Guest speaker Luisa Catalina Remnelid captured our attention with compassion and charm, based on her solid “hands-on” experiences from working with clients at Kastrup Airport, IKEA, and others across the globe with concept development projects.
Among Luisa's activities are Mystery Shopping Evaluations and implementation, public speaking at seminars across Sweden, developing and or fine-tuning service strategies in the on/off retail environment and providing education to students with a retail background and professionals in the retail/service industries.
Lisa is also engaged locally in Malmö with Made in Rosengård is an incubator for young people and young new arrivals between 14 and 20 years. The purpose of the project is to involve young Malmö residents around income-generating activities, entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. The project is financed by the General Heritage Fund and runs between July 2018 and June 2021. There is so much published today that suggests that many salespeople working in retail, hospitality/services or in the restaurant business are quickly being replaced by robots.
Yes, in some aspects this is true in relation to simplified job tasks, but in other aspects the role that a salesperson in the future will have must be focused on some fundamental key aspects that I don’t believe a robot can be programmed to do. As a reflection, just think of the word ‘experience’ on a holistic level, tie that in with emotions and feelings and you get back to the core root of how we humans communicate and are fulfilled. Often project teams complete the first phase of a project from a bricks and mortar standpoint, however they forget that the hard work kicks in to ‘keep the existing customers coming back and attract new customers.
This is where a Customer Service Strategy is fundamental from Day 1 with a flexibility planned in to adapt to challenging situations that may present themselves. Let’s not forget that customers today have a powerful tool known as ‘social media’ whereby they can either make or break your business, therefore isn’t it in your best interest and theirs to prioritise this as a key strategy for long term success?