How far a Retail store is able to connect with its Customer in a Serious Manner

With the retail industry taking a big leap in India we see a Retail store emerges then transforms into a chain of stores proliferating across the nation.
when a local retail goes regional, then zonal and then national and international....but while climbing this ladder how many operators actually keep a watch down the ladder.

Here i m sharing my views not as a Marketing professional but as a Customer to these upcoming promising Brands, i would like to appeal to my humble Network member to kindly view this and then post there real opiniuns based upon the experiences in the Retail stores across the country . and the objective is not to pinpoint there short comings but to guide them where are we going wrong....Friends it our world and we are the one who could make it better.

We are engulfed by the word RECESSION and you walk in any store ask the Store manager how is the sales going, his obious answer would be it was better last year we use to meet our targets but this year it falling badly okay how about last to last year then ohh it was great in 2007 but that footfall and conversion is not more there..................this is where the company or the people who are involved in the retail management are to be blammed......and trust me this same guy would give you the simmillar feedback without any change in his selection of words ....the only change is the Figures when 2007 becomes 2008 so forth and so on...

So this is what we are sowing and so is what we are reaping .....inculcate that winning attitute in your store manager and make him revolution his sales may be not in numbers but the experience which he has given to the walking Customer...not how many bundle of currency he has fetched from the pocket of the customer but the no. of reasons he has given his customer to smile.....

Customer Loyality is there but we fail to understand his aspiration and deligh factor that makes the Customer feel the urge in him ....

But in doing all this we should not forget that we are here to sell and the smile which is pasted on to the customer is to make him dig out some extra bucks out of his pocket without him having a realization of the same.


But my experience is a little different ...when i walk in to a store what i see most of the Brands(Not all ) are not actually updating there MERCHANDISR regularly , since i m stationed in a mall so i m a regular window shopper as a mystery customer to the many a Brands and what i have realised is a) the Merchandise Mix across the chain of outlets is inappropriate b) the showroom manager is hardly trained adequately to handle the same c) the motivation of the Store staff is always kicked down once they attend a Window shopper & this drastically cahnges once they had a convertible Customer.......

Guys the Customer who is about to enter never knows that the one who has gone out is the one who had got you this expression on your face.....
the complaints listed in the Customer Book are most of the time never reported to the Zonal offices they would only highlight those problems in which the Customer had the problems related to the product but it would seldom talk about the experience the Customer had or the kind of services the Staff has rendered ...and all the golden words.

But the objective is ...the customer experience spreads a lot of words of Mouth about your brand..but what a customer would spread when he never had an experience.....

So let us try to change the game at the end user level..the communication which goes in process with him should be monitored in a more productive manner and more insight could be generated about the product and its sales then the kind of Sales which could be expected from a Product itself....