BCSC president Bob De Barr steering industry
toward higher customer service standards
It’s easy to be portrayed as a lip server when
you head up an association as large as BCSC. That hasn’t stopped Bob
De Barr from setting an ambitious course for the organisation, with
the end goal of raising customer service standards across the
industry.
As BCSC’s incoming president, as well as director of development
partnerships at Land Securities, De Barr believes it is time to make
shopping centres aware of and accountable for the customer service
they provide to their clients.
"The idea is to set some ground rules for best practice in customer
service and measure performance against it," De Barr explains.
"We’ve done it in the catering business."
He sees no reason why it cannot be repeated in retailing. On the
contrary, not doing it would eventually hurt the sector, which is
under constant pressure from Internet-based businesses.
"A bad experience in a shop reflects on a shopping centre, and a bad
one in a shopping centre reflects on the entire industry," he says.
That’s why De Barr stresses the importance of making good customer
service a priority at every level—from ensuring shopping centre
landlords treat their retailers well to providing as good an
experience as possible for every consumer who steps into a high
street boutique or shopping centre.
De Barr acknowledges that making it happen won’t be easy, given the
tight budgets under which shopping centres are forced to operate,
not to mention retailers being squeezed on rent.
Despite the difficulties, he still believes that good customer
service is one very obvious way of adding value to a shopping centre
scheme.
"Developers go to great lengths to provide the best in shopping
centre entertainment. They focus on the experiential side of things
by putting millions of pounds into quality furnishings and
entertainment. But if the customer is let down at the point of sale,
the whole thing is spoiled," De Barr notes.
"It’s like having a top-of-the-line stereo system and a downset
record player. You’re never going to get optimal quality of sound.
It’s a case where two and two don’t always equal four."
De Bar has had plenty of experience analysing investment plans,
assessing risks and identifying which strengths will best serve a
retail scheme today and over the long run.
Over the past 35 years, De Barr has been involved in developing over
half a million square metres of retail space. As a founding partner
of The Birmingham Alliance, he has helped transform the city of
Birmingham into a prime example of partnerships gone right.
The Alliance’s award-winning Bullring scheme has set new standards
not only in terms of physical development and merchandising, but
also in team work.
A public-private partnership, Bullring was built on the premise that
it takes everyone’s efforts to make a scheme succeed—developer,
public partners, centre management and retailers. It’s an example
that he says other projects are beginning to follow.
When De Barr isn’t working on supporting best practices in the
retail industry, he likes to feed his passion for water sports.
"I like to surf and get to the sea, even if I’m getting a bit old
for that. My three kids are pretty much grown up now so I have a
little extra time to go boating as well."
De Barr says picking a favourite destination is rather difficult, as
he has been fortunate enough to travel to so many wonderful places
both at home and abroad—be it Australia, Portugal (he has seen
examples of very good shopping centres coming up in that market),
Italy or the US.
De Barr does, however, have a slight penchant for Southern France,
particularly the Côte D’Azur.
"There’s a good feeling there," he says of the place, where he has
attended international retail real estate events such as MAPIC and
MIPIM.
Businesses along the famed French Riviera certainly know how to
create that good feeling and De Barr would like to see more of it
coming from the UK’s retail industry.
As he rightly points out, when as a traveller you step out of a
train station and get into a taxi, the cab driver should be
promoting the city. It may not be in the cabby’s handbook, but it’s
customer service nonetheless. And, chances are, you will begin your
exploration of the city more confidently and even more excited about
being there.
"People in a shopping centre might not be spending money at a given
time, but they still need to be taken care of," De Barr notes.
"It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a 5,000-square-foot scheme or a
large centre. Customer service is an attitude. It’s a mindset."
Under De Barr’s leadership, BCSC will further the customer service
agenda through a number of means, including the publication of an
industry report on the subject, to be made available in hard copy,
via email and on the Web.
Customer service will also get plenty of attention at BCSC’s
upcoming annual conference, to be held in Belfast from 31st October
to 2nd November 2005.
As I was perusing the Web in search of new
shopping centre contacts in Europe, I noticed that many schemes had
decided to embrace the concept of the Global Village. Wanting to
attract travelling shoppers from neighbouring countries and
overseas, some centres featured a button showing the Union Jack or
simply marked "English" on their Websites. The mere vision of such a
link got me rather
excited at the prospect of being able to delve
into a wealth of information—my French, German and rudimentary
Spanish wouldn’t help me much in Poland, Russia or any other
European land whose language I cannot decipher. The excitement was
short-lived, however, when those links turned out to be mirages.
Much to my chagrin, the links led me to pages
whose primary titles were indeed posted in English, but whose
remaining text was in the language of the land. The shock was just
as hard for my English-
language computer to take, judging by the lines
of symbols and rows of question marks that ran across my screen. The
experience, which
I went through on several Websites, left me
wondering why any
marketer would go through the bother of
pretending to offer a
bilingual site when in fact it did not have one.
It would be like making up a spontaneous lie about having travelled
to India without realising that the stranger you’re speaking to has
spent the last three years there and will know in a second that
you’re a phony.
It would be much better to stick to a shopping
centre’s true tongue and then offer a couple of contacts there who
can speak a foreign
language. These days, it is rare to find a
centre, especially a tourist-
oriented one, where no one speaks more than one
language. Surely anyone interested in finding out more won’t mind
sending off a few email queries. I certainly didn’t.
It’s one thing to want to be worldly. But
covering the basics of good PR representation might be more
important.
