Customer - Top Tips - Creating theatre

Creating theatre

This document is designed as a quick reference guide to creating theatre in a store. This will involve everybody in your team so careful planning and preparation are required to have the maximum effect.

This will enable you to gain knowledge of a particular skill, task or process in store. This means you can quickly find the key information that you need and refer to it on an ongoing basis whenever you need to refresh your knowledge.

Introduction

Delivering a world-class customer experience is crucial to the success of any business. Our customers expect the best service when they spend their time and money with us. This means that we should be creating the right environment for them to shop in.

Think about when you last went shopping, think about the difference between those shops and consider what impact your store has on the customer.

● Is it easy for customers to shop (shoppable)?

● Is it tidy?

● Does it inspire customers to buy the products we sell?

In this document we are going to look at ways to create theatre in your store and how that will help maximise profit.

Customer - Top Tips - Creating theatre

What you need to know

Creating theatre is about maximising the merchandising of your store, and making your store visually attractive to a customer. This is not just about merchandising, it’s taking it one step further and creating an unbeatable shopping experience for your customers. It’s also about coaching your colleagues to see it from a customer’s point of view (they are of course customers as well so let’s use their experience).

Stand outside the front doors of your store and ask yourself:

● Does my store stand out on the Retail Park / high street?

● Is my sign clean and free from damage?

● Are my front doors clean and in good condition?

● Are the posters in the window straight?

● Are the 60 x 40 holders clean?

● How clean are the windows?

● Are the American Golf banners/flags (where applicable) bright and clean?

There are many ways to improve the presence of your store, previously we have looked at several generic ways to improve the presence of your store but remember that each store is individual and will have specific improvements that could be made. Overall you should ask yourself would I shop here.

Store atmosphere and welcome

As you walk through your front doors ask yourself another question, what does it feel like in my store?

Our stores should feel vibrant, full of energy, and above all welcoming to every customer. Check your store entrance for tidiness and the general feeling, does it feel welcoming? What could you do to improve it?

How can you create atmosphere?

Think about your favourite restaurant, what makes it special? There could be many factors that make it special including:

● Customers talking to each other

● Music playing in the background

● Staff smiling and being friendly

● The smell of great food cooking

● Ambient lighting

All of the above contribute to the overall atmosphere of a well-run restaurant, and this makes customers feel special and more relaxed and when a customer is more relaxed they are more likely to make a purchase. Think about how much you spend in your favourite restaurant every time you visit it.

If we can recreate that relaxed special feeling for our customers what impact would that have on your NPS score and your KPI’s?

These ideas are great for a good restaurant but how can we use these principles in your store?

● Are your team happy on the shop floor?

● Do you have respectable music playing in the background?

● Are all products working/Demo ready?

● Is your store temperature reasonable?

● Do customers appear happy?

● Is everyone getting the service they expect?

All of these will contribute to the overall atmosphere in your store and increase the chances of customer’s spending money with you.

Customer - Top Tips - Creating theatre

What you need to know

Creating theatre through effective merchandising

Creating theatre is not just about atmosphere and the look of your store from the outside, again think about how stores will attract you to buy their products:

● Fast food restaurants show pictures of the food you can order

● Clothes shops dress mannequins to show you what clothes look like on

● Car dealers will allow you to take a test drive in their cars to see if you like it

● Travel agents have brochures showing glossy pictures of fabulous destinations you can travel to

● Even supermarkets have taster sessions so you can try new and exciting food for free

Sometimes we believe that putting a product on a shelf with a ticket is enough to entice a customer to buy it.

You can enhance any display to make it more appealing to a customer, try some of the following:

● Display the product working, (When applicable) this will help customers to see the product working and helping them improve their game

● Display the product not the POS, it is important that we ensure the customer can see the price but this should not be the first thing that a customer sees

● Can you display any relevant add ons or essentials so the customer knows what else is available to buy with their new product

These are only a few ideas and you are only limited to what you can do by your imagination (as long as it doesn’t impact on health and safety).

We mentioned earlier about colleagues looking at your store through customer’s eyes and creating this theatre. It’s just as important for our colleagues to be able to use this theatre to create the need and desire for our customers to want to purchase the products. When creating theatre think about how you can use this to increase your ATV

We have all been customers at one time or another a great way to think about creating theatre is to visualise your own ideal shopping experience. What would capture your attention? What would keep you interested in a product if a sales person wasn’t readily available to serve you?