In high school I had two passions: photography and stereo equipment. I loved both of these topics, and devoted countless hours to reading about them, checking them out in stores, buying magazines like Popular Photography and Stereo Review, and talking (arguing – in case Goldstein and Mmahat are out there) about them with my best friends. Hours and hours a day. I understood the Ansel Adams zone system, I could calculate fill flash from the F#’s in my meter and on my flash, and step it down one or two stops so that it looked realistic. I knew about composition and depth of field. I had the same level of knowledge of stereo systems. Decibels and audio response curves, the meaning of watts RMS, different speaker cone types, and impacts of different room shapes and windows to the sound system that would work best. Most of this knowledge is useless with the tools commonly sold today. I’m not sure if college students would even understand the term “stereo system.
I worked in a general merchandise store, and every day for minimum wage I gave people an explanation of what I had learned the hard way. Why? Because I enjoyed being an expert giving out knowledge fluently that other people hadn’t begun to amass, but which they needed in order to make the best purchase. I didn’t enjoy looking down on the non-initiates, as Jack Black did in High Fidelity. I enjoyed being helpful while repeating complex things that I was clever enough to have figured out. Also, I just loved the subject matter. I loved photography, and being a photographer, and checking out every new feature. I loved authentic sounding music, and big, furniture-sized speakers that could reproduce all of the tonality of a stand up bass. Something in my brain produced endorphins when a person had questions about something technical related to cameras or stereo equipment and I was able to explain it. And they bought the camera or stereo.
As an adult, I still love retail, although I’m somewhat of an anti-consumer in my private life. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in retail stores observing employee-customer interactions, so that I could understand different customer archetypes and different purchase processes. I have found that same degree of knowledge and love of a topic in many store employees today. Whether home improvement products or women’s clothing or luxury goods, I’ve seen employees enjoy sharing their special knowledge with customers, in the zone while explaining how to find the right size T and P valve for a given brand of water heater or how to find the right bra size for a hard to fit body type or how to select the perfect watch for a husband who already has eight of them. These people are intrinsically more valuable to a retail enterprise than those who frown and point to an aisle on the other side of the store. It’s just been very difficult to single them out and compensate them in a way that makes them want to stay. Until now.
With the advent of e-commerce social media, these people have a whole new platform and level of effectiveness that awaits them. I’ve noticed on Sears.com the rise of some people like this, who answer many questions with eloquence and — could it be? — Joy.
Of course, social media e-commerce sites need perky marketing reps that have Hollywood-style head shots that look great at 80×80 pixels, and who can write a dozen times a year that they are so excited about the next whatever release and not give a second thought to the idea that someone might consider their enthusiasm disingenuous. But there is also a place at this table for the unsung retail expert from the aisle. Social media gives them a platform that could realistically multiply the revenue they’re responsible for by a hundred or even a thousand times. There’s a risk of given them so much of a platform that they fly the coop. But that’s a risk anyway. The battle for these voices has not even begun yet. And if you give them a voice on your platform there will probably be many more in line waiting to take their place when they move on. Retailers need to find a way to locate such people and compensate them so that they have a high degree of job satisfaction, and better pay than people who don’t add comparable value to the brand and to the bottom line. They need a new role designation for these people that differentiates them from their less productive and less knowledgeable peers.
Some will say this is unfair to people who are not as eloquent, not as good at writing, not as expert at their field, not as giving of their time an resources. Without doubt, social media brings the potential of very concretely widening this gap. But this isn’t taking away anything from those people. It’s recognizing the substantiated contribution of others in a way that matches the value they add to the bottom line, and with analytics tools this is not hard to figure out. The retailers who develop a model for finding, engaging, and rewarding these purveyors of joy through product knowledge will have a position of strength in the coming social media melee.
Copyright 2009, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)
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