I was in a store the other day and saw a box of Cracker Jacks and a thought came to me about the Loss Prevention System, Inc. (LPSI) Free Loss Prevention Calculator. Now I had better go back a bit for some readers. Cracker Jacks today aren’t like they used to be. A LONG time ago you used to get some little trinket surprise in the box. You never knew what the surprise would be but you knew something would be in the bottom of the box. We enjoyed the snack but many of us also bought the treat for the joy of the hidden treasure. In a manner of speaking LPSI offers a kind of surprise to retailers when they use the Loss Prevention ROI Calculator and learn that Loss Prevention can be free.
When a store owner starts to look into the purchase of a Loss Prevention anti-theft system it is often the result of high shortage numbers primarily attributable to theft. There are also owners or managers who think about purchasing a security system but are reluctant to do so out of an unfounded concern over what a system would cost them. Sadly, some of these owners have looked in all the wrong places for the best value. They get prices for systems and they may get prices on tags but they have no idea what they are purchasing and no one is explaining the value of what they are investing in. By visiting the LPSI website and their Loss Prevention ROI Calculator, a storeowner is going to be in for a pleasant surprise. Just like finding that hidden toy in a box of Cracker Jacks, the owner is going to find out that the ROI Calculator is a Free Loss Prevention Calculator. There is no charge to use it, no pushy salesman with a pop-up chat box trying to interact with you just a calculator that requires a few key pieces of information.
The second surprise comes when the user of the calculator learns that shortage in the store can be reduced by almost half with a Sensormatic security system installation. The calculator estimates a system will reduce your losses due to theft from 1.2% to .65% (which approximates average national shortage figures). Surprise number three is when you learn that over a period of time a retail anti-theft system will pay for itself. You read that correctly, the amount of money a system will save in shortage reduction will eventually pay for the system and the Free Loss Prevention Calculator will tell you how long it will take to do so. No boxed candy snack is going to give you three surprises!
And to borrow a phrase from those as seen on the television commercials, “Wait there’s more!” After you use the Free Loss Prevention Calculator and decide you might be interested in a Sensormatic system, a visit to LPSI’s home page reveals that if you purchase a Loss Prevention System from them you get more than just a Sensormatic tower and installation. LPSI includes free, live Loss Prevention training for the life of your Sensormatic system when you purchase a system from them. You ALSO receive free training on how to use your Sensormatic system when you make the purchase from them. A system requires more than just haphazardly putting labels on merchandise or walking up to someone who has set off an alarm and asking if they have something they didn’t pay for. There are right and wrong ways to do things and LPSI will teach your team the best methods for optimizing your system.
Purchasing something and getting a bonus item with it that was not expected is always a pleasant surprise. You may be in the market for a new anti-theft system just to get control over inventory shortage. Before you search the internet for a dealer who may not be interested in more than selling you a tower and tags take a look at the LPSI’s Loss Prevention ROI Calculator and their website. Learn how they are interested in more than selling you a tower, they are interested in the success of your business. Their commitment to their clients makes them stand far above other Loss Prevention consultation businesses and even Loss Prevention system dealers. Check out their website today and find out why they are an award winning company in the field of Loss Prevention.
Get more information on the Free Loss Prevention Calculator, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 today.
Sensormatic Customer Counting Systems
Have you ever wanted effective customer counting systems in your retail? How about incorporating retail traffic counting into a Sensormatic security system? We can do it. In fact, given the low cost it is simply not smart to leave it out of a Sensormatic system.
But, what will it do for you? We have a long time customer with eight stores that incorporated retail traffic counting into the systems we installed. Besides the obvious like counting traffic by time of day, day of the week, etc., a number of other surprise benefits arose. Our customer told me that in the first year the people counting portion of the system saved them in excess of $100K!
They found that there were stores that were opening too early/late and some that were closing to early/late. They combined our people counting systems data with their sales data and these revelations jumped out at them. They made adjustments to the hours in individual stores and their sales climbed significantly.
They also found that they were better able to adjust staffing needs to accommodate customer traffic. It makes sense. Why have staff on the floor when the customer traffic is low? On the other hand if you know there is a spike every Wednesday between 2:00 PM and 3:45 PM, you would want to make sure you have enough folks on the floor to accommodate.
