Marshall Retail Group

Client:

Marshall Retail Group (MRG) is in the retail apparel business and employs close to 700 people in nearly 90 locations across the US.

Challenge:

MRG has been experiencing explosive growth since 2005 and needed to ensure the consistent delivery of service across their brands; ideally leading to demand from developers to open more MRG stores.

Solution:

Customer Service Experts partnered with Marshall Retail Group in August 2005 to employ a mystery shopping program in an effort to measure the customer experience and to provide detailed feedback of their Sales Associate's product knowledge and approach to customer service.

CSE conducts 35 – 40 mystery shops per month at MRG stores, rotating frequency based on store sales volume, seasonal trends and training schedules. In the beginning phases of their program, Marshall Retail Group's baseline score was 64.9%, leaving many areas for improvement. MRG revisited their training program and partnered with CSE to create a new and enhanced in-store coaching and training initiative. At the end of 2006, scores were boosted over 5 percent to 70.5%. 2007 saw scores reach 74.9% and by the end of 2010, scores have increased once again to 82.88%. Over 5 years of evaluating service, Marshall Retail Group has achieved a continuous +5% annual increase of their customer service scores.

Building on the success of the front-line program, we knew that it alone would not improve organizational performance. To make progress organization-wide, CSE would first administer an employee survey to get to the heart of employee satisfaction, experience and perception.

The employee survey results showed a clear opportunity for improvement in employee engagement, communication, motivation and environment. CSE then facilitated a Survey Strategy Session with a cross section of 24 employees to identify root causes of these opportunity areas, formulate effective action plans for improvement, and create a consistent communication channel to keep employees informed of the changes.

Results:

Since identifying the action plans and a communication channel, MRG has experienced:

  • Reduced employee turnover
  • Increases in promoting from within the organization
  • Regular "town hall" phone calls
  • Creation of a company newsletter
  • The implementation of a Leadership University
  • Improved mystery shop scores
  • Store growth