Keep listening to your customers

A few days ago, Retail Week held a special evening here in London as part of its 21st anniversary celebrations. It brought together four true “legends” of UK retailing to answer questions from today’s generation of retail leaders. The point being, that for many board-level directors running retail businesses, the downturn of the last 18 months is a completely new phenomenon. Unlike the veterans assembled before them - Lord Stanley Kalms who took his father’s photographic shop and turned it into the UK’s largest electricals retailer. Bernard Lewis who developed Chelsea Girl in the swinging sixties and then calmly killed it off in the late 1980s to launch the more contemporary and now hugely successful River Island. John Gildersleeve, the former director of Tesco and part of the team that built it to what it is today and finally, Feargal Quinn, founder of Ireland’s Superquinn.

There were war stories aplenty and if people think Ireland’s economy is tough now then Feargal reminded the audience that he launched the business in 1960 and faced more than 20 years of depressed economic conditions until the celtic tiger awoke in the 1980s.

There were countless wise words - including the advice from John Gildersleeve that in these conditions you sometimes have to be brave and back what you believe is right, just as Tesco did in the early 1990s when it began buying land that was suddenly cheap. From that famous land bank it was able to steal a march on its competitors and has kept its lead ever since.

But the most consistent message was in staying close to your customers. Feargal Quinn gave it the most lyrical twist when he quoted the gaelic phrase which translates - roughly - as “you have to listen to the sound of the river to catch the fish”. Good advice endorsed by all the “legends”. And they spoke too about how you get people to listen to their customers and deliver great service.

On a recent trip to New York, I was also reminded that sometimes great service is not even something that can be taught - its just down to great people loving what they do. At a Midtown Starbucks - and there are plenty - there was one server taking orders from the snaking queue who asked everyone their first name when they placed their order. And instead of marking up each cup with a cross against the box for whatever coffee, she also wrote the name. The reason being, when the order was ready, the barista was able to call out “tall cappuccino for Ian”. She did this all morning, every morning so that it was pretty clear that she knew all her regular customers by their first name and was able to greet them personally. Which also made for happy customers. Brilliant.