Fix the Behavior, The Sales Will Follow

In this episode of the Productivity Podcast, we speak with Kayleigh Fazan, founder of the International Retail Academy, to discuss why transforming the customer experience has to start behind the scenes. Kayleigh shares her insights from over 20 years in retail, explaining why true productivity is all about empowering leaders, building team confidence, and getting the basics right.

Here are the key takeaways from our conversation:

Behavior Over Metrics: Retail leaders often fixate on lagging indicators like conversion and ATV that only show what happened yesterday. To genuinely improve productivity, managers must focus on the daily behaviors that create those results.

The Power of Service: Delivering an exceptional, consistent customer experience is one of the most commercially productive activities a retail business can perform.

Targeted Training: Overwhelming part-time staff with massive libraries of learning materials is highly ineffective. Businesses should instead empower their leaders to separate critical, "must-do" training from optional "nice-to-have" learning.

Sustainable Growth: Retailers cannot simply cut costs to achieve growth. Adopting a bottom-up approach to customer service naturally boosts commercial numbers, which in turn allows for future budget growth.

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Transcript

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Simon 0:06

Welcome to the Productivity Podcast. Today I am delighted to be joined by Kaylee Fazan, who is the founder of International Retail Academy based out of the Netherlands. Hi Kaylee, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hey Simon, I'm doing good, thank you. Happy Monday.

Simon 0:21

It's Monday recording. It's uh it's still sunny. What's it been like in the Netherlands? Have you had the heat like everybody else?

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Yeah, it's been very similar actually. Uh, heat wave is due again in a couple of days, so it's going to get really hot over here. Um, might go to the beach.

Simon 0:36

Good. Well, uh, we should enjoy it while it lasts because it'll soon be winter, and you know what that brings, rain and all the other things, as well as Christmas though. So there is some good stuff. Um Kaylee, we're we're gonna have a chat around productivity and some of the work you do and some of the speaking you do today. But before we dive in, do you want to give us a little bit of a Kaylee career history biogue and what you're up to today?

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Yeah, sure. So I've been in retail since gosh, I was 16. Um, I got a part-time job in a retail store and then worked my way through many different positions in many different countries. And that was like 20-something years ago. Uh, five years ago, I set up the International Retail Academy. So we're based out of the Netherlands, as you can tell by my accent, very northern, and from the UK. And what we do is we partner with different retail brands to improve their customer experiences. But I'm a big believer that you can't actually improve a customer experience or get more sales in the till until you get into the kind of hearts and minds of the leaders who are delivering those results. So a lot of what we do is around leadership, coaching, training, um, all of that stuff behind the scenes, which then impacts the shop floor.

Simon 1:56

Perfect. So retailer at heart. Um any particular industry you worked in, is it more fashion led? Was it more kind of FMCG led? What's where's your heart at in terms of retail?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Yeah, yeah, a bit of everything actually. So I started off in fast fashion, uh, went to the Middle East for a couple of years and worked for a huge retailer over there. It was it was amazing, American Eagle, under the franchise of Alshire. But I really started to get into the whole concept of customer experience and what does that truly mean when I worked at a jewellery business in the UK? Because you can imagine a jewellery store is a little bit quieter than a fast fashion store. Um, and then after that, I went over to sports retail. So I was in New Balance for about five years. Um, so a bit of everything actually. I haven't worked personally in luxury, um, but it might be something I'm interested in future.

Simon 2:51

Yeah, you never know what the future holds.

unknown 2:52

No.

Simon 2:53

Never know. So let's let's dive in then. Um, obviously, the the purpose of what we do at Rethink and the podcast is all around productivity. So linking that back to your world, what you've seen, and then what you do at the um Academy, how do we create behavior that naturally produces productivity? Because the two are intrinsically linked, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yeah, absolutely. They really are linked. And the thing that I see a lot of um with so many retailers that we we've worked with, and even just going into the shops, right? You see that retailers are constantly measuring all of these, you know, hardcore KPIs that can be produced on a report. So your store manager goes in in the morning and they'll be able to see what was the conversion, what was ATV, how's payroll looking week to date. And the area managers are looking at these same metrics as well because those metrics are available. But the thing is, those are actually lagging indicators because they only tell you what happened yesterday. You can't change yesterday, you can't go back. And so what we're really interested in doing is helping retailers to get behind the behaviors that created those results in the first place. Um and so when we're when we're talking to a you know a store manager, regional manager, it's really about understanding their psychology almost, you know, why are you in this business? Tell me what you enjoy about about your role, um, and really getting under the skin of of their motivation. Because ultimately, you know, the the effort of the shop floor team comes down to the motivation and intention of the store manager, which is of course filtered through, you know, upper management as well. Um and and the thing is, you can't you can't actually improve productivity just by chasing productivity. You actually have to improve the behaviour first, and then productivity follows naturally.

