When you run a convenience store, you have control over certain aspects of the business. Products, store layout, employees, and policies—all are carefully considered and chosen. Your customers, however, will always be a wild card. You can’t control who’s having a good or bad day, or anything else going on in their lives. What you can control, with proper training, is how your team handles the customers that try to take those emotions out on your store.
Prepare Your Team for Any Situation
Your employees need to know how to respond to intense situations — and keeping customers calm can go a lot further than you might think. Some ways de-escalation training can benefit to your store include:
Keeping Your Employees Safe
De-escalating a situation with an angry customer means finding a peaceful resolution and avoiding a potentially more dangerous incident. This could save your employees from any further verbal, and possibly even physical, abuse. When the alternative is so drastic, your team will appreciate training on how to avoid escalation. Training will provide them with the confidence they need to respond quickly and appropriately.
Protecting Your Customers
When a situation escalates, your employees aren’t the only ones in danger. Other customers could also be in harm’s way. An altercation between one customer and another can be just as bad for your business as one between a customer and employee. If the situation isn’t handled properly, customers not directly involved could find themselves in harm’s way. Giving your employees the training they need to act as a mediator in these situations is crucial to protecting innocent bystanders and preventing a more serious incident.
Protecting Your Store
You and your team put a lot of work into your store! Unfortunately, it only takes one angry customer a couple seconds to cause a big mess. Tipping over displays, throwing beverages, knocking things off shelves; all these actions are disruptive to your store’s operations. If your employees can calm the situation before tempers rise this much, they might be saving your store from damage and a lot of cleaning up afterwards.
These are all tangible benefits that avoid serious injury and destruction. But there’s also an intangible benefit to running a safe store: leaving a good impression on your shoppers. Customers won’t return to stores where they feel unsafe. Preparing your team to take control of situations and prevent escalated incidents will make customers feel more comfortable while visiting your store. This will certainly help your store gain customer loyalty on top of the other benefits.
Online Training for De-Escalation
As part of our comprehensive Convenience Store Training suite, our De-Escalating Difficult Situations training uses realistic scenarios to teach employees how to keep a difficult situation from escalating into a dangerous one. – all delivered through our trainingGrid® learning management system. This flexible system comes with a variety of robust features customizable to fit your needs in addition to built-in reporting and certification tools to help maintain compliance.
Request a guided demonstration of trainingGrid® today!
