Bad employee experience, retail store goes down

Last week, South African media reported on how a record store chain has only one outlet left which is due to shut its doors soon. Not itself different to global trends of brick-and-mortar yielding to newer tastes in media consumption methods, I believe that the story of this store’s demise extends beyond this single reasoning.

I once worked for a rival record store or “music shop” as a sales assistant selling CDs while a student. My experiences were both exciting (I connected to hundreds of fellow music fans daily) and extremely frustrating because of the working environment. These retailers worked quite similarly so I’ll give my account of what I believe was a contribution factor to the shut down: broken customer experiences due to mediocre employee experience.

Carrot-or-stick management style

Most of the staff complement consisted of underpaid semi-permanent who had hopped from one mall job to another so were accustomed to what was to me an unsettling feeling of being led through a series of rewards and punishments (mostly the latter).

Needless to say, motivation to perform beyond what would successfully avoid the beating stick was minimal so seeing staff avoid customer contact (if you’ve been to a Game store, you know exactly what I’m talking about) or doing the least possible to assist was quite the norm.

These behaviours did not go unnoticed by customers.

No one (with authority) would listen

As frontline staff, we were made painfully aware of the store’s shortcomings as observed and told to us by customers. We possessed more useful customer feedback than anyone else in the organisation but the hierarchical structures and invisible upper management layer made it impossible to share these insights to any decision-makers. Store managers seemed to have their hands tied, delegated to resource-heavy micromanagement and ensuring staff didn’t contribute to mysterious shrinkage — behaviour I’ve learnt could be rooted in “stick it to management” mentality. Some of my then-colleagues were equally frustrated by the situation were not nearly as upset as to quit as I did and without any solid plans for my future.

Where did the passion go?

There was a time when working at a music retailer required vast knowledge of this great art. There was even an in-depth music knowledge test and cultural-fit interview to boot, which I enjoyed as I felt I had earned my place and was working with peers. This practice died out as they seemed to hire anyone willing to be underpaid and withstanding of a controlling environment.

The other aspect was nourishing relationships with customers which is where I believe was a vital ingredient to the physical store’s value. Online music communities have yet to match the type of connections possible offline, of being able to engage in friendly debate and share rare discoveries from your personal vault that certain people had to earn and you would make special orders for them (there was a time when people even lent me their own music that they brought to the store for my enjoyment!). Music may have largely become a commodity but these types of exchanges were made more meaningful than a mere purchase.

A person that is passionate about serving the extreme music fan community has little issue providing a decent service to the majority of customers who wanted a quick in-and-out, smooth sales experience.

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As an early adopter of technology I was very aware of the changing times and inevitability of the store facing serious adversity. Could the things I’ve stated above have helped them avoid this fate? Perhaps not but they may have discovered opportunity on how they could change their relationship to music fans to create value for themselves and their customers by engaging employees as more than a necessary evil. The disparaging employee conditions in no small part contributed to a dissatisfied customer base.