Why sales assistants are the secret to retail success

Wal­mart, the US super­mar­ket and depart­ment store giant, just pulled the plug. After a year-long exper­i­ment using auto­mat­ed tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing robots to track inven­to­ry and scan the shelves, the retail­er has decid­ed it is peo­ple, actu­al­ly, who do the job bet­ter. What’s more, peo­ple, even pushy ones, don’t creep out the cus­tomers in quite the same way.

What might come as a blow to the robot­ics indus­try is no doubt a relief for shop-floor staff. After all, a wide­ly cit­ed 2013 report from Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty reck­oned by 2020 the like­li­hood of sales assis­tants being replaced by tech was at 92 per cent.

“But that hasn’t come to pass, not even with the pan­dem­ic dri­ving a stam­pede to online shop­ping, such that bricks-and-mor­tar shops seemed ever­more redun­dant,” says Rachel Jones, senior lec­tur­er in fash­ion busi­ness mar­ket­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster. “I’d bet the effect may be the oppo­site as there’s now the scope for, and a dri­ve towards, a new idea of shop-floor staff as more expert, con­nect­ed and emo­tion­al­ly engaged.”

A need for the new ‘super’ sales assistant

Dr Denise Dahlhoff, senior researcher at con­sumer behav­iour ana­lysts The Con­fer­ence Board and lec­tur­er at Whar­ton Busi­ness School, Penn­syl­va­nia, says: “The pandemic’s increased dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of shop­ping has put a lot of pres­sure on offline stores, even in the busi­ness-to-busi­ness world, but it’s also placed a new empha­sis on every­thing tech can’t do: com­mu­ni­cat­ing at a human lev­el, cre­at­ing com­mu­ni­ties, gen­er­at­ing loy­al­ty.

“But it has also meant ever­more knowl­edge­able cus­tomers have high­er expec­ta­tions of offline retail, espe­cial­ly of sales asso­ciates. There’s a need for a new kind of super sales assis­tant.”

Indeed, if shop-floor work has his­tor­i­cal­ly been low sta­tus and low pay, far from tech doing away with the role alto­geth­er, a counter nar­ra­tive is it will require a rethink of the job descrip­tion and the kind of per­son right to fill it.

Dahlhoff speaks of “the Tup­per­ware mod­el”, for exam­ple, after the mak­er of plas­tic con­tain­ers’ famed use of cus­tomers to sell to oth­er poten­tial cus­tomers: “There’s a demand for sales asso­ciates who are enthu­si­as­tic brand users, because they make for authen­tic sales peo­ple.”

Mal­colm Costel­lo, own­er of Four Sea­sons Recruit­ment, a recruit­ment agency spe­cial­is­ing in fash­ion and lux­u­ry retail, argues this tran­si­tion has been hap­pen­ing over the last five years, but the pan­dem­ic has accel­er­at­ed it. There has, he says, been too much empha­sis on tech­nol­o­gy in retail as a panacea.

“But while tech aids process­es, it doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly improve the in-store expe­ri­ence for shop­pers. Improv­ing that will be vital to the sur­vival of shops and cru­cial to this improve­ment will be sales asso­ciates,” says Costel­lo. “Retail needs to rein­vent itself and under­stand sales asso­ciates are a major part of that. These peo­ple will need to be recog­nised for their pas­sion and knowl­edge.”

The retail working experience must change

This will require a more con­sid­er­ate, flex­i­ble approach to job-shar­ing, work­ing across mul­ti­ple stores, and to open­ing hours, for exam­ple. “Late-night hours don’t encour­age any­one to love their job,” he notes. And pay needs to be high­er, with bonus­es, and not com­mis­sion based. “Because peo­ple don’t want to be sold to. They want some­one with insight and advice, who can pro­vide ser­vices ahead of sales,” says Costel­lo.

This is espe­cial­ly the case when it comes to more tech­ni­cal prod­ucts, such as elec­tron­ics, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and DIY, or when a good eye is ben­e­fi­cial, as in fash­ion.

