Liz Hall
H Samuel´s in-store coaching programme has delivered a £732,891 return on an investment of £71,814.
The jewellery retailer introduced its shop floor coaching programme to help it boost sales by 1%. The Coach Approach programme was first piloted in 32 stores which were compared with a control group before being extended to the retailer´s 400 stores. Tracking of the 32 stores over a 12 month period showed they outperformed the rest of the stores by 2.2%.
Area managers are put through an ongoing facilitator development programme enabling them to coach sales assistants through what has just happened with a customer, taking advantage of “hundreds of coaching opportunities.”
“We have hundreds of customers a day, 100 in 15 minutes in some stores. We decided coaching was what we wanted to do rather than training as we felt our people already know what they need to do. We wanted them to understand the level of service they´re already offering, pinpointing where they are losing rapport and what they needed to think about doing differently,” said head of organisational development Gaynor Bradshaw. Bradshaw was speaking at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development´s HRD conference on 6-7 April in London.
Kevin Ryan, stores director of Signet Trading, which owns H Samuel, told delegates: “I felt a one-off programme wouldn´t pass muster, we needed a new way of life, of thinking. But it´s business and it needed a hard edge.”
The programme had four stages- in the first positioning stage, coaching wasn´t talked about. “The emphasis was on high energy, on how to get employees to talk about customers. We then moved into practices and upskilling, and embedding it,” said Ryan.
Development methods include telephone coaching, workshops, e-learning, role-modelling, coaching clinics and videos.
“We needed each and every one of our leaders to champion this. Without that, our programme wouldn´t have been as successful as it was. Being able to show that Kevin (Ryan) was going to do it too was very important,” said Bradshaw.
The business made sure it was very explicit about the behavioural changes it wanted to see, which helped it measure ROI, said Bradshaw. The retailer used mystery shoppers to track improvements in behaviours such as sales assistants asking customers about the intended gift recipient and occasion. Customer feedback showed they had experienced a higher level of service, more focussed on their occasion and life.
Coaching helped bring about an increase in positive staff opinion of around 20% compared to the previous year in a number of areas. These included “Signet has clearly explained what it expects of me in terms of the way I support, help and develop staff,” up 19% to 94% in 2009.