But you may be saying to yourself now “I have my sales data to tell me that”. Sales data is only a piece of the puzzle. Sales data tells you how many customers made a purchase. It does not tell you how many lost opportunities there were because customers could not get assistance, make a decision or find something. On top of that, we know that properly trained staff will have add-on sales. “I think this scarf would look lovely with the blouse you picked out”. So we have more opportunities to increase the sales with the customers we have already attracted to the store. That is the benefit of having the right people on the sales floor at the right time.
All of this leads us to the big elephant in the room, payroll! We know that our largest expense tends to be labor. A retail traffic counting system will help you to reduce or use your payroll dollars much more efficiently as I have demonstrated above.
Sensormatic systems have retail traffic counting built in on many models. You will receive automated reports and can access the system dashboard at any time. Most Sensormatic systems have a built in network card to attach to your high speed router. The software monitoring is called SMaaS which stands for Shrink Management as a Service. This cloud based loss prevention service is designed to help enhance your stores productivity, increase reliability and boost system performance.
Additional features of SMaaS include the ability for you to have the systems power themselves up/down to a lower rate of energy consumption. Over a year’s period of time that will add up. You can also access real time data involving Sensormatic systems alarms, maintenance issues and much more. Here is the full list of features:
• Will help ensure reliability and optimal Sensormatic system performance with 24/7/365 remote monitoring and management of connected EAS equipment health statuses. This monitoring is provided by Sensormatic.
• Correct equipment issues in a proactive way with notification of service required to rectify problems
• Gather insights to help make effective data-driven decisions that will impact your shrink and bottom line results
• You are emailed notifications when your systems activity exceed a predetermined threshold so you know when an exception has occurred
• Minimize your Sensormatic systems downtime to help you spend less time managing
• Highly scalable and customizable cloud infrastructure and EAS event reporting
Contact Loss Prevention Systems today or call 1-770-426-0547 to learn more about Sensormatic Security Systems, retail traffic counting, people counting systems and customer counting systems.
Have you ever wanted effective customer counting systems in your retail? How about incorporating retail traffic counting into a Sensormatic security system? We can do it. In fact, given the low cost it is simply not smart to leave it out of a Sensormatic system.
But, what will it do for you? We have a long time customer with eight stores that incorporated retail traffic counting into the systems we installed. Besides the obvious like counting traffic by time of day, day of the week, etc., a number of other surprise benefits arose. Our customer told me that in the first year the people counting portion of the system saved them in excess of $100K!
They found that there were stores that were opening too early/late and some that were closing to early/late. They combined our people counting systems data with their sales data and these revelations jumped out at them. They made adjustments to the hours in individual stores and their sales climbed significantly.
They also found that they were better able to adjust staffing needs to accommodate customer traffic. It makes sense. Why have staff on the floor when the customer traffic is low? On the other hand if you know there is a spike every Wednesday between 2:00 PM and 3:45 PM, you would want to make sure you have enough folks on the floor to accommodate.
But you may be saying to yourself now “I have my sales data to tell me that”. Sales data is only a piece of the puzzle. Sales data tells you how many customers made a purchase. It does not tell you how many lost opportunities there were because customers could not get assistance, make a decision or find something. On top of that, we know that properly trained staff will have add-on sales. “I think this scarf would look lovely with the blouse you picked out”. So we have more opportunities to increase the sales with the customers we have already attracted to the store. That is the benefit of having the right people on the sales floor at the right time.
All of this leads us to the big elephant in the room, payroll! We know that our largest expense tends to be labor. A retail traffic counting system will help you to reduce or use your payroll dollars much more efficiently as I have demonstrated above.
Sensormatic systems have retail traffic counting built in on many models. You will receive automated reports and can access the system dashboard at any time. Most Sensormatic systems have a built in network card to attach to your high speed router. The software monitoring is called SMaaS which stands for Shrink Management as a Service. This cloud based loss prevention service is designed to help enhance your stores productivity, increase reliability and boost system performance.
Additional features of SMaaS include the ability for you to have the systems power themselves up/down to a lower rate of energy consumption. Over a year’s period of time that will add up. You can also access real time data involving Sensormatic systems alarms, maintenance issues and much more. Here is the full list of features:
• Will help ensure reliability and optimal Sensormatic system performance with 24/7/365 remote monitoring and management of connected EAS equipment health statuses. This monitoring is provided by Sensormatic.
