Letter E strategy.
At last week’s Online Retailer Conference, Winning Appliances CEO, David Woollcott, outlined the company’s strategy for ensuring that the retailer delivers the best possible customer experience.
Expert
Winning Appliances employs 200 people, 140 who are expert salespeople to provide a specialist appliance retail experience.
“Our staff are not casual workers or students who work part-time, they are professionally trained salespeople. Many of them have been with us for 15 years or more,” Woollcott said.
The retailer invests in staff training and personal Net Promoter scores are used as the sole incentive for every employee.
“This is not based on weekly or monthly bonuses. We find that bonuses are a short-term incentive and create bad behaviour in-store. Although it helps the financing of a business because you don’t have to pay someone until they perform, we would rather pay a professional retail sales person a good salary to have solid customer service skills, be able to answer questions and be committed to their customer.
Environment
The company strives to inspire its customers both in-store and online.
“We want to inspire you when you walk in to our space. We don’t want you to come in to a store where the products are just all lined up for you to pick one based on price. Our products are going to end up in your home and the door that is opened the most in your household is your fridge door, so you use these products all the time.
“Therefore, it is important that we get the products absolutely right for our customers because we believe our appliances enhance our customer’s lifestyles,” he said.
Event
“We have 12 stores and they work well during business hours, but we want to think about how we can use our store assets to invite and engage people after hours. We have a vast number of contacts, including builders and developers. We segment them and invite them to particular events to showcase our products, and we often do this for suppliers as well. We become the facility, the home, where we can host people for a dining experience.
“We want to get designers, architects, and foodies in the same place at the same time so Winning Appliances becomes known as the thought leaders. We are already known as thought leaders within the industry, but we want to become thought leaders in the greater retail community. Therefore, we want to create events for people to be introduced to our people and our brands,” Woollcott explained.
The retailer strives to host 200 people per store per month, or 30,000 invited visitors annually.
Experience
Woollcott said one of the most important factors in the retail experience is to “prove the promise from enquiry to delivery.”
“The Winning Appliances Net Promoter Score is currently at 76.8, which is an extraordinarily high level for customer satisfaction. It’s all about the customer experience and delivery, because a lot can go wrong at the delivery. We want to provide the best possible experience and the best possible product,” he said.