US Store Operations & Human Resources
A retail jewellery sale normally requires face-to-face interaction between the customer and the sales associate, during which the items being considered for purchase are removed from the display cases and presented one at a time with their respective qualities explained to the customer. Consumer surveys indicate that a key factor in the retail purchase of jewellery is the customer’s confidence in the sales associate.
Customer satisfaction
A customer satisfaction index covering 12 criteria was introduced during 2005/06 in certain trial stores and was expanded to all stores during 2006/07. Each store is benchmarked against others in its district, region and across the division based on customer feedback. The scores are reported on a monthly basis, highlighting areas of good performance and those for improvement.
Training
Providing knowledgeable and responsive customer service is a priority, and is regarded by management as a key point of differentiation. It is believed that highly trained store sales staff, with the necessary product knowledge to communicate the quality, attributes and competitive value of the merchandise, are critical to the success of the business. The development of the customer satisfaction index has improved the division’s ability to design and implement its training programmes by identifying areas of strength and opportunity.
The US division’s substantial training and incentive programmes, for all levels of store staff, are designed to play an important role in recruiting, educating and retaining qualified store staff. The preferred practice is to promote managers at all levels from within the business in order to maintain continuity and familiarity with the division’s procedures.
Retail sales personnel are encouraged to become certified diamontologists by graduating from a comprehensive correspondence course provided by the Diamond Council of America. Over 50% of the division’s full time sales staff who have completed their probationary period are certified diamontologists or are training to become certified. All store managers are required to be thus qualified. The number of certified diamontologists employed by the US division increased by 9% in 2006/07. Employees often continue their professional development through completion of further courses on gemstones.
Goals and incentives
All store employees are set daily performance standards and commit to goals. Sales contests and incentive programmes also reward the achievement of specific targets with travel or additional cash awards. In addition to sales-based incentives, bonuses are paid to store managers based on store contribution and to district managers based on the achievement of key performance objectives. In 2006/07 approximately 23% (2005/06: 24%) of store personnel remuneration was commission and incentive-based. US head office bonuses are based on the performance of the division against predetermined annual profit targets. Promotion and salary decisions for principally non-management head office personnel are based on performance against service level and production goals; for managers they are based on annual objectives and performance against individual job requirements.
Store manager
Each store is led by a store manager who is responsible for various store level operations including overall store sales and branch level variable costs; certain personnel matters such as recruitment and training; and customer service. Administrative matters, including purchasing, merchandising, payroll, preparation of training materials, credit operations and divisional operating procedures are consolidated at divisional level. This allows the store manager to focus on those tasks that can be best executed at a store level, while enabling the business to benefit from economies of scale in administration and to help ensure consistency of execution across all the stores.
Recruitment, retention and promotion
Although staff recruitment is primarily the responsibility of store and district managers, a central recruitment function supplies field recruiters from its US head office in Akron, Ohio. Methods such as internet recruitment are used to provide stores with a larger number of better-qualified candidates from which to select new staff.
Management believes that the retention and recruitment of highly-qualified and well-trained staff in the US head office is essential to supporting the stores. A comprehensive in-house curriculum supplements specific job training and emphasises the importance of the working partnership between stores and the head office.
A key motivator for all staff, and in particular for store based employees, is the division’s practice of internal promotion. All district managers and Vice Presidents of Regional Operations have been a store manager within the division.