• Correct equipment issues in a proactive way with notification of service required to rectify problems
• Gather insights to help make effective data-driven decisions that will impact your shrink and bottom line results
• You are emailed notifications when your systems activity exceed a predetermined threshold so you know when an exception has occurred
• Minimize your Sensormatic systems downtime to help you spend less time managing
• Highly scalable and customizable cloud infrastructure and EAS event reporting
Contact Loss Prevention Systems today or call 1-770-426-0547 to learn more about Sensormatic Security Systems, retail traffic counting, people counting systems and customer counting systems.
Stop shoplifting – 3 WC blog 744
Sensormatic labels – 4
Is New Technology More Effective To Stop Shoplifting?
Okay folks I am just going to say this, all of our new fancy technologies are just interfering with all of the old tried and true methods of doing things including how we stop shoplifting. What got me started on this bandwagon you may ask? Let me tell you what started this. My children bought fast food and brought it home and I happened to note an advertisement for a food delivery service that can bring fast food (or other restaurant fare) to your home. Now c’mon, a drive through wasn’t fast enough for you? I mean now we have to have that food brought to us? Geez, let’s hire someone to feed it to us too! And there’s a PHONE APP for this! Why, in my day you picked up the receiver and you put your index finger in the rotary dial and called to see if a restaurant was open or if a pizza could be delivered. And let’s talk about other technology. You couldn’t be satisfied with a beeper alerting you that someone was trying to reach you? No, that wasn’t good enough you had to come up with your fancy flip phones. Okay, I bit and I got one too and guess what I still have one! Now you had to go and upgrade to your smart-phones and all of your apps that you download. You’re turning on and off lights when you aren’t home. You talk to family and friends face to face on a phone!! Even in Retail Loss Prevention the use of Sensormatic labels and towers has changed. It worked just fine when we had to put those big 2-inch EAS tags on merchandise to keep goods from being stolen. Those clunky electronic article surveillance towers worked just fine with their hit or miss tag detection. Now you’ve gone and mucked that all up too!
Nowadays we don’t have one-size fits all EAS tags. No, you had to go and make them small and more convenient to protect more types of merchandise. Now you have Sensormatic labels small enough to protect cosmetic items. In my day you just sucked it up and either took the hit in shortage due to theft or you took a gamble and tried to stop shoplifting by apprehending people you suspected of taking a $3.00 mascara bottle. Add to this, Bill Bregar and his company Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. recommending Sensormatic systems and products to his customers as the best method of cutting expenses and building sales through reduced theft! What has happened to the days of using black and white pan-tilt-zoom camera to try to catch that thief pocketing merchandise and the thrill of stopping them and hoping they didn’t drop it? Doggone it you even have Bill recommending a Sensormatic Synergy Camera to attach to compatible antennas to capture alarm events as they happen when Sensormatic labels activate the tower. Need a snapshot? It can do that. If you prefer video, you can have that instead.
Oh, and if you think I’ve covered everything you are mistaken. I remember the days when we had to go to a computer terminal to look up reports and research information to help us identify potential theft and to stop shoplifting. Now you retail managers have even gone mobile in your stores and carry your fancy-shmancy phones to access store reporting. So what does Sensormatic do? They create Shrink Management as a Service (SMaaS) to assist managers in their Loss Prevention Programs and enhance sales. In MY day if you wanted to know when alarms had taken place you went to the alarm log and assumed all activity was entered correctly. Equipment problems were identified by testing your system on a daily basis and if you were off for a week then it would just wait until you returned. Now this software can analyze problems for you!
On a serious note, the advances in Sensormatic labels and technologies is amazing. While it would be nice if every store could afford a Loss Prevention staff the fact is it is expensive and not in the budget for most small retailers. Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. does have practical and affordable solutions for you. I have seen what they have to offer and they can provide all of the tools necessary to improve your profits. From reduced shrink to improved hiring and staffing processes with their Applicant Management Center they offer everything that I could only wish I had available when I was Loss Prevention Manager and a Manager on Duty for a major retail chain. I recommend you check out their website and yes, go ahead and use your fancy smart phone to do it.