This approach will be essen­tial in what Geor­gia Han­ley, divi­sion man­ag­er of TRP Recruit­ment, refers to as a new retail envi­ron­ment, which is as much about the in-store expe­ri­ence as sell­ing mer­chan­dise. Indeed, with retail increas­ing­ly described as expe­ri­en­tial, with shops fea­tur­ing skate ramps, work­out class­es, cold rooms, cook­ery class­es or art talks, much of it designed to be Insta­gram­ma­ble, sales staff are like­ly to be more the essen­tial facil­i­ta­tors of a brand adven­ture.

“Because it’s long been under­paid and poor­ly trained, a retail career has been looked down on,” she says. “But the sit­u­a­tion is pro­pelling a new look at the sales assis­tant as absolute­ly essen­tial, as some­one clos­er to a busi­ness devel­op­er. It’s actu­al­ly about a return to rather a tra­di­tion­al con­cept of shop-floor work, when sales assis­tants had their lit­tle black book of clients, when there was a rap­port with them, when they could call a cus­tomer up and ask about the fam­i­ly.”

Tech there to support workers, not replace them

Improve­ments in train­ing will be essen­tial, because it’s not as if tech­nol­o­gy, data rich and com­ple­men­tary to rather than com­pet­ing with humans, won’t be a greater part of the retail land­scape to come, though ini­tial­ly
at least it’s set to man­age more repet­i­tive or mun­dane tasks like tak­ing pay­ments.

Fabi­an Wal­lace-Stephens, senior researcher with the Roy­al Soci­ety of Art’s Future Work Cen­tre, says the mis­take for much retail has been “to try to com­pete with, say, Ama­zon on tech, rather than dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself through the role of shop staff”. Sales assis­tants, he argues, look increas­ing­ly like play­ing the role of in-store influ­encers enabled by tech, “to pro­vide the kind of ser­vice that can’t sim­ply be moved online”.

Lib­er­ty, the Lon­don depart­ment store, for exam­ple, took the oppor­tu­ni­ty of lock­down to over­haul its web­site, but also to look at how the online shop­ping expe­ri­ence could bet­ter inte­grate with offline to pro­vide an omnichan­nel approach. It has intro­duced an Ask the Expert ser­vice, through which cus­tomers can book video calls with shop-floor staff, as well as Live Chat. Both have proved a huge­ly pop­u­lar way of link­ing remote cus­tomers direct with shop staff at the rails and shelves. The sale may still end up being online, but it’s been nur­tured and facil­i­tat­ed by a real per­son.

“We’re look­ing more at tech as an enabler for the exper­tise of our ambas­sadors,” as Madeleine Macey, Liberty’s chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer, describes shop-floor staff. “I don’t think any retail­er has got this 100 per cent right yet, but clear­ly there’s still a need for a human point of view in retail. It’s not just about get­ting the trans­ac­tion done as soon as pos­si­ble. It’s peo­ple who real­ly rep­re­sent the brand who are going to be most valu­able to the com­pa­ny they work for.”

People are key to great customer service

Kelsie Mar­i­an, retail research direc­tor at Gart­ner, says: “A lot of even the more futur­is­tic ideas, like inven­to­ry robots or smart shelv­ing, are real­ly about get­ting infor­ma­tion to sales asso­ciates. And that mat­ters because I can’t empha­sise enough how retail store asso­ciates are still key to com­pet­i­tive advan­tage.”

Gart­ner research sug­gests cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion is 2.5 times greater in stores with well-trained, well-paid shop-floor staff and that these staff mem­bers are 30 per cent more pro­duc­tive. Per­haps inevitably, hav­ing well-paid staff results in low­er staff turnover, greater job sat­is­fac­tion and bet­ter ser­vice. 

“It’s been some time com­ing, but I think the pan­dem­ic will prove a turn­ing point in retail atti­tudes to sales asso­ciates,” says Mar­i­an. “The future is going to be about cre­at­ing high-per­for­mance sales teams. The ques­tion is how quick­ly retail address­es the idea, because until recent­ly only a hand­ful of retail­ers have been ready to make the invest­ments in staff, to real­ly under­stand spe­cial peo­ple are the spe­cial ele­ment that makes good retail good retail.”