Simon 5:03

Got it. And in terms of quality of customer interactions, can you, I suppose, quantify that for for the listeners in in terms of what are you looking for? Is it the sentiment in the conversation? Is it the script they're given by head office to work through to make sure they're doing all the add-ons? What do you what do you look for in that quality?

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Yeah, so when we um, for example, you know, whenever we start an engagement with a retailer, we will always go to stores first. We are very much bottom-up approach. So, yes, you know, we have that strategic, you know, uh guidance from leadership, but ultimately we want to see what's going on on the shop floor. And very, you know, sadly, the basics are not being done. So when it comes to, you know, a customer walking into a store, are are they greeted? Are they welcomed? Is somebody smiling at them? Are those basics being done? And then from there we look at the quality of the interaction as well. So are the associates proactively approaching that customer? Um, are they engaging in a conversation? Are they interested in building a connection? Or are they just having those surface levels, hey, how are you doing? Do you need anything? Can I get USIs? And sadly, it's it's mostly that that is actually happening. And so what we recognize very quickly is that we just need to build people's competence and skill set, which then when they practice that and they get better at that and they're putting in more effort, then that builds confidence. And once you have a confident team, my goodness, the culture of the store completely changes. So indeed, what we are looking at is you know, is the customer welcomed? Are they getting that connection moment when they're picking up product? Is somebody there to guide them and to help them with styling or sizes? Um, and what we see a lot of is our teams in our stores now are so thin, you know, there's payroll challenges, there's not many bodies on the floor. And so teams are now really pressured, you know, with doing all of the jobs. And so you'll see customers in the store, there might be five or six customers, but the one or two team members are processing the delivery or they're behind the tilt. Um, and they're doing everything, you know, that's needs to be done, but they're missing that customer interaction. And and that's critical. You cannot miss the customer interaction.

Simon 7:32

And it resonates with some of the things we talk about a lot around you can't save your way out of the current environment. As you you mentioned there, people are challenged by budget, they always have been and probably always will be, but more so now it's resulting in probably those unpalatable decisions that that people haven't wanted to face the input into before around headcount, around should you have a manager in every store. That it's that deep. But this must be a really good way when retailers start to focus on it to drive the commercial numbers upwards. That then in turn means that you can have more heads in the future because your store's doing better, you're taking more money, therefore your budget increases if you bottom-up approach or a cost to sell. So it it kind of supports that driving for growth rather than just cut, cut, cut.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think for me, great service, like ri I'm talking great service, not just not just good or nice service, but great service is probably one of the most commercially productive activities that anybody can perform. So, what we'd focus on is taking teams that are perhaps, you know, good or average, and we make them great. Um, I know that's a really bold statement, and it doesn't, you know, it doesn't happen all the time, consistently, everywhere, but we get those results through really close interaction with what's happening on the sales floor. How are you approaching the customers? Why are we not approaching the customers in this particular way or a different way? I'm not a fan of scripts, but I do think that it helps because a lot of retail staff, Simon, are, you know, part-timers. Um, and they probably don't want to be in retail for the rest of their lives. So, you know, those kinds of people would probably appreciate having a little bit of guidance or a little bit of scripting. Um, but ultimately, service has to feel real. It has to feel like a conversation.