For more information on Sensormatic labels contact us or call 1.770.426.0547
Okay folks I am just going to say this, all of our new fancy technologies are just interfering with all of the old tried and true methods of doing things including how we stop shoplifting. What got me started on this bandwagon you may ask? Let me tell you what started this. My children bought fast food and brought it home and I happened to note an advertisement for a food delivery service that can bring fast food (or other restaurant fare) to your home. Now c’mon, a drive through wasn’t fast enough for you? I mean now we have to have that food brought to us? Geez, let’s hire someone to feed it to us too! And there’s a PHONE APP for this! Why, in my day you picked up the receiver and you put your index finger in the rotary dial and called to see if a restaurant was open or if a pizza could be delivered. And let’s talk about other technology. You couldn’t be satisfied with a beeper alerting you that someone was trying to reach you? No, that wasn’t good enough you had to come up with your fancy flip phones. Okay, I bit and I got one too and guess what I still have one! Now you had to go and upgrade to your smart-phones and all of your apps that you download. You’re turning on and off lights when you aren’t home. You talk to family and friends face to face on a phone!! Even in Retail Loss Prevention the use of Sensormatic labels and towers has changed. It worked just fine when we had to put those big 2-inch EAS tags on merchandise to keep goods from being stolen. Those clunky electronic article surveillance towers worked just fine with their hit or miss tag detection. Now you’ve gone and mucked that all up too!
Nowadays we don’t have one-size fits all EAS tags. No, you had to go and make them small and more convenient to protect more types of merchandise. Now you have Sensormatic labels small enough to protect cosmetic items. In my day you just sucked it up and either took the hit in shortage due to theft or you took a gamble and tried to stop shoplifting by apprehending people you suspected of taking a $3.00 mascara bottle. Add to this, Bill Bregar and his company Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. recommending Sensormatic systems and products to his customers as the best method of cutting expenses and building sales through reduced theft! What has happened to the days of using black and white pan-tilt-zoom camera to try to catch that thief pocketing merchandise and the thrill of stopping them and hoping they didn’t drop it? Doggone it you even have Bill recommending a Sensormatic Synergy Camera to attach to compatible antennas to capture alarm events as they happen when Sensormatic labels activate the tower. Need a snapshot? It can do that. If you prefer video, you can have that instead.
Oh, and if you think I’ve covered everything you are mistaken. I remember the days when we had to go to a computer terminal to look up reports and research information to help us identify potential theft and to stop shoplifting. Now you retail managers have even gone mobile in your stores and carry your fancy-shmancy phones to access store reporting. So what does Sensormatic do? They create Shrink Management as a Service (SMaaS) to assist managers in their Loss Prevention Programs and enhance sales. In MY day if you wanted to know when alarms had taken place you went to the alarm log and assumed all activity was entered correctly. Equipment problems were identified by testing your system on a daily basis and if you were off for a week then it would just wait until you returned. Now this software can analyze problems for you!
On a serious note, the advances in Sensormatic labels and technologies is amazing. While it would be nice if every store could afford a Loss Prevention staff the fact is it is expensive and not in the budget for most small retailers. Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. does have practical and affordable solutions for you. I have seen what they have to offer and they can provide all of the tools necessary to improve your profits. From reduced shrink to improved hiring and staffing processes with their Applicant Management Center they offer everything that I could only wish I had available when I was Loss Prevention Manager and a Manager on Duty for a major retail chain. I recommend you check out their website and yes, go ahead and use your fancy smart phone to do it.
For more information on Sensormatic labels, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547
Clothing Security -4 WC Blog 734
Sensormatic Tags -3
Make Good Decisions And Use Sensormatic Tags To Avoid Bad Stops
If you own a store that sells softlines merchandise clothing security has to be a concern for you. Theft is going to happen and you need to be prepared to address it but how you do so can be a tricky proposition. When I started out in Retail Loss Prevention my first job was in a department store and the majority of the merchandise we carried was softlines products such as men’s and women’s clothing, shoes, handbags and accessories. What you have to be careful of is protecting merchandise from theft and also not making false accusations against customers. I thought about this after watching a “live” police show on television the other night (although it was a previously recorded episode). I also read a news story about a teenager allegedly falsely accused of shoplifting after having been forcibly stopped by a store Loss Prevention Agent. I will tell you more about each incident in a moment but first I want to say that I have made a couple of “bad” stops during my own 17 years in Loss Prevention. It is uncomfortable and embarrassing to the accused and as the officer making the stop it is embarrassing and sticks with you a LONG time (as I attest to writing this more than 17 years after my own first “bad” stop). The other issue is that a bad stop can result in a lawsuit against the business. Sensormatic tags on clothing can greatly reduce the risk of ever having to deal with bad stops and the potential for being sued.
