SECURITY
Nowhere is this more important than in retail. With customers keeping a watchful eye on spend and the trend for online shopping, retailer budgets being squeezed, and ever- increasing competition in the sector, and landlords needing to differentiate their offer and provide a high-quality service, the customer attraction and retention challenge is a higher priority than ever before. Retail strategies must look at how to keep the customer satisfied and encourage shoppers to come back on a daily basis, rather than every week or every month.
It is essential that the security service provider adds value to each of the three tiers in the relationship - the property owner/managing agents, the retail tenants, and the shoppers – by understanding and delivering results to meet their individual customer service needs. The security team needs to know how to act professionally and drip feed a strong sense of customer service excellence from the top all the way through to the public end-user. The security guard is a key customer- facing employee who must ensure that shoppers are greeted by skilled and efficient staff.
Ensuring that staff have the highest skills, experience and aptitudes to perform their service role to the highest standards is essential, but enhancing this with robust customer service training and other complementary training is now equally important.
Four years ago, AM Services Group (AMSG) was asked to provide security at The Lanes shopping centre in Carlisle. The team was disengaged, due to problems with recruitment, training and staff conditions under another supplier, and there was an immediate need to improve service. AMSG identified the need to not only boost security service training, but to further engage the team with their role and client by creating culture of customer service excellence. The AMSG team embarked on an ongoing programme of training to support a positive customer experience and to develop skills that would add value for the client, without
www.tomorrowsfm.com
any additional resource or budget from them. As well as ensuring visitors feel safe and comfortable, through the firm stance on zero tolerance to crime, the team provides management of fire and evacuation systems, risk assessments, accident reporting, asbestos and Legionella awareness, first aid, checks on buildings, mechanical works, and waste management equipment, latest counter terrorism and health and safety intelligence, and knowledge of equality and diversity.
Many of the team had worked at The Lanes for ten or more years. They are well-known and provide the ‘friendly face’, acting as customer service representatives, tourist information officers, and advisers for visiting contractors.
“INCREASED
AWARENESS OF MENTAL HEALTH
HAS GREATLY HELPED STAFF TO INTERACT WITH ALL VISITORS.”
The team takes real pride in contributing to the success of the centre, to customer wellbeing, and bringing the community together. Each year they provide facilities for the city centre ‘Pride’ event, the Christmas lights switch-on and the council’s regular international market events. Staff also organise and actively support a raft of charity events throughout the year.
In Middlesborough at Hillstreet Shopping Centre, all AMSG staff undergo training to become World Host accredited. However the desire to go above and beyond good customer service, and to achieve excellence, is demonstrated with the team’s recent training in dementia awareness. All staff wear Dementia Friends badges, and have allocated 36 parking bays identified with the ‘Forget Me Not’ logo, painted by AMSG staff. The increased awareness of mental health has greatly helped staff to interact with all visitors, and particularly vulnerable people.
However in Wythenshawe, Greater Manchester, customer service support is taken to the next level by AM Services Group’s Operations Manager Sam Rhodes. While many senior positions in security have traditionally been filled by those in law enforcement or with military experience, Sam, with his experience in a large UK supermarket retailer, is representative of a new breed of security industry professionals who come from diverse backgrounds and possess a wide and varied skill set. In Wythenshawe, the security team is not only the ‘go-to’ point for customer information, they handle all in- bound telephone enquiries, manage the client’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, upload retailer offers to the client’s website, and manage the electronic advertising boards.
Security contractors can take some great examples from the retail environment and add value through customer service across all the other sectors too, especially in leisure and healthcare. You will rarely see a receptionist these days. The security guard can be the first point of call; at a major UK manufacturing plant the security guard welcomes guests from the company CEO, to international clients and the cleaning team, or acting as the first point of information for a large global commercial company.
www.amservicesgroup.co.uk
Some hints and tips for providing great customer service through your security team are:
• Ensure you work to a quality customer training standards such as World Host
• Ensure that your staff are well- presented and stand out from the crowd e.g with bespoke uniform that shouts out that they are ‘happy to help’
• Ensure that your recruitment process doesn’t just focus on the right skills for the job but also on the right attitude and aptitude to provide a top class customer experience
TOMORROW’S FM | 45
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