Despite Hurricane Sandy, a trip down Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side revealed that the holiday season had begun. It appeared that most of high-end retail stores had resumed business as usual.
However, for many of the people who work in the stores, their circumstances were far from usual. The trains were still mostly down, commuting took two or three hours longer than usual and most had no power at home. For many staff members, this must have weighed on their minds and I wonder how it might have affected staff morale and the level of customer service.
A critical point to remember is that the retail staff-client relationship is one of the most intimate relationships with the client that a brand can form and how effective it is depends very much on individual staff members. This is especially true in the luxury or fashion sectors because of the emotional and symbolic nature of purchases. At the Hermes’ flagship store, clients were selecting leathers for custom bags, shopping for gifts and selecting perfumes. Each of these activities required the personal attention of a staff member.
We often forget that staff members, so pivotal in providing that multi-sensory luxury experience, are people too. This means their performances can vary depending on their morale. In this case, the staff can be said to be one of management’s internal customer inasmuch as far as staff morale is concerned.
At Hermes, I chanced upon Robert Chavez, CEO at Hermes of Paris, who was paying the store a visit specifically to check in on staff members and to ascertain if they were detrimentally affected by the hurricane. Tellingly, the store was slated to close early. I can only guess that it was to allow its staff enough time to travel home light of the upheaval to the city. In doing so, the brand showed that it understood the importance of presenting “business as usual” to maintain client confidence but also the importance of front line staff members and their morale.
It was clear to me that, even as a staff member recounted stories about tourist shipping the famous bicycle back home, luxury and the many people who make its dreams possible do not exist in a vacuum.