The purpose of clothing security is to prevent theft through deterrence. Plain and simply those who shoplift do so for any number of reasons but they are usually dissuaded when the risk of being caught is too great. Bill Bregar who is the founder and owner of Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. was a National Director of Loss Prevention for several major retailers. He has experience with electronic article system tags working and deterring shoplifting. He recommends his customers invest in Sensormatic systems and tags to reduce shrink. Crooks know that tags are going to set off alarms if they get near the pedestals in an effort to sneak clothes out. Sensormatic tags will also damage clothes if a shoplifter attempts to force them off in order to steal merchandise. Either way, the use of these devices will stop shoplifting. If a store isn’t using electronic article surveillance that business is going to have high shortage rates there is no getting around that fact.
This brings me to the two cases that turned out to be bad stops. In the television show a suspect was stopped by police, handcuffed and told that he was a suspect in a shoplifting incident at a hardware store. The Loss Prevention Officer came out, showed video from her phone of the incident and it was determined the suspect was not the same person. The man was released. Then in an article from wsvn.com on December 13, 2018, by Nicole Linsalata and Andrew Dymburt, they report about a family suing a major retailer after a “security officer” stopped a 13-year old girl for shoplifting. The report says that video of the arrest shows the security officer pushing the girl to the ground. To make matters worse the police found all four of the bathing suits the girl was suspected of taking were still in the fitting room. I don’t know if the stores in question use Sensormatic tags or not but obviously they do have security officers. Large retailers can afford these officers but they can and do make mistakes. Unfortunately these officers sometimes have poor training or can be too aggressive. Sometimes they get so focused on a case they fail to err on the side of caution and when that happens, things can spiral out of control. This can lead to a very costly lawsuit for the store.
Small store owners with no Loss Prevention can avoid worrying about any of this if they use Clothing security tags to protect their merchandise. If tags are used there will be few attempts at shoplifting and those that do happen can often be prevented with great customer service. To help owners with electronic article alarm response and theft prevention, Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. offers free training with the purchase of a Sensormatic system.
Don’t make bad choices or bad stops. Use clothing security tags to stop theft from taking place. Train employees on the proper methods of tagging products and alarm response and you will find you can greatly reduce theft and significantly improve profits.
Get more information on clothing security, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 today.
If you own a store that sells softlines merchandise clothing security has to be a concern for you. Theft is going to happen and you need to be prepared to address it but how you do so can be a tricky proposition. When I started out in Retail Loss Prevention my first job was in a department store and the majority of the merchandise we carried was softlines products such as men’s and women’s clothing, shoes, handbags and accessories. What you have to be careful of is protecting merchandise from theft and also not making false accusations against customers. I thought about this after watching a “live” police show on television the other night (although it was a previously recorded episode). I also read a news story about a teenager allegedly falsely accused of shoplifting after having been forcibly stopped by a store Loss Prevention Agent. I will tell you more about each incident in a moment but first I want to say that I have made a couple of “bad” stops during my own 17 years in Loss Prevention. It is uncomfortable and embarrassing to the accused and as the officer making the stop it is embarrassing and sticks with you a LONG time (as I attest to writing this more than 17 years after my own first “bad” stop). The other issue is that a bad stop can result in a lawsuit against the business. Sensormatic tags on clothing can greatly reduce the risk of ever having to deal with bad stops and the potential for being sued.
The purpose of clothing security is to prevent theft through deterrence. Plain and simply those who shoplift do so for any number of reasons but they are usually dissuaded when the risk of being caught is too great. Bill Bregar who is the founder and owner of Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. was a National Director of Loss Prevention for several major retailers. He has experience with electronic article system tags working and deterring shoplifting. He recommends his customers invest in Sensormatic systems and tags to reduce shrink. Crooks know that tags are going to set off alarms if they get near the pedestals in an effort to sneak clothes out. Sensormatic tags will also damage clothes if a shoplifter attempts to force them off in order to steal merchandise. Either way, the use of these devices will stop shoplifting. If a store isn’t using electronic article surveillance that business is going to have high shortage rates there is no getting around that fact.
