Leadership and Customer Experience at a Retail Boutique

Introduction to the Interviews

The following two interviews were conducted at Sandro Boutique in South Coast Plaza. Each interviewee was asked the same five structured questions about retail leadership and the customer shopping experience. Interpretive notations follow each interview to reflect on the quality and candor of the responses.

Interview One: Assistant Manager Perspective

The first interview is with the assistant manager of Sandro Boutique at South Coast Plaza.

Leadership is very important. Everything that you see and experience in the store comes from leadership. There are different types of leadership — the people at head office for Sandro, the people who run South Coast Plaza, and then the leadership right here at the store: my boss and myself. We provide the vision, the guidance, and the direction. So there are a lot of leadership tasks, and they can be divided among all the different people who occupy leadership positions.

I do not have the vision for the store — that comes from head office — and I don't really get to choose who the target market is either. But in my role, I lead the sales and service team in their daily work. So a lot of the in-store experience is my responsibility. I have to envision what the customer will experience when they come through the door, and then I have to make that vision a reality. I train people, I explain what they need to do, and I do this from the perspective of the customer, so that everybody is aware of what the expectations are when someone walks through that door. Leadership has everything to do with the shopping experience. I have to ensure that everything I want to happen with respect to the shopping experience is actually happening, and if it is not, I have to figure out how to fix it.

Having been in this business for a few years, there are kind of two ways to answer this. On one hand, customers are looking for something unique each time — there is no singular generic customer. Each one is different, and that is always important to remember. But the other way to look at it is that customers are always looking for perfection. They don't think about leadership that much, really, unless they feel that it isn't there.

Sandro is a recognized brand. We're all over the world, and customers definitely have high expectations. So when someone comes in, they expect that the store will be well-organized, that the staff will be enthusiastic and attentive, and that any problem that arises gets fixed right away. They will notice when things are not working well. So my job is to make sure that they notice nothing — meaning there are no problems or issues. If you went back and asked the customer, they would say, "That store must have been well-run because my experience there was perfect."

We make it happen. As a customer, you do not see a lot of what leaders are doing because most of it takes place behind the scenes, even when the store is closed. It's almost like theater — you do all this work and then the customer only sees the finished product of months of hard work. The expectation is a high level of service, great fashions, and that people will find something they want in our stores. And it all comes down to a lot of hard work behind the scenes.

Other than perfection? Customers look for clothes and service, and that is pretty much what we need to deliver. The clothes are basic, classic, stylish. That comes from head office leadership — how they stay on top of trends and anticipate the latest fashions. In terms of my role, part of that is ordering inventory to make sure that we are not out of the things people are looking for. This is a hard part of the job because you have to know about forecasting. With staff, it is about finding the right people and giving them the training they need to be their best and give the best service. So a lot of the expectations customers have come down to the things that we as leaders do behind the scenes.

Current leadership is working fairly well. The company is doing well, and this store in particular is doing well. But that's by design. There are leaders above me, above my boss, all the way back to head office. They measure things — sales, customer satisfaction, profits. So they know when someone is not doing a great job at leadership, and when they identify that, it is the responsibility of leaders higher up to address that issue. The whole chain of leadership exists to ensure that all people within the organization are performing at their best. Right now we are doing very well at my store level, and that makes a contribution to the company as a whole. Sandro is still growing.

This interview went well. The first interviewee was open and honest in their responses. They did not say anything notably negative, which is probably the biggest weakness. In my observations, there was evidence of things like staff being placed on the store floor before completing training. So there is some discrepancy between the way the assistant manager portrayed management's work and what my own assessment of that work was. Still, I felt the interview was otherwise quite honest, and that I was receiving straightforward answers.

Interview Two: Sales Associate Perspective

The second interview is with a clerk at the store. She has worked in several similar stores, and so it seemed she would provide useful perspective on leadership in the retail setting.

Leadership is something that we see as employees. Leaders have to handle the more business-oriented side of things, but they also have to create the right atmosphere in the store. I think they have a pretty hard job. For me, when I come into work I get into a happy frame of mind, but that is because they have really made this a good place to work. I have done a few jobs like this, and Sandro is the best. They treat you well, they train you. You always know what you are expected to do, and they help make you better rather than running you down when you make a mistake.

