By: HappyOrNot
Translation : Feedbacksmiley.ae
SPAR, founded in 1932 in the Netherlands, is the largest food store chain in the world. In a highly competitive industry, SPAR is committed to exceeding its customers’ expectations by creating more relevant in-store experiences.
The three stores in Wiltshire, UK, have been equipped with HappyOrNot Smiley Terminals since 2014. Susan Connolly, Sales Director at Connolly SPAR, turned to HappyOrNot to innovate the way they operate, better understand the shopping experience they provide and improve the overall quality of their customer service
Using feedback to keep customers happy
Connolly SPAR stores receive an average of 1,500 customer responses each week through Smiley Terminals and have achieved a very impressive Happy Index score of 96 – well above the industry standard of 87 and placing them in the top 10% within their industry. The data helps Susan and her executives make quick, informed decisions so they can always exceed their customers’ expectations.
“We must remain relevant to our customers”
Delivering a strong and consistent customer experience is critical for retailers. If they can’t meet demand, and/or if customers don’t feel comfortable shopping somewhere, they will go elsewhere. “We have to stay relevant to our customers – to be relevant is to always be ahead of the competition.”
To secure their competitive advantage for years to come, Susan and her management team were looking for innovative solutions to connect with their customers when they came across HappyOrNot’s solution.
Before engaging HappyOrNot’s Smiley Terminals to collect in-moment customer feedback, Susan admitted that Connolly SPAR did not have an efficient process to collect and process customer feedback.
“As long as we had a product to sell to them, we didn’t put a strong emphasis on customer experience. We cared about it and of course always did our best, but it wasn’t our main focus because we didn’t have a good way to measure it.”
Susan reported that HappyOrNot has become an integral part of the shopping experience. The terminals are located near the exits so it is more convenient for customers to interact with them. As a result, people press it by default when they go out.
At first, Susan didn’t expect HappyOrNot to become such a valuable tool for them. “We hadn’t realized how valuable it would be. It enhances the shopping experience, brings attention to problems in stores and offers ways to solve them. It’s one of those things that just works. In fact, we haven’t changed the questions we ask our customers in seven years, and our customers continue to interact with it.”
Detect and solve problems in real time
Collecting feedback from customers helps Susan and her store managers identify problems that they might not otherwise be able to pinpoint directly.
In one of her stores, for example, “the Happy Index Score dropped to 80, and that was absolutely alarming – what went wrong? We looked into it and it turned out that our refrigerator wasn’t working properly and our milk was warm. When people returned their milk, they pressed the red button on their way out, which indicated that something was wrong.” Because she was alerted in real time, Susan was able to take immediate action and work to fix the problem. Today, store staff regularly check refrigerators to prevent this from happening again.
The Smiley Terminals also help Susan better train and manage her staff. “We had a staff member who was very slow to serve and we saw the number of red buttons increase to an unacceptable level. Again, customer feedback helped us see that they needed more help at that time. We asked a more experienced staff member to switch shifts with this person while they received additional training, and the score went up again.”
“Sometimes you suddenly see a lot of red buttons and panic. But you can easily pinpoint the time on the [HappyOrNot] reporting dashboard, go on CCTV, and see what’s causing it.”
Susan gave another concrete example of how she turned a momentary negative experience for her customers into an opportunity to serve them better. She noticed that stores were getting a lot of negative feedback toward the end of the day, but couldn’t explain why. “We looked at the time of day on our dashboard, looked at the camera footage and realized that the amount of time it took to be served in the evening was creating a lot of frustration for customers,” she said. Susan decided to give staff headsets. “Now they can call for help and cut the queue faster.
A motivational tool for employees
Besides being an instant reward for staff when they see customers pushing the green button when they go out, another benefit of using HappyOrNot is that it creates a healthy competition among Connolly SPAR stores.
On the one hand, collecting customer feedback helps Susan “look at the business” to best serve her customers. On the other hand, it motivates store managers and employees to do their best to achieve the highest Happy Index score. “My store managers always strive to be the best, and we offer our employees a bottle of wine if their location achieves the highest score of the month.”
Susan also reveals that she uses the customer feedback she collects through HappyOrNot as a competitive advantage. “One of my stores recently achieved a Happy Index score of 100. This is information I can use to show that we care about our customers and do things differently than the competition.”
Supporting customers during the pandemic
Like most retail professionals around the world, Susan and her teams had to deal with the unprecedented measures taken to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
Surprisingly, Susan reports that the pandemic had no effect on her customers’ willingness to share their feedback through the HappyOrNot Smiley Terminals. This is confirmed by the feedback data in the reporting service, which shows that response rates have remained at the same level as before the pandemic.
We take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of our customers. We clean the terminals every hour, we make sure our staff and our customers take social distancing measures, and we provide masks and antibacterial solutions.” Susan adds that they “didn’t remove the terminals because they belong there, they live there. Customers keep pushing the buttons when they go out, and they let us know that they don’t like it when the terminals are put in a different place.”
Susan additionally reveals that employees at her stores have made every effort to continue serving customers during the pandemic.
“We started working through the night to replenish stocks, introduced home deliveries […] we bought 25-kg bags of flour and distributed them so our customers could get flour, we rationed eggs, rationed toilet rolls in bags of four so everyone got a few, we distributed food packages to people in need and provided lunches to children from families in need. We didn’t stop.”
Susan’s staff is so dedicated to the task that she had to convince them to take two weeks off to rest So in 2020, Connolly SPAR gave its employees both Christmas Day and Boxing Day off to reward them for their hard work.
“Our customers have been so happy with us during the pandemic. They have often told us they don’t know what they would have done without us. When the larger supermarkets ran out of essential goods, we had everything in stock.”
All in all, Susan finds that “people appreciate us more. It feels like all the community work we normally do is now being recognized during the pandemic.”
Despite all that happened in 2020, the unyielding determination of Susan and her staff, combined with their ability to incorporate customer feedback, strengthened the relationship with their customer base and helped them attract and retain new customers.
For example, Connolly SPAR stores retained as many as 27% of their new customers during the first 2020 close in the UK. This alone shows how crucial it is to heed your customers’ feedback and show them how much you value their shopping experience, especially in times of crisis.
Over SPAR
SPAR is the world’s largest food retail chain. The company began with one Dutch store in 1932 and now has more than 13,300 stores in more than 48 countries on four continents. SPAR’s development rests on a set of values that have guided the organization since its founding more than 85 years ago. At the heart of these core values is the commitment of SPAR stores worldwide to freshness, choice, quality and service.