Show Us the Money

April 30, 2007  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Furniture Retailing on May 2007 None of us think that we€™re paid what we deserve€”it€™s the nature of the beast to either overrate or underrate our jobs and our performance.

And very few jobs are identical, on a day-in, day-out basis. But similarities exist, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), part of the U.S. Department of Labor, undertook a compensation survey in May 2005 that looked at many, many industries.

One of the industries reviewed was retail furniture stores. Salary data from all sizes of stores was accumulated and analyzed, from store chains with annual sales in excess of $20 million to one-store operations with sales under $1 million. All of the results were specifically for furniture stores, although job titles and descriptions may also apply to other industries.

Not surprisingly, the highest-paid category was Chief Executives, with an average annual salary of more than $130,000. Next in line were Sales Managers, at $88,940 per year.

Lowest paid were Truck Drivers, Light or Delivery Services, with an annual wage of just over $22,000.

Other high-wage earners were General and Operations Managers ($80,140), Financial Managers ($82,970) and Purchasing Managers ($80,400). At the lower end of the scale were Credit Authorizers ($24,380), Shipping, Receiving and Traffic Clerks ($24,750), and Customer Service Representatives ($24,930).

Your Store is Unique

The salary figures that were released in the BLS survey are national averages. What a store needs to pay to hire and retain good workers varies from place to place. A store such as Short Furniture in Neoga, Ill., competes with other local furniture retailers such as Elliott Furniture, Furniture Center or Broadway Discount Furniture, all just down the road in Mattoon, Ill.

Short Furniture doesn€™t€”and shouldn€™t€”compete with furniture retailers in Chicago or St. Louis, where wages are buoyed by a higher cost of living.

Concerned about what you should be paying? Two good resources are your state€™s department of labor and Internet resources like salary.com. You might also wish to check with the local office of the Small Business Administration and, of course, your local library.

Hot Spots

What may be most worrisome is that the two positions that have the most post-sale contact with customers are among the lowest-paid: customer service and delivery personnel.

There isn€™t a furniture store owner who hasn€™t come under fire from dissatisfied customers€”and most of those complaints center on product quality and delivery.

Look at it from the customer€™s point of view. She just spent (in her mind) a very large sum of money for furniture that will make her home look beautiful. It arrives, (usually days or weeks after she wanted it, since most buyers want instantaneous delivery) and it isn€™t right. Wrong color, wrong size, it€™s damaged€”whatever. Who takes the blame? The hapless delivery guy, who rarely has anything to do with the product.

He will most likely tell the unhappy customer to call customer service. And all too often, that€™s when it really hits the fan. Customer service personnel never hear from happy, satisfied customers. When the phone rings or the customer shows up in the store, she€™s mad€”mad with a capital €œM.€

Unfortunately, customers have a unique ability to inflate the importance of their situation in relation to how much it has €œruined their life.€ Pity the customer service person who has to calm them down, find out what the problem is and then fix it. Often, the more complicated the problem, the less likely he or she is to have the power to fix it.

How do you correct this? Take a day and ride along with your delivery people. Then take another day and sit with your customer service personnel. These front-line experiences may be the best on-the-job training you€™ll ever receive.

Then, take what you€™ve learned and apply it to your daily routine. Make customer service your No. 1 priority. The best way to win against the competition is to develop a customer service strategy that turns your one-sofa purchaser into a repeat buyer. Give your customer service people the power to make things happen in a variety of instances. Then, for problems outside that, give them free access to you. And then it€™s up to you to decide what happens next.

Everyone makes mistakes, but it€™s how you resolve them that counts. Set your employees (and yourself!) up for success by understanding their jobs and giving them the resources to compete on the basis of customer service, not just on product price.