I think that becomes reflected in how all the staff approach coming into work. We like being here. So when you are talking about what the customer sees and how leadership affects that, the leaders are the people who not only make all of this work but who really set the tone for the energy and good vibes in the store. The customer sees a smiling associate, but some of that is down to leadership, because they make it so that people actually want to be here.

That's a funny question. Before I worked in the business I never really thought about how a good shopping experience happened. I might have thought, "Oh, that sales associate is having a really bad day," assuming it came down to the individual person. But I guess some of that is about creating the right atmosphere for everybody to be at their best. So if a customer actually sat down to think about it — and they probably wouldn't — they would recognize that a really well-run store delivers a pretty good experience and great service, with nothing really going wrong. They might think that leadership has something to do with that.

I don't know about anybody above the store level, but I know that the managers here are great people. They are a lot of fun to work with. They started out the same as the rest of us, so they really relate to what our jobs are like. You know that if there is a problem, you can talk to them and they will do whatever they can to fix it. They have an enthusiasm that rubs off on everyone else, but they also have a lot of knowledge.

I worked in another company's store and the manager was someone who had never worked with customers before. He didn't get it. The whole staff hated the environment because his expectations were completely unrealistic. Sandro is smarter about this — they take people right off the floor and develop them into managers. I like it here because of that. There is a level of mutual understanding among everybody, and that ends up reflected in the customers' experience because the service level is really high and problems are handled very efficiently.

Sandro is fine. It's nice fashions — the whole Parisian classic style. Customers want to feel like they're walking around California with a bit more class and elegance. So that's the whole Sandro brand. People want good service. They want to be impressed when they come in to buy something. I don't think that is always easy to achieve. Some people can be a little difficult or rude, but your job is to make sure that everyone gets the same great experience no matter what, because that is what helps the company. And if you are good at it, this is a company where you might be able to move up, so of course that makes you want to be good at your job.

Current leadership is good. They are great people. Everybody who works here is really happy, and that makes it a great place to come to. The customers seem to like it as well. For a store like this, we really do not get a lot of complaints. Some stores get a difficult crowd where there is always something wrong, but Sandro does a pretty good job of making people happy the first time. I would call that good leadership. You aspire to be like these people, and that's what a good leader should do. You never hear the managers complaining about their bosses either, so you know there is pretty good communication all the way through from the higher-ups as well.

This interview felt somewhat more guarded. The second interviewee is not in a managerial position and seemed hesitant to say anything critical about management. The sense I got was that she was very pro-Sandro, and while this might be because she is genuinely happy in her job, there may also have been some guarded responses because she was unsure how much she could trust me with full honesty. Off the record, I might have been able to get more from this interviewee. The interview was also probably limited by the fact that this person has little experience with the managerial perspective. It was generally a good interview, but where the first interviewee understood the questions quite easily, I was less confident that the second interviewee did.

Theme One: Atmosphere

The first theme to emerge from the interviews is the role that leadership plays in creating the right atmosphere. Both interviewees addressed questions related to the shopping experience, and there is a clear underlying theory: a better shopping experience allows for increased sales. People will shop more, stay longer, bring their friends, and tell their friends. Both respondents made the point that a great shopping experience is shaped significantly by the sales associates, since they are the ones who interact directly with customers. This can become a negative experience under poor leadership, because staff do not feel supported or valued. But when leadership is good, the staff are well-trained and genuinely want to be there.

This is especially important in retail, where many employees are young and the position may be temporary — making the environment engaging and fun matters. When the customer base is also young, a positive atmosphere is something that makes people want to return to the store and spend more. Research consistently links positive service environments to customer retention and repeat spending.

Leadership clearly plays a big role in creating that environment. As the first interviewee pointed out, some of it comes from head office — the fashions, the store layout — but issues related to staff, such as who gets hired and how well they are trained, are handled at the store level. Leadership exists at different levels, and each level has its role. The first major theme, therefore, is that the shopping experience is affected by the staff, and the staff are shaped by leadership, which sets the emotional tone for the store. A good leader creates a positive environment for staff, and that translates into a positive environment for customers. There is a clear link between staff, customers, leadership, and sales.