Mary Portas Secret Shopper episode three: The customer service lessons

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So much so that last night’s ‘victim’ – mobile phone shops – was completely interchangeable with the previous week’s target – the sofa warehouse industry.

 

Common factors were the similarly bland shop environments, the confusion marketing which makes it difficult to compare like-for-like products and services, the commission driven hard sell and the bloke-ish environment. Likewise customers in both programmes left with something they didn’t go in to buy having spent more money than they intended. The only difference is they probably used all the features of their sofa.

 

It was even more familiar to me as the same, unreconstructed business that I spent nearly two decades in, and left more than five years ago. A business which placed a great deal of emphasis on the presentation and promotion of the technology and significantly less on understanding customer needs and staff training.

 

Sadly Mary fell into many of the same traps in her attempt to improve the customer experience at the 50-store Fonehouse, owned by former rock musician Clive Bailey

 

She redesigned the poor performing Fonehouse store in Angel, Islington in a way that differentiated it from other mobile phone outlets – and certainly the company’s customer experience needed improving. It was far from the ‘Funhouse’ Clive believed it to be. But she left the key issue of staff training largely untouched.

 

And she came so tantalisingly close to breaking the mould.

 

 

The sub plot in last night’s episode was the differing attitudes of the franchise holder and top salesman, the Lamborghini-driving ‘H’, who introduced himself as simply ‘The Best’ and Matt who worked in the Angel store, where his dad just happened to be manager. During undercover filming Matt had made a name for himself by admitting. ‘I am not exactly good with phones’.

 

Berating all the staff for failing to listen to customers, Mary pitched them onto the beauty counter of a department store and watched them struggle as they tried to sell products before understanding the needs of the customers.

 

All that is except for Matt, who freed from the pressure of a hard sell environment, began to ask the right questions.

 

 

Matt, who admitted to being petrified and intimidated by retail’s headmistress was, she said, typical of many customer service staff in being young and lacking confidence. Yet she did little more to help him than getting rid of the counter that separated him from his customers. As in earlier programmes this was a key point missed.

 

 

Matt certainly seemed to be happier in his new, consultative environment and, as earlier in the series, sales were up in the new Portas–designed store. How much of that was down to customers feeling less pressured and more at home?

 

Meanwhile ‘H’ who had admitted to Mary that he was delighted to meet someone almost his equal remained unconvinced. He led a revolt of franchisees who operated all but five of Fonehouse’s shops. His position was that only men know about ‘techie stuff’ like phones. His job was to impart that knowledge to customers, and he knew what was best for them. As the programme progressed, he looked far less than the top dog and more like a lost dog, a throwback.

 

The tussle between Mary and H gave a tension to the programme but was ultimately disappointing. In a 20 second clip at the death, H, who previously had declared the whole idea “cr**”, capitulated and agreed to the redesign of his store.

 

Had some deal been done under the soon not be there counter?

 

I was left with the feeling that a better programme went unmade. How H, the unreconstructed archetypal salesman, fared in his ‘Portasised’ store.

 

Duncan Baker is director of strategic marketing and communications at the Institute of Customer Service.