two, you have to train them.

Our friend, Kimberly Ruthenbeck, who is a lifelong retailer, has a great quote. She says that unless you clearly communicate your standards to your team members, they have no choice but to create their own.

And then if they creates then if they create standards that you don’t like, you have no right to be angry or upset about them, about what they’re doing. Right? They’re not mind readers. You have to train them. You have to educate them. They have you have to give them the skills and the information they need to be successful on the floor of your store.

It’s about taking what’s in your head and getting it down. It’s about creating the standards in your head and making it real. You can put it into a a manual, a written manual. You can create videos or you can even create audios.

Best, you do all three. This is what we did at the Mackinac kite company. This is the foundation of our goof proof training method. And it simply goes like this, you create the manual, you create videos, and then you rip the audio out of the videos.

And now people have different ways to learn, different ways to consume your training, different ways people with different learning styles. It’s just much more effective. But again, if you don’t communicate it, you can’t expect them to be the kind of team members that you want them to be. The kind of team members that will give your customers the kind of experience you want them to have.

So hiring good people, training and educating them so they know what to do so they’re comfortable and confident on the floor, that’s the second step. The third step. Now this is a little more esoteric, but it’s really important. It’s sort of a higher level behavior or a higher level process.

And what I’m talking about here is having a secret shopper program.

Let me just say this.

You don’t know what’s happening on your floor.

You don’t. I, you know, I spent nineteen years on the floor. I’ve worked with thousands of independent retailers. And when you leave, things get different.

And it’s just natural. It’s entropy.

It’s it it just it’s natural. So the only way to truly combat this is to have a secret shopper program. Now you can hire a secret shopper program, and somebody will come in and they’ll take a look. You know, you give them a list of all the things you want the shopper to look for as they’ll, you know, watch and see if all of these behaviors and all of these things are in place, they’ll give you a report.

They’re often expensive.

They often in order to justify their ex their expense, they’re they give you more information than you need, but it’s one way to do it. In the retail mastery system, our retail mastery system in the staff development module, we share a very simple, very straightforward, do it yourself secret shopper program.

And basically the essence of that program is find ten or twelve, one or at the most two pages of the things you want to have happen every single time in your store.

Then you hire hire local nonprofits to send their supporters into your stores to do the shopping. You know, so you pay you give the shopper some money to shop, cash. You give the organization some money for the shopper to come into your store, and then somebody is shopping your store. It’s not your best friend so your team doesn’t know that it’s your best.

Oh, there’s Bob’s friend. He’s shopping at No. They don’t know. You won’t know. And so here’s what happens when you regularly shop your stores.

You show your team what they’re going to be shopped before, you know, but when you launch the program, here’s what we’re looking for.

So if they don’t do it right, they don’t care. And what you’re gonna find is that the first couple of shops, that was a shorthand for the first couple times a shopper comes in and gives you the report. Your first couple shops are going to be uneven.

But then as you give your team members feedback on the reports that you have received, all of a sudden it’s going to get to a hundred percent.

Everything is gonna be done the way that you want it to be done every single time. Because the people who aren’t doing it, it means that they don’t care. They know exactly what you’re looking for. And if they they don’t do it, it means that they don’t care enough to do what you have shown them to be important. And so then they’re gonna go away.

I have always said that if I got into retail again to Mackinac kite company, we would shop our stores sporadically using this, the secret shopper program that I’m talking to you about. But, I have always said now, and now that I’m out of retail and looking at it a little more clear eyed, a little you know, looking at it from the outside, looking at it more as a coach, I have always said that if I had a retail store again, I would have it shopped every week no matter what, end of story, until it’s not my story anymore.

That consistent feedback to you and your team about the experience your customers are getting is invaluable.

So there it is. If you want to take that experience gap from here or there, I don’t know where it is in your store, but really bring it to amazing.

Those are the three steps. Hire good people, good chicken. Train them, educate them, give them the tools they need to be successful in your business and give your customers the experience you want them to have. And number three, trust experience you want them to have. And number three, trust but verify.

Have your store checked regularly.

So I hope that you find that helpful.

Again, the experience is our number one competitive advantage, and this is a way, absolutely a fantastic way for you to give your customers the very, very best experience.

So I’m signing off from a very, very windy Michigan. We’ll see you next week, everybody.