How Store Fixtures Affect Your Customer Service

Your retail store fixtures can have a big impact on customer service, from the way that customers interact with the products your company sells to which products they ultimately choose to buy. Fortunately, there are steps that you can take to use store fixtures to improve your store’s customer service. Use this store fixtures guide to improve how your existing department store fixtures impact your business’s customer service.

Shopping Flow

Where you place your store fixtures and create walking paths can impact how and where customers walk. Essentially, you can change how customers flow through your store so that they can easily find everything they need and end up at the cash register by the door. Customers can become frustrated when there are backups in aisles or if they find difficulty moving around your retail location. You want to foster an easy and comfortable shopping experience. 

Proactively Answer Questions

If customers frequently ask the same questions to staff members about a product, you can answer common questions with your store fixtures. Whether you merchandise the most commonly used items together or incorporate signage that answers questions, you can improve customer experience and reduce the workload on your staff. For instance, you can place the correct ink cartridges near the corresponding printer or print signs to educate customers about the sizing of maternity clothes. 

Encourage Specific Sales

Store fixtures can encourage the sales of specific SKUs through better placement. By pairing certain SKUs together, customers may choose to buy more items in each order. If you end up with too much inventory of one SKU, strategically placing items on store fixtures can help to encourage sales of items you place on sale to liquidate.

In terms of customer service, shoppers want to find great deals and feel that there are plenty of items that they can purchase in your store. No one wants to walk into a store to find that there really wasn’t anything that interested them. By switching the focus of store fixtures near your cash register and window front to sales, you can better catch their attention.

Grid vs. Informal Layouts

When it comes to retail store layouts, there are generally two frames of thought. There is a grid layout, with clearly defined departments and aisles that evenly dispersed. Most grocery stores use a grid layout. Informal layouts can be anything else. Informal layouts can encourage customers to spend more time pursuing the store as opposed to going directly to the item that they want. Many high-end boutiques utilize informal layouts in some capacity to influence customer experience.

Branding

The types of department store fixtures that you choose says a lot about your company’s brand and what customers should expect. If you walk into a store that uses secondhand fixtures and sells items in a flea market-like setting, you have a different set of expectations than you’d expect in a luxury jewelry retailer with glass displays. Be aware of the expectations that your store fixtures set for your customers.

If you want to upgrade your department store fixtures to improve customer service, contact MW-SF to schedule a consultation today.