"Retailers exhibit highly conflicting behavior when it comes to their workforce," said Nikki Baird, Managing Director of RSR and author of the report. "On the one hand, they say that employees are critical to their customer service strategies, and have become even more so over the last three years. On the other hand, they continue to under-invest in the tools that could help turn front-line employees into real assets to the business."
RSR's new report identifies specialisation of the workforce as a major strategy that retailers are pursuing to enable higher levels of customer service. By providing more specialised service, retailers look to address increasing customer power in the face of the overwhelming amount of product and competitive information that consumers have access to as they shop.
"Does this mean that we'll all have great shopping experiences this holiday season? Unfortunately, no," Baird commented. "To date, customer-centric strategies have primarily been focused on creating a store assortment that is tailored to the demographics of a store's customers. Before frontline employees can be an effective part of these strategies, retailers need to move away from treating their workforce as a tool of customer service and more as an asset that, when invested in and managed well, responds in kind - happy employees that make for happy customers."
According to the report, larger retailers (those with more than 10,000 employees) are leading the charge in transforming workforce management from the purely tactical activity of scheduling and time and attendance, into a strategic weapon in the battle for customers through plans to deploy labour analytics and sales and labour budgeting, alongside recruiting tools and performance management workflows.
To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, click here or follow this link: http://www.retailsystemsresearch.com/_document/summary/346
For more information, visit: www.rsrresearch.com
Source: eMediaWire.com
