Neon Agency is a team
of experienced performance
improvement experts
We work across multiple
industry sectors UK and Worldwide
With national coverage and a disparate workforce ensuring consistency of standards in the retail environment can be a difficult challenge. But an effective retail engagement programme, that addresses cleanliness and corporate compliance, can deliver return on investment and strong business performance.
For brands who rely upon retail and trade distribution points such as, dealerships, retail stores, petrol stations, pubs, restaurants and coffee shops, the ultimate moment-of-truth is when your customer comes face to face with your brand experience. Customers prompted to seek out your brand, arrive with expectations escalated by brand reputation, recommendation and marketing promotion.
In some cases, your business may own its distribution points and its staff are your employees, in others they may be brand franchises or independents with non-direct employees. Success in this environment for any brand, must be to ensure its customer experience meets the four golden rules embracing:
1. Look the Part
2. Play the Part
3. Sound the Part
4. Be Authentic
Research suggests that 85% of our perception, learning, cognition and activities are mediated through vision. According to Good Corp 2022; “A clean store with a beautiful appearance leads to greater sales solely based off a good first impression. When customers enter a dishevelled, and disorganized store, first impression equates to, “I’m not spending my money here!” Positive customer experiences are vital today, negative online reviews can kill your business very quickly.”
Following a survey, “95% of consumers consider a store's exterior appearance a crucial factor when deciding upon a place to shop, and more than half will avoid a store if the exterior is poorly maintained.” and “80% of customers conversely are willing to try a new store if the exterior was clean and inviting.”.
Clearly, its vital that your brand experience is show cased and delivered in a manner which gives the full flavour of its values, and both the people working at point of delivery and the environment it’s in, must be fully cogent with that ambition.
At Neon Agency we design and deliver engagement programmes for global organisations, ensuring that the environment and way brands are delivered are sustained at the highest standards. Typically, these programmes integrate staff engagement and learning reinforcement with regular systematic monitoring, utilising both external and self-audits to ensure standards are kept up every day.
We communicate to nationwide staff via our employee engagement platforms, delivering information and compliance guidelines directly into their hands via their mobile devices, 24/7. The key task is, through engagement, learning and recognition to encourage staff to take responsibility for their environment and behaviours, because they understand the logic and see the benefits.
With a retail-based jewellery business, we devised a programme to ensure branch staff not only continuously reinforced their knowledge and presentation skills for a famous global watch brand but ran daily checks to make sure product positioning and display material were consistent with plan. This resulted in a sales increase of circa 15% in stores against a control sample.
In the automotive and petrol retail markets we have run similar successful campaigns by encouraging staff accountability and co-operation through engagement.
If you would like to know more about how Neon Agency can help to keep your customer experience sparkling, please contact us at info@neon-agency.co.uk.
