What If My Showroom Manager is a Sourpuss?

Dear Stephen:

I run a large international company and I rarely write letters like this, but I would like your opinion on a dilemma I see in my organization. I like your column's point of view so I thought I would pose a question. My company is contemplating leaving the Merchandise Mart, like Knoll, Herman Miller and other competitors of ours have done. This decision partly comes down to dollars and cents, but we also think that our brand stands up on its own and it is time for us to get away from the "mall mentality" of design centers like the mart. This brings me to the question of our showroom manager in our flagship showroom and regional showrooms like NYC, Miami, LA-everywhere really. Our showrooms are one of the most important part of the customer experience.  We have invested in top design firms to create an exciting and welcoming environment. Complementing that is fancy espresso and coffee machines, high-end refrigerators, ice machines and kitchen equipment good enough for a professional chef - all to create an engaging experience that showcases our product and makes customers want to visit us.

Lately I have been traveling the country and walking in unannounced to our showrooms and finding either no one to greet me in the showroom or a sourpuss showroom manager who roles their eyes at having to use the state-of-the-art coffee machine. The same applies to our conference centers and meeting rooms in the showrooms. Frankly, at my own company, I am often embarrassed by the first person I see when I walk in the door. They all simply seem to have a bad attitude and a negative vibe. I also tried calling the showrooms and it is the same negativity over the phone! I started complaining to our regional managers who run these offices and I cannot get a straight answer. It seems they (we) are not training these people well. Yes, they are "showroom managers" but at the end of the day, it must be their job to wear a smile on their face and fetch the orders of our customers, be it coffee, a product or even lunch!

I get a better vibe and great feeling by walking into Restoration Hardware and being greeted, than I do our high-end brand. What is wrong? These are tenured employees and I suspect that is part of the problem. We of course pay them well so there should be no complaints there. Yes, I know that they are multi-tasking and balancing a lot but it is imperative that our customers be delighted when they walk through the door!

Signed:

The Boss

Dear Boss:

Very few managers at your level appreciate how important the customer experience is. In fact, it seems to me that furniture was one of the last industries to realize that such a thing as "customer experience" even existed.   Manufacturers always rent fancy showrooms; they may have a kitchen suitable for a 3-star Michelin Chef and they have great sales people but as you get further down the ladder many companies continue to retain employees who have not been properly trained for the present and future of our industry. In short, this is a trend I have noticed. Many showroom managers and even sales assistants are simply not up to snuff.

Back to the basics: It's obvious that someone should always be at the reception desk to greet people, especially in the flagship showroom. Smiles and eye contact would be nice! Here is a question for you though; do you need to retrain a showroom manager who is just phoning in the job or have you given the showroom managers ten jobs to do instead of one? I feel like I keep on meeting showroom managers who wear the hats of receptionist, sales assistant and make-shift caterer all at once. A project manager cannot also be a showroom manager. Start by examining if you have enough employees present to maintain the image that you believe your brand deserves. If your customer experience is going to be truly great, you might need more than one person behind a reception desk to service that fancy showroom of yours. When one person is stretched too thin with a broad job description, something is going to need to fall by the wayside, you need to be sure that this is not the customer experience. At the end of the day though, you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. If you are going to bring on a showroom manager, you better make well sure that this person knows how to make and keep your customers happy!

Where do I recommend my client find the best showrooms managers today when they are recruiting on their own? I say go to luxury brand retail stores and find the best smiling face and hire them for your showroom. It's a lot easier to teach a person the basics of office furniture than it is to teach them customer service and apply a new persona to them. And as far as who you have working now start the "performance review" process. Give them a chance to improve in 30/60/90 days or whatever your company uses as its protocol. Don't stop there either! Work your way across the country and apply performance reviews to people in every position. If the showroom manager is slacking off, who's to say that the sales manager is not doing so as well? If you're unhappy with your employees, it might be time to clean house!

Here is one other tip: I see plenty of manufacturers changing the old fashioned "Showroom Manager" title into "Customer Experience Manager". Readers of the column know that I am not big on semantics but there is something to be said about this change in particular. If your job title literally has "Customer Experience" in the name, it's going to make you far more likely to take that experience seriously.

At the end of the day, your salespeople need to see you are serious about the customer experience and so do your customers. This does not just mean the people your customers see in person it is also how people are treated on the telephone and everywhere in every way. Hey, it is Thanksgiving season and do you know what your people sound like they need to be thankful for? Their job! Now let them be thankful to keep it.

And by the way, even you, Mr Boss man, should know how to work that fancy espresso machine.

Signed,

Stephen