In March, the IAA and the Post Office visited Paresh Vyas’s shop in Manchester to help improve his customer service. Here, we find out how this advice has helped.

Paresh's Action Plan

1. Write down how you want to handle complaints.

2. Ask for feedback on your customer service and make changes to improve.

3. Introduce a dress code and name badges so staff stand out to customers.

Since the Post Office’s visit, we’ve taken the tips Peter gave us on board. We had a problem with customers complaining about long queues, to solve this we opened a second till just for parcels to prioritise them, and customers are much happier.

We’ve also produced a feedback form – with a prize draw for a free bottle of wine – so customers can rate their visit, our staff’s friendliness and our availability. To help customers identify our staff more easily, we now all have name badges.

Visit Better Retailing/IAA to find out more about the visit from the IAA, to develop your own action plan and see similar results in your store.

Your action plan:

• Go to betterretailing.com/IAA to download the free tools to improve your shop
• Call 020 7689 0600 (Option 3) to find out how you can take part in a future visit from one of our partners

• To benchmark your shop, download your free digital copy of the IAA’s Retail Profit Guide.