Simon 9:36

You have to find your style, don't you? And and that there's loads of challenges out there, isn't there? I don't know what it's like in um the Netherlands, but certainly in the UK, retention's really tricky. So people, people aren't staying for long. So you get the skeptics that say, Yeah, Kaylee, get it, I get it, it's great, all this, that, and the other. But actually, people come into my business and they stay for like three months and then they go get a job elsewhere. So, how do you make it sustainable if there's high turnover? And assuming you get it right, hopefully the turnover drops.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's a it's a really good point because over here, turnover is also an issue. In fact, hiring is a very big challenge in itself, and then training and retaining those people is even harder. So for us, it all comes down to getting into the um into the leadership capability piece. So we help to develop leadership behaviors um through doing lots of different things. We uh we go through leadership behaviors, what does this mean? How does it show up for you? How are you helping your teams on the shop floor, whether you've got a part-timer only working on a Saturday, or you've got a supervisor working four or five days a week? And so everybody is exposed to the same uh to the same foundational training. So, why are we here? What are we doing? What's our purpose? How do we behave around each other? What does trust and respect look look like around here? So we have this kind of base of the pyramid, if you will, foundations that everybody needs. It doesn't matter how many hours you're working in the business. And then as you go up the pyramid, we then identify the skills and competences that people must have versus what's nice to have. And so I'll give you an example. We worked with a business a couple of years ago, um, and they had an extensive library of learning materials. And I'm talking everything about product knowledge, handling customer complaints, um, gosh, everything that you can possibly imagine. And the expectation from corporate was that everybody needed to go through these modules, watch these videos, and basically tick off the training. And I said, This is this is unbelievable. So if you have a uh you know an eight-hour part-timer, they're expected to to watch all of this and apply all of this when really their job is just to serve customers on a Saturday when the store is busy. And the answer was yes. I said, Well, that's that's bonkers. That person doesn't need to know all of this information. We have to define what is critical, what must you do, and then have a bunch of nice to have and almost coachable moments that the leaders can then choose. Ah, my team need to know a little bit more about product knowledge, or my team need to know a little bit more about handling uh customer refunds or exchanges. So they can then choose from that pool of uh of learning, if you will, how to manage their teams. And the great thing is, Simon, when you give leaders that power, those regional managers, those store managers, to decide what I can train my team on, what's important to me, they feel so much more connected to the business. They become better leaders themselves because they're choosing how to train their people. So for us, it's all about empowering the leaders to do the right things with the materials.

Simon 13:07

So we're now kind of bridging that gap into culture, aren't we? Because I can't control what I can't control: cost of people, employment laws, whatever it might be that's legislative or safe and legal, but I can create a culture.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Yes. Always, always, and the culture lives and breathes every single day on the shop floor. You know, I've helped businesses to create um mission statements, um, values, leadership behaviours, and all that's great, you know, but that's not where it shows up. You know, it's it's nice to have it on the walls and it's nice to, you know, hear some echoes of it around head office. But store teams create their culture every single day, and head offices do as well, of course, you know, around the coffee machine or you know, heading into the weekly trade meetings. But yeah, culture is is very much created on the shop floor. Um, yeah, yeah, I love I love this topic.

Simon 14:07

And and again, people listening will be, I suppose, thinking around, okay, so get get that, that that's good. How does that relate back then to maybe the customer surveys that they do that you get, you know, on your till receipt or mystery shopping programs that organizations will pay for where a a person from the organization goes in and does a scripted journey and kind of scores it. So does that does that support the work you do and give you a kind of holistic 360-degree view, or is it just is that something separate?

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Yeah, it it definitely dovetails into that. So um, you know, a couple of businesses that we've worked with have already had NPS uh in place, for example. Uh, another business we've worked with started mystery shopping after we launched their customer experience program to yeah, to measure what we've basically trained them on over the last 12 months or so. And it's it's going really, really well. The thing is, with with these different ways to measure customer interactions, I just I don't think there's any one tool out there right now that ticks all of the boxes. And with mystery shopping, I think it's I think it's great because in a way teams then become a little bit more on their tiptoes, right? They they're anticipating that a mystery shop is going to come in. So naturally they start to, you know, do all the things properly, um, which is kind of false and it's not real. Um, so yeah, but it it kind of you know it ticks that corporate box in a way of okay, let's get everybody on their toes and we'll, you know, we'll get good mystery shop results in. Uh it's just a snapshot in time. It's not, it's not, you know, the whole picture. NPS, of course, has its advantages. I think it's, you know, it's a little bit more uh more truthful, if you will, it's from an actual real authentic customer who had a real interaction. Um, so yeah, so we're able to dive into different uh different results. We recently had some great success actually, where um a retailer was uh sitting at around 77, 78% on uh on MPS. And within I think four or five months of the program, they immediately spiked up. So it went up to like high um high 80s, and now they've settled on on low 80s. So yeah, it's it's nice to see these things, but I just I just don't think that having all the data available um from a pool, you know, from an actual pool, is so helpful because okay, the reason why I'm saying this is because in retail, you might have 500 customers a day, right? Maybe 20 of those customers buy. We all know conversion's a huge problem right now. And out of those 20 customers that buy, there might be a small handful that fill in the MPS survey. So, what are we doing with those other 400 and something customers? How are they experiencing the brand? And I think that's um, yeah, I think that's a gap.

