Open up your retail eyes
Ask retailers who their real customers are, and most of them will profess to know the correct answer, says Tim Ogle, founder and marketing director of customer research and analysis company Retail Eyes UK. The reality is, however, that many methods of customer research that are widely employed by retailers and operators today are clumsy and primitive.
“Often, knowledge of the customer is based on research that is outdated,” explains Ogle. “I spoke to one ceo recently who said, ‘we know what our customers think, we did some research six years ago,’ when in reality things change considerably and retail is fickle and fashionable.”
Retail Eyes UK was founded in 2003 as a subsidiary of an American mystery shopping and customer research company, Retail Eyes. In its fourth year of operation, the company now has 45 British retail and service clients.
Mystery shopping has something of a mixed reputation, but the Retail Eyes team is here to prove that when done properly, the exercise can be extremely fruitful for retailers. “We’re able to demonstrate a lot more tangible benefits through the types of programmes that we run, with proof of return on investment,” says Ogle.
The difference, he notes, is in the shopper. Rather than employing a small team of professional shoppers who are sent into pre-scripted situations where they would not otherwise be, Retail Eyes can call on any of its 110,000 “real” shoppers to provide qualitative feedback. This is particularly relevant to the travel retail industry, as it is increasingly difficult to get access to airside unless you are a genuine traveller.
The first step for Retail Eyes on acquiring a new client is to qualify, support or disprove their customer base. “Once we’ve agreed who their target market is, we’re able to profile the visits and the measurements by using those specific consumers.”
The company then identfies suitable candidates from its vast community of shoppers to go in and assess the business in a natural scenario. Jeremy Michael, account director at Retail Eyes UK, knows that picking the right shoppers is key. “The people we send in have to be comfortable and fit in so they’re not spotted,” he says. Of course, this depends on the client; Retail Eyes works with restaurant chain Chez Gerard in both central London and Heathrow T3. “In London, the customer has to be someone who is used to spending £85 on a meal for two. But Chez Gerard also has an outlet at Hetahrow T3, so there we might use somebody on their way to catch a flight and [who] wants to pop in for breakfast,” Michael explains.
The alternative for travel retailers is to use their own employees to check up on the service, product offer or merchandise. Ogle thinks this approach is flawed. “If you’re limited to staff or airside employees at Heathrow, for instance, you’re never going to get a balanced overview of the service or the products in question.
“Many retailers who carry out self assessments are missing out on the genuine customers – it’s great sending a sample shopper to see if there’s enough stock on the shelf, or whether the product was right in my eye as I went through the entrance, and whether you’re wearing a name-badge, and if the tills are open and the light’s on at the front there. That’s all great, but that’s really about standards and
presentation, which is purely an operational thing. What you can’t get is the feedback from the real customers and there’s nothing more valuable than understanding how real customers perceive your business,” Ogle explains.
Retail Eyes, then, works on the premise that travel operators have historically been unable to listen to their real consumers due to the nature of the closed environment. Some retailers run customer service checks in-house, but as Retail Eyes’ account director, Jeremy Michael, points out, this approach can mean key problems are not spotted.
“Some retailers might have a certain poster in a certain place and they would ask their staff to check the poster was there, and they could do that, but that doesn’t answer the question ‘did most customers see it?’. Ten out of ten internal staff might say ‘yes it was there’, but then if they actually asked the customers whether or not they saw it, maybe one out of ten would say ‘yes’ – which means it’s in the wrong place,” says Michael.
The majority of Retail Eyes’ customers are domestic UK retailers and service providers, but many now have travel retail outlets, such as WH Smith, HMV and Hamleys. “There’s a lot of crossover from high-street to airside and it’s normally an extension of that. What we’ve been able to do is facilitate a continuation of those programmes airside,” says Ogle.
The company currently undertakes customer research and analysis for currency exchange service provider Travelex, as well as easyJet, Choice Hotels, and airside mystery shopping for popular British high street chains such as HMV and Boots, among others. Retail Eyes is also currently talking to several airport operators, details of which cannot yet be disclosed. As most players in the retail industry know, accurate customer research is notoriously difficult to find, but Ogle believes that his company has the right formula to generate reliable, and therefore useful, results. The phrase ‘mystery shopping’ might still evoke images of consumers in disguise, pretending to shop while wielding a hidden scorecard and pencil, but Retail Eyes is proposing a more comprehensive approach to customer assessment. This approach goes further than ‘checklist’ research.
“Historically, mystery shopping is about measurement,” says Ogle. “It’s about going into a store with almost a mental checklist – did they wear a name badge? Were these four items available? Did they smile when they took your money? Did they say ‘would you like anything else like that?’”
This ‘score-card’ approach does not give retailers the whole picture, argues Ogle. “We’re more focused on collecting qualitative feedback and actually understanding customers’ feelings and experiences in more detail, rather than just ticking some boxes.”
Jeremy Michael argues that this is the sort of valuable information that companies are very keen to
find out. “When you speak to directors of companies you realise that what they really want to know
is, ‘what do our customers think of us?’”
Of course different clients do have different objectives, admits Michael. “I was talking last year to the BAA duty free shops and their big issue was whether the right items are right in the particular areas for traffic, so as the customers come through it’s vital that everything is in exactly the right place to attract their eyes. Whereas for restaurants like Chez Gerard it’s all about speed of service and being friendly,” he explains.
Whatever the company, it is clear that now – arguably more than ever before – is the time for travel
retailers and operators to get back in touch with the real customer. With the majority of consumers still confused about security restrictions and allowances, retailers are realising that listening to consumers is just as important as talking to them.
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