Counter Productive
Frank Dekker, Tuesday, 7th August 2007
When did you last see a bar in someone’s living room ?
You may even be too young to remember, but sometime in the last century this was quite the rage. Your friends or hosts for the evening would proudly offer you a drink and then disappear behind their bar. Whilst all good fun, the bar always seemed, to me, to lack a purpose, as cold drinks and ice were usually stored in the kitchen creating an awkward dynamic. The bar(rier) between host and guests also seemed to limit the flow of conversation.
In my experience it is no different in most retail environments. Too often a large counter separates the staff from the customers creating an awkward space, where ‘them and us’ takes precedence over customer engagement and staff have another excuse to hide from helping customers. This, of course, maybe the design you want, but most dynamic retail environments show a distinct lack of counters.
In these award winning spaces the counter is gone and the customers mix with staff in the same space, there is no hierarchy between the server and the served, resulting in a higher level of staff-customer interaction, and a better customer experience.
There are good examples all around. Ikea have very little staff, but those that are available are often perched on a stool next to (not behind!) a very small shelf with a PC to help customers look for items. This collaborative approach helps to draw customers into the screen and find items they want.
On a recent visit to Comet, the electrical chain that has made huge leaps in customer experience thanks to a sustained effort, the staff actually jumped the ‘help counter’ to join me on the customer-side and talk me through the product selection. Bravo!
Counters that allow staff to hide are bad and should be banned. The excuse often heard is that the retailer needs somewhere to put their tills. Of course they don’t, the advent of mobile computing and wireless can take care of everything except the actual transaction of money, and when selling furniture, floors, bathrooms, fashion and IT equipment the transaction can be done completely with mobile payment terminals.
Even in more traditional businesses, such as an opticians, do we see that an open space in which customers and staff work together to find the best product, with the help of tablet PCs to keep all information close to hand, creates a positive customer experience? Leading Dutch eyewear retailer Hans Anders is working with acquility to realise this today.
Counters can only add significant value if the customer and the staff are on the same side, and the counter is used to display product information, or the customer and staff explore the perfect product together, be that the latest fashion look, a complex IT purchase, or a trip of a lifetime.
acquility has designed interactive counters for this purpose, but never as a barrier to interaction between staff and customer, but rather a facilitator.
Like the living room bar from the seventies, the retail counter has had its day. The new customer experience demands shared space, interaction and collaboration for the perfect product. If designed from the customer experience outward the necessary processes and flow will follow.
Experience Design helps opticians sell glasses, furniture retailers sell sofas, fashion houses sell garments, IT warehouses sell TV’s and travel agents sell adventures, all without counters. The only place where the counter is productive is in a real bar!