Stores Don't Suck by Melissa Wong

Author:Melissa Wong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melissa Wong
Published: 2023-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Current Communication Challenges

Moving to email was clearly a step in the right direction, but as business, technology, and our customer expectations continue to change rapidly, the communication most retailers currently employ is not keeping up. The following are the most common messaging practices.

Ongoing Messaging

Many retailers create cadences of communication to manage the volume of information they need to transmit. These typically include communication bundles that are sent in quarterly, monthly, biweekly, or even weekly cadences.

Although the intention of moving the information from mailed-out packets into email was the right move, the execution exposed certain unique challenges. Although the plan was to send information periodically, that was rarely the case. The biggest problem with weekly communication is that it is never actually weekly—it somehow always turns into daily!

Oftentimes, stores receive twenty to eighty communications a week. Headquarters will, for example, send PDF packets of information to stores with different themes every Monday. The stores then try to piece together what they should do, according to their store category. Maybe one particular Monday is unusually busy, or perhaps someone called in sick, and tasks from the PDF weren’t completed. “No worries,” the manager might say. “We’ll finish it first thing tomorrow morning.” But then the next morning, another piece of communication comes in that conflicts with what was sent on Monday. The store now needs to figure out if what they did needs to change based on the new details, and the manager is spending more time just trying to figure out what his store still needs to do.

Being able to process and digest all of the information just isn’t realistic.

One of our clients, Berme (not their real name), implemented a weekly communication cadence, but also sent out a daily update. Berme made it clear that the daily communication superseded the weekly, which then caused the stores to spend a lot of time flipping back and forth between what they read in the weekly communication and what changed in the daily update. Another client also decided to go with a weekly cadence, but then they set expectations for their stores to also check their email twice a day—once at 10 a.m. and the second at 5 p.m.—to make sure nothing was sent out from headquarters. What’s the point of establishing a weekly communication when they’re asking their stores to check their email twice a day?

These companies have structures in place, but in reality, there are so many messages leaking out—critical ones, no less—that it’s defeating the purpose of a planned communication. One way retailers have tried to deal with the leakage is by implementing themed communication three times a week. For example, communication relating to loss prevention and human resources will be sent out on Monday; marketing and promotions on Wednesday; and inventory and merchandising on Friday. Their hope was to give stores a more digestible way to go through and understand what’s expected of them and what actions they need to take to materially drive the business. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work because—again—business happens twenty-four hours a day, and it’s constantly changing.

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