How to evaluate the quality of the customer service in your chain?

Today, one of the most serious problems for retailers is the low quality of service. It is a well-known fact that the price is not always the decisive factor that makes customers return to your store.

According to studies by the independent consulting company Defaqto: " 55% of customers would pay extra to guarantee a better service".

Cashiers play a special role in providing quality customer service.

The quality of their work affects the loyalty of customers and the reputation of the entire store. Accordingly, the conversion and the value of profit will largely depend on this particular group of employees.

You can assess the level of professionalism of cashiers and highlight problematic moments in their work using Key Performance Indicators (KPI - key performance indicators).

KPI of cashiers in retail

Before conducting an analysis, you should understand which indicators allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of the cashiers' work and which of them should be given special attention.

In the reports of the analytical platform for retailers BI.Datawiz, there are a significant number of KPIs for cashier workers. Therefore, we will group the indicators:

• Quality indicators:
  • Fulfillment of service standards:
    • Average check position speed;
    • Average check speed;
    • Number of checks;
    • Average number of checks per day.
  • The efficiency of using the cashier's working time:
    • Number of hours worked;
    • Number of days worked.
• Financial indicators:
  • Sales value indicators:
    • Average turnover per day;
    • Turnover;
    • Profit;
    • % of LP checks (% of checks with a special price for regular customers).
  • Quantity sales indicators:
    • Qty of sales;
    • Average qty of sales per day.

The recommended KPIs list can be adjusted by the specifics of your chain. You can evaluate indicators in dynamics or compare them with intranet standards.

The sequence of KPI assessment for cashiers: a step-by-step guide

The effectiveness of the analysis always depends on how correctly all the analytical steps and procedures are performed. Therefore, for a better and more comprehensive assessment of cashiers' work, we recommend you perform the following steps.

Step 1. Analysis of the quality indicators of the cashier's work efficiency

Quality of customer service is the biggest challenge that retailers face today. To analyze the quality of work of cashiers, it is necessary to calculate the following indicators:

• Average receipt position speed;
• Average receipt speed;
• Number of receipts;
• Average number of receipts per day (week, month);
• Number of days worked;
• Number of hours worked.

At the same time, it will be useful to form a rating of cashiers according to the most important quality metric - "Average receipt position speed".

What do you figure out at this step?

The most important goal of this step is to get an overall view of how well the chain cashiers serve your customers, and who is the worst among them.

For each cashier, you'll realize:

• how much time they spend on each item on the check;
• what is the average speed per check;
• how many checks are issued per month or per day;
• how many days and hours were worked per month.

In addition, you can find out the "weaknesses" in the work of the cash register employees in your chain and decide to eliminate them in the future.

Step 2. Analysis of the financial indicators of cashiers' performance 

To assess the financial KPI of the cashier, you should separately analyze the value and quantity indicators of sales:

• Turnover;
• Average turnover per day (week, month);
• Profit;
• % of LP checks.

To obtain a rating of cashiers, you should sort the data by the indicator - "Average turnover per day".

In the course of such an analysis, you will find out:

• what value of turnover was "served" by each cashier during the month;
• what average value of turnover per day was processed by the cashier;
• how profitable and marginal goods were sold by the cashier;
• % of served clients registered in the loyalty program. On the one hand, this indicator reveals the conversion of regular customers, but on the other hand - it affects the decrease in profits due to the application of special (bonus) prices for this group of customers.

When evaluating Quantity sales indicators (Qty of sales, Average Qty of sales per day), it is appropriate to supplement them with indicators Fulfillment of service standards (Number of checks, Average number of checks per day). This will allow you to form more reasoned conclusions about the work of cashiers and understand how many customers generated the sales metrics. 

Step 3. Comparison of "financial" and "qualitative" ratings of cashiers

Comparison of the ratings of cashiers by financial and quality KPI will allow you to determine whether professionalism in customer service and compliance with the work schedule are the necessary conditions for achieving high financial performance.

As practice shows, the maximum length of hours worked does not guarantee the achievement of the best financial performance. In the future, it is possible to assess cashiers only according to those groups of indicators that are priorities for management.

Conclusions

To carry out such an analysis quickly and without errors, we recommend using the "Effectiveness of cashiers" report on the BI.Datawiz platform for retailers.

This report will allow you to visually compare the results of the work of store (chain) employees in different KPI groups, as well as identify leaders and outsiders among them. In parallel, this will make it possible to identify gaps in the cashiers' performance and take appropriate measures in time:

• reward the best employees, provide them with bonuses (benefits) and introduce moral encouragement;
• apply fines or warnings to outsiders;
• set "benchmarks" in the work for all cashiers of the store/chain based on the best indicators already achieved;
• to improve the professionalism of the staff - join training courses, and motivational events.

The quality of work of employees, who contact customers, is the key to the success of your business!