This brings me to the two cases that turned out to be bad stops. In the television show a suspect was stopped by police, handcuffed and told that he was a suspect in a shoplifting incident at a hardware store. The Loss Prevention Officer came out, showed video from her phone of the incident and it was determined the suspect was not the same person. The man was released. Then in an article from wsvn.com on December 13, 2018, by Nicole Linsalata and Andrew Dymburt, they report about a family suing a major retailer after a “security officer” stopped a 13-year old girl for shoplifting. The report says that video of the arrest shows the security officer pushing the girl to the ground. To make matters worse the police found all four of the bathing suits the girl was suspected of taking were still in the fitting room. I don’t know if the stores in question use Sensormatic tags or not but obviously they do have security officers. Large retailers can afford these officers but they can and do make mistakes. Unfortunately these officers sometimes have poor training or can be too aggressive. Sometimes they get so focused on a case they fail to err on the side of caution and when that happens, things can spiral out of control. This can lead to a very costly lawsuit for the store.
Small store owners with no Loss Prevention can avoid worrying about any of this if they use Clothing security tags to protect their merchandise. If tags are used there will be few attempts at shoplifting and those that do happen can often be prevented with great customer service. To help owners with electronic article alarm response and theft prevention, Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. offers free training with the purchase of a Sensormatic system.
Don’t make bad choices or bad stops. Use clothing security tags to stop theft from taking place. Train employees on the proper methods of tagging products and alarm response and you will find you can greatly reduce theft and significantly improve profits.
Get more information on clothing security, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 today.
WC Blog 740
Stop Shoplifting -3
Sensormatic hard tags-3
Building A Culture Of Customer Service To Stop Shoplifting And Grow Sales Part 2
Most people in retail management are at least familiar with Sensormatic hard tags and what they do. Whether they choose to use them in their stores to improve their sales and profits may be another story. Most store managers will also pay lip service to the value of customer service in a store but I am not convinced all of them really know what great customer service looks like. I thought about this following a recent trip to a fast food restaurant and experienced what great customer service truly looks like. I shared this in Part 1 of this series. This business was extremely busy and had the employees been stressed out or short tempered it would have been understandable. Instead, the employees were smiling, engaging customers and there was plenty of help available. The culture of customer service in this restaurant should be emulated in every retail store. I can assure you that if you apply this model in your retail business you will boost sales and you will enhance the anti-theft capabilities of your Sensormatic security system (pssst…if you don’t have a Sensormatic system we will talk about that too).
What is it that made this store stand out from its competitors and what is management doing to make it happen? I would suggest that the employees were happy. The crowd was not a bother, a challenge perhaps but not a bother. I saw a manager (I’m pretty sure it was a manager) who was smiling, talking to his team encouraging them and giving direction but was pleasant in the process. This type of leadership is infectious and creates the climate for that shift or the day. What kind of leaders are working for you? What is your leadership style? How do YOUR managers cope under pressure? I would also say that based on the staffing level on the day I was in this establishment management had planned on a large influx of customers. Do you consider how you will stop shoplifting or the increased opportunity for it on busy days? Do you do anything differently to support increased patronage in any way? If you aren’t properly staffing you are hurting yourself.
When you have enough coverage it takes a strain off of your workers and they don’t feel overwhelmed. I have no idea what tools this business uses to plan but retailers can plan for business by using customer counting devices on their Sensormatic towers. Using the information from these counters can aid in planning and scheduling based on your customer foot traffic. Know when the peak times are for shoppers (and shoplifters) and you can schedule staff more effectively. Your employees can assist more patrons on the floor, increasing add-on sales and it also serves to stop shoplifting since crooks don’t want the attention. You can also have enough front end coverage that someone can respond if Sensormatic hard tags set off alarms be it by an attempted theft or cashier failure to remove a tag. Paying customers are less likely to be angry at an alarm activation if someone friendly responds to the doors quickly. Again, good customer service goes a long way to maintain happy customers who will return to a store to shop. Bill Bregar the founder of Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. (LPSI) recognizes how important proper staffing is to customer service, how it impacts sales AND can stop shoplifting. That is why he strongly recommends his customers install door counting sensors. Often the sensors can be seamlessly incorporated into existing systems. If you have avoided purchasing a system because you fear the cost will be out of your budget try looking at the LPSI ROI Calculator on their website, you will be very surprised at how affordable it is.
