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Reflection (Capstone 2017)

There were many times when I had to use critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration during the Capstone project. When it came to helping Jospeh design the floor sets I had to use critical thinking because I had to think things through carefully in order to make sure that clothes could be noticed by the customers. I had to make sure that all the floor would also be in accordance to the regulations they had to be set as. This very important because clothing conversion is effected even through the setup of where clothes are placed. It is up to the store manager to complete these tasks. I had to reassure that customers would be satisfied by granting them the best items. Also, most importantly the setup has to make promotions noticeable because it is those same promotions that carry customers to buy clothes. Again, it was a job left for me to do under the advisory of my mentor.  For the first rooms I had to bring out new clothes that came from the transfers. This is ...

Positives and Negatives of a Retail Store April 14, 2017

Being a store manager can be very difficult because they are the ones that hold full responsibility of the store and the associates. Well to speak about the general positives of a retail store is that it can be a fun job. Also, you get to be more opened to people who helping them out. On the good note for managers, they already have all these qualities and are proficient at what they do. There are good managers, but there are also bad ones. Good managers drive the store to good business and keep the store under good control. Bad managers tend to get carried away and let associates do as they please. In a good atmosphere all managers and associates ay attention to work and customers. And managers are always there to help customers if they need anything. If customers are not pleased with something, then it's up to the manager to fix those errors.

Scheduling With the Manager April 11, 2017

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For yesterday's task I had to help the manager create the new schedule for the following week. Once again I was introduce to the new part of the Link that I've never seen before. like as mentioned before, it was so that it gives us access to the documents of associates as well. The part that is taken in interest is vowing their time availability. The manager was teaching me how she personally creates the schedule. In the Link, we were able to see how many hours each person could work for and what days they are available. On a piece of scratch binder paper my manager explained to me that we are given a limited amount of budgeted hours, so therefore we had to chose who can work for those hours. I examined the availabilities and she told me that the people who got to work a lot this week would be scheduled for two days next week. And the people who worked a small amount of hours would be scheduled more, so that it could be fair. When it comes to scheduling also, people need to hav...

April 4, 2017

For the last time I went to do my hours I went to Serramonte to learn more about the floor sets of a regular retail store. So I learned that a regular store is very different in comparison to an outlet for many reasons. Right when I walked in I noticed that it was squeaky clean and in pretty good conditions. I made my way back into the stock room to meet the managers over at that store. Again,  it was physically different because the stock room is 3x bigger than that of an outlet store. Every item is placed with its department, rather than by reduced prices like it is done at the outlet. I also took notice that there were a lot more of associates at work. The reason why there is more workers this week is because the season does take a lot of matter in this case. My mentor explained to me that there needs to be extra sets of hands to entirely change the whole store. In a regular store there's not much thinking to do because there are planned floor sets that the company sends to the ...

Sales Floor Set March 22, 2017

Spring season has been making its way through the business industry of retail. What does that mean? Well of course the sets of clothes have to be changed. Although, that doesn't really matter for the store at The Shops at Tanforan because it is an outlet store. So basically all the clothes we're getting are all transfers from regular full-priced stores. For the most part we're primarily getting winter clothes that didn't get sold. For this task I have to help the store manager and assistance managers bring out clothes that we know will sell right away. We had to plan out a floor set that makes sure that things will be noticed and will catch customers' eyes. I made some suggestions, and my mentor believed for some to be good because they were going to be noticed. One of a really good idea I suggested was to put all the extra 30% shirts and jackets on the same floor set of the cash register. This way when customers are about to check out, they would notice these produ...

Plan for Improvement March 1, 2017

For today's task I had to help my mentor organize a plan in which we were trying to figure out how to bring up the low percentiles of customer service to 70% or above. The areas we lacked of good customer service was in organization of both the regular priced jeans and clearance jeans. We also lacked a lot in fitting room experience, as well as clean-up of clothes that had to go back in their place. Some customers also suggested on the survey plan that associates should smile more and present themselves when helping them. Also, customers don't find it very helpful that there is no indication of who are the employees of the store. They said that there should be an indication such as name tags or a an employee badge that says Hollister Associate. The first part of all this that I took in interest in was being present during five minute meetings between the store manger and associates once they clocked in to help them understand what needs to change. My mentor let me participate i...

Customer Service February 27, 2017

Voice of customer and customer surveys are two major components to making present and future sells better for both the consumer and the company. As before I explained what the GIFT approach is, well I forgot to mention that it is our primarily source of voice of customer. The VOC is always to be improved. If it's already good, then it has to be made greater. It always needs to be something that is passed on to the new associates that are hired, and must be one of the first things they learn. The voice of customer reflects upon customer service experiences. Those experiences can be seen by the manager, hence they try to have their associates stay in place in the good areas, and also try to improve on poor areas. According to the chart of the store's surveys, it is noticed that the little things do matter. What I mean by this is that the survey asks a series of questions from employee interaction to experience in the fitting rooms. There are percentiles that define the circumstan...