Simon 17:19

Yeah, and it I I'm fatigued out by surveys, if I'm honest. Um, I'll look at it now and think, yeah, okay, I've done plenty. I would personally probably more likely to do something. It probably says a lot about me, what I'm about to say, if something was wrong, um, it'd have to be really, really, really good for it to be uh one when something was right, if that makes sense. And having worked for a couple of companies in stores where we've used mystery shoppers, I think the behaviours are really interesting because you're all trying to guess if it was the mystery shopper, because you can kind of tell, because there's a there's an odd question they'll ask, or something that's not normal, if that makes sense from a customer. So I think the service drops off after people think they've served the mystery shopper because that's my one for the quarter, that's my one for the month. So everybody relaxes. So it'd be interesting to see if you could ever prove it of mystery shopper goes in. Does service actually suffer post the perceived mystery shopper? So if you sent a mystery shopper in uh on a Tuesday and everybody says, Oh, they've done we've got the one for the month, you sent one in on a Wednesday, is it different? Because I having worked in stores and seen those behaviours, everybody kind of relaxes a bit because we think we've done it. Um maybe it is the mystery shopper, maybe it's not, but that's the point. Um, so no, I think I think that's the stats are interesting. You know, AI is going to bring a whole different angle, isn't it? Where at some point we'll be able to measure facial expressions and the sentiment, hopefully, in a different way and get a larger sample. Um but the reality of all this stuff boils back to whether it's a mystery shop or whether it's somebody filling in a survey or not, everybody should get hopefully the best experience they can based on the culture that you've instilled in in those individual locations.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, definitely. I think that, you know, when when the and this ties back into productivity, of course, when there's a customer having a I don't know, having a having a bad visit, right? She's not being helped or he's not been approached and they've come in with the intention to buy. Let's remember that customers have got so much choice today. You know, they can go anywhere to buy anything anytime. So when a customer chooses to walk into that retail store, there's a level of expectation. They either want to try something on, they want to see the product that they've actually seen online, or they want some personalized help. So to me now, you know, when a customer chooses to walk into a store, retail store teams should feel almost um, almost lucky, almost kind of, wow, you know, we've got customers through the door. They could easily just buy this online at 3 a.m. in the morning, you know, if they wanted to. And so when a customer's having a bad experience and they can't find their size or they're not being helped, well, that one poor interaction can actually create hours and hours of additional work. Because they can go online, like you said, if you've had a bad experience, they can leave a nasty Google review, they can fill out a horrible MPS survey, they can call up the head office, they can log a complaint, and once and then once you've got, you know, senior managers involved, head office involved, that one port interaction is costing hours. And it could have been avoided just by smiling and saying, I I I love I love what you're wearing today. Can I help you with something? You know, just connect and try and talk to somebody.

Simon 20:52

That's the one you know about, right? Because you'll have another X percentage of people that maybe have the same thoughts and just think, well, I just won't go again. I'll just order it online or I'll go to the competitor. So what what you know about is only the tip of the iceberg, isn't it? Because there'll be a whole bunch of people that won't put the effort in, just don't complain, vote with their feet, vote with their keyboard somewhere else. So it's a it's a really interesting topic, and yeah, I absolutely support the whole trying to grow your way out of any economic situation that that you kind of can't affect because keep cutting and cutting and cutting just goes completely against it and to some degree forces people to shop online or elsewhere because there just is zero service, then it becomes transactional, doesn't it? Of I walk in, I pick it up, I scan it myself, probably, don't speak to anybody out to go. It becomes it becomes price related rather than value of brand or conversation.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Yes.

Simon 21:47

Perfect. So we'll pause there, Kaylee. We could, I'm sure, talk for a couple of hours more on this, but we'll pause there. It's been great to have you on. If people want to reach out to you, find out more about what you do in the academy, just have a chat generally. I know you do lots of uh speaking as well. Where's the best place for them to find you?

SPEAKER_00 22:07

Yeah, brilliant. So I am on LinkedIn pretty much on a daily basis, so definitely networking on LinkedIn and of course through the website as well, the international retailacademy.com.

Simon 22:17

Perfect. And we'll put links to both of those in the show notes so people can click through and find you easily. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Thank you.

Simon 22:22

That's kind of you once again. It's been great to chat, and I'll catch up with you soon.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Great. Thanks, Simon. Have a great day.