Keeping Staff Engaged During Quieter Times

February 6, 2017

By Blue Anderson

Winter can be a time when we relish comfort from the elements with whatever we are most familiar—comfort foods, comfortably warm and toasty fires in the hearth, Southern Comfort. It is also a quiet time for many retail stores. Inventory is done and major holidays are tucked away—and we can find ourselves a little too at ease in our workplaces.

I know I’m guilty of it.

We might hold conversations that we were too busy to have during season changes, everything from work-related to personal stories, political beliefs to gossip about the store down the street. And some may say that there is nothing wrong with that, we’re “bonding” with staff. Except sometimes when it is slow in our stores, we don’t give the same customer service to the visitors that do come in.

We might be so engaged in other conversations that we don’t stop to acknowledge our visitors.

And you don’t know who that visitor is, what his or her politics are, or whom he or she might know.

This past weekend, I brought a friend to another cultural spot in town to see the fantastic view, just as many locals do with visiting tourists. The staffing there had a complete turnover in the past year, and I haven’t been friendly enough to introduce myself to the new manager yet, making this a kind of “secret shopper” experience for me.

And how pleased was I to overhear the manager tell a guest to go to my museum store for the item that they were asking for! He offered the guest directions, and off they went to give us a sale. Nice!

Then, the manager turned to the woman working with him, and this is what I heard:

New Manager: “They’re really overpriced, you know.”

New Clerk: “Who?”

New Manager: “The museum store.”

New Clerk: “I didn’t know that.”

New Manager: “Oh yeah, they charge way more than we do for items. You know that really ugly plush crab we had? They have it for $7.95 or $7.45 or something—we had it for $6.95. Way overpriced!”

This chatter about my museum store prices went on, talking about magnets and such, while there were customers in the 600 square foot store. One of those customers happened to be me. And even though I was wearing a sweatshirt with a large, collegiate “CRMM” emblazoned on the front, the two store employees didn’t acknowledge anyone in the little building.

I didn’t want to call him out for dissing my museum, but I did want to share with him that underpricing was doing a disservice to his venue, as well as the power of 2.2, but that’s another blog …

We can all be lulled into feeling too comfortable in our work environments. As I’m writing this in my office, I can hear my staff talking about the new baby-safe plush we just got in and now the talk is turning to an upcoming golf tournament that two volunteers are in. It happens.

But the other day, we had several pieces of costume jewelry go missing from their boxes—six pairs of earrings total. No one saw who took them. One staff member said it was so quiet in here they should have seen the thief. Truth is: We were so busy talking with each other that someone took advantage of our lack of attention and helped themselves to our merchandise. That was a larger loss than anything we experienced in our entire busy season. Not much comfort there.

So, here are a few tips to keep your staff engaged with the customers during slow times:

1. Give them customer-centric tasks, like reorganizing a book section or sizing T-shirts, to get them out onto the floor, but nothing too big that would get them engrossed and unable to stop their tasks.
2. Remind them that they need to greet everyone as they come in, not just when customers are walking out the door.
3. When they are in another store, have your staff note what type of service they receive. What makes them want to go screaming out of a place? What makes them want to linger? Let them design a model that produces that desire to linger for your store.
4. Offer your staff institution-related books to read so that they can be more knowledgeable about your store selection.
5. Have handy a list of tasks that you were unable to complete in-season so that staff and volunteers can check off the tasks as they get done. (You can be at MSA Forward 2017 in Pittsburgh and thing will still get done!)

Now I shall head back to that local cultural institution to give the manager an MSA membership brochure and a list of the great MSA webinars available that have helped my store and me. Perhaps I could also bring him a welcome wagon gift of Southern Comfort …

What do you do to keep your staff and volunteers busy during slow times? Email me your tips and tricks to anderson@crmm.org.

Blue Anderson is the current MSA Board Secretary and President of the MSA Pacific Northwest Chapter. She is the Manager of Visitor Services at the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon.