The Customer Comes First

Delivering consistent outstanding customer service is Dufry´s main aspiration to retain its position as the leading travel retailer. No matter where our stores are located, the ultimate objective of Dufry´s Customer Retail Excellence program is to give our customers the best possible shopping experience. But, how can this be achieved?

By Jorge Muñiz

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." This quote from the American writer, Maya Angelou, captures in a little more than a line what the philosophy is, behind Dufry´s Customer Retail Excellence Program.

It´s true that, more and more, we bring exclusive products to our shelves as a way to increase Dufry´s value proposition for customers. But, even just from a statistical perspective, exclusive products are a small proportion of the total number of products available in any Dufry store.

A Toblerone bar - or a flacon of Chanel 5 – is the same in our stores and elsewhere. The aspiration of Dufry´s Retail Customer Excellence program is nothing else than giving something more to our customers that turns this Chanel 5 into a Dufry Chanel 5, hence, turning a standard product into an exclusive.

The in-store experience is what will make the big difference between a customer and a repeat customer – and it is what customers take with them. And this is a favorable battlefield for Dufry to beat its competitors.

This program aims to make Dufry a WorldClass retailer that provides excellent employee and customer experience, focusing on:

• Reinforcing customer service through ideal staffing levels according to store traffic and sales
• Provide employees with a clear focus and target for each shift
• Empowering teams through strong leadership
• Enhancing selling capabilities around our products, promotions and specials
  

Academy Stores – Case Study Zurich

13 Academy Stores spread across the 4 Divisions have been rolled out globally. These are located in Stockholm, Zurich, Athens, Madrid, Marrakesh, Jordan, Toronto, New York (Newark), Cancun, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires (Ezeiza), Melbourne and Bali. The Academy stores have served to test concepts and best practices and, more importantly, to be a reference for stores in other airports and geographies.

In the online version of Dufry World – available at www.emagazine.dufry.com – you can view a video we have posted about the Zurich Academy Store. Supported by teams from different locations, Zurich has taken the complete Retail Excellence Program and tried a new way of operating the store.

The plan covers the four areas of the Retail Excellence Program, including:

1. Workforce Management – not just adjusting shifts to coincidewith peak traffic flows, but also distributing our staff across the store, ensuring managers cover the whole shop floor and are easily accessible to sort out issues as they happen.
   
   
2. Staff Briefing – shift briefings and performance reviews with clear information on daily events, objectives to achieve… and anything relevant to know for the day. The day starts with a daily huddle, where priorities and objectives are set and the latest novelties shared with managers to cascade to their teams.
   
   Service managers then have their daily briefing with the team, to cover what´s about to come. From reviewing schedules, identifying customers that are due to pass through the store on that day, reviewing latest product releases or promotions to explain the sales target we want to achieve for the day, it´s all about setting the expectations for the day.
   
   Similar briefings also take place with brand ambassadors and non-Dufry staff that are in our stores. To the eyes of the customer, they are all part of the same team and the same WorldClass service is expected from everyone. We therefore have to play our part and ensure they are kept fully up to date with what´s going on in the store.
   
   
3. Service orchestration – just as in a concert, our sales staff are the musicians. They can be the best in the world, but without clear and harmonic direction, the music – the service in our case – won´t flow. The staff are key to ensuring the day flows seamlessly. And if there´s anything to correct, or something is needed to perform the job, they are there to sort out. As with the conductor of an orchestra, the store manager’s role is to ensure everyone plays their part in generating perfect harmony.
   
   
4. Driving engagement. We all like being rewarded for a good job. And, yes, it´s also motivating to share success with other colleagues. That´s why rewarding great service is a key element of the whole program. It not only reinforce positive behaviors we like to see in our staff, but it also serves as inspiration for others, who then strive to improve and get better every day.
   

The Perfect Customer Journey

The Retail Customer Excellence Program needs to be, by definition, something very practical and down to earth. It has a single objective: offering superior customer service that results in higher spend per customer and, eventually, more repeat customers.

Delivering the perfect customer journey is the way of achieving this. And whilst, the following description may sound quite academic,it really encapsulates what we strive to do:

1. The Discovery Stage – a prospective customer enters our store. He may want to buy something or just pass some time. But for us this is a passenger that couldevolve into a potential customer, and hence, is potentially interested and able to be converted.
   
   
2. The Consideration Stage – our prospective customer is now really interested in our product. Now it’s the time to go “full-steam-ahead” with our selling arguments. Additional instruments, like sales tablets, play an important role here. It’s time to impress our potential customer!
   
   
3. The Purchase Stage – you made it. The customer is really convinced. Time to close the deal… and in doing so, highlight details such as larger sizes of the product that might be available, or a bigger or more premium product (up-selling) and/or help the customer with something else that’s available in our store (cross-selling).
   
   
4. The Retention Stage – Sale completed. But we want to keep this customer loyal to us. Make sure he is in our RED by Dufry program… and say farewell with a great smile!