I am going to add one more thought on the importance of focusing on customer service in retail. When employees aren’t happy they don’t care as much about the tasks they need to accomplish. Associates may not take time to properly place Sensormatic hard tags on merchandise or they miss an occasional piece of merchandise. Cashiers are careless in removing hard tags leading to false alarms. A cashier with a negative attitude leaves a bad impression on customers. Any of these can be a cause for shoppers to decide not to return to a store. Be sure to create an atmosphere in your store where your employees are happy and encouraged to perform their best. Staff the building to minimize the stress level and your employees will appreciate it. As they do the level of customer service will improve and that will boost sales and reduce shortage and that is what your goal should be.
Need information on Sensormatic hard tags? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 now.
Most people in retail management are at least familiar with Sensormatic hard tags and what they do. Whether they choose to use them in their stores to improve their sales and profits may be another story. Most store managers will also pay lip service to the value of customer service in a store but I am not convinced all of them really know what great customer service looks like. I thought about this following a recent trip to a fast food restaurant and experienced what great customer service truly looks like. I shared this in Part 1 of this series. This business was extremely busy and had the employees been stressed out or short tempered it would have been understandable. Instead, the employees were smiling, engaging customers and there was plenty of help available. The culture of customer service in this restaurant should be emulated in every retail store. I can assure you that if you apply this model in your retail business you will boost sales and you will enhance the anti-theft capabilities of your Sensormatic security system (pssst…if you don’t have a Sensormatic system we will talk about that too).
What is it that made this store stand out from its competitors and what is management doing to make it happen? I would suggest that the employees were happy. The crowd was not a bother, a challenge perhaps but not a bother. I saw a manager (I’m pretty sure it was a manager) who was smiling, talking to his team encouraging them and giving direction but was pleasant in the process. This type of leadership is infectious and creates the climate for that shift or the day. What kind of leaders are working for you? What is your leadership style? How do YOUR managers cope under pressure? I would also say that based on the staffing level on the day I was in this establishment management had planned on a large influx of customers. Do you consider how you will stop shoplifting or the increased opportunity for it on busy days? Do you do anything differently to support increased patronage in any way? If you aren’t properly staffing you are hurting yourself.
When you have enough coverage it takes a strain off of your workers and they don’t feel overwhelmed. I have no idea what tools this business uses to plan but retailers can plan for business by using customer counting devices on their Sensormatic towers. Using the information from these counters can aid in planning and scheduling based on your customer foot traffic. Know when the peak times are for shoppers (and shoplifters) and you can schedule staff more effectively. Your employees can assist more patrons on the floor, increasing add-on sales and it also serves to stop shoplifting since crooks don’t want the attention. You can also have enough front end coverage that someone can respond if Sensormatic hard tags set off alarms be it by an attempted theft or cashier failure to remove a tag. Paying customers are less likely to be angry at an alarm activation if someone friendly responds to the doors quickly. Again, good customer service goes a long way to maintain happy customers who will return to a store to shop. Bill Bregar the founder of Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. (LPSI) recognizes how important proper staffing is to customer service, how it impacts sales AND can stop shoplifting. That is why he strongly recommends his customers install door counting sensors. Often the sensors can be seamlessly incorporated into existing systems. If you have avoided purchasing a system because you fear the cost will be out of your budget try looking at the LPSI ROI Calculator on their website, you will be very surprised at how affordable it is.
I am going to add one more thought on the importance of focusing on customer service in retail. When employees aren’t happy they don’t care as much about the tasks they need to accomplish. Associates may not take time to properly place Sensormatic hard tags on merchandise or they miss an occasional piece of merchandise. Cashiers are careless in removing hard tags leading to false alarms. A cashier with a negative attitude leaves a bad impression on customers. Any of these can be a cause for shoppers to decide not to return to a store. Be sure to create an atmosphere in your store where your employees are happy and encouraged to perform their best. Staff the building to minimize the stress level and your employees will appreciate it. As they do the level of customer service will improve and that will boost sales and reduce shortage and that is what your goal should be.
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