Retail hygiene is about much more than just ticking boxes. Far from an end of day or last minute consideration, the impact of the cleanliness of your business premises on your customers can significantly affect sales, reputation and licences. Whatever area of retail you work in, whether it’s fashion or food preparation, maintaining essential hygiene practices should be a vital consideration not just day-to-day, but on a consistent and permanent basis.
Your Professional Image As Commodity
Any successful business knows that it’s selling more than a product. It’s selling an image, a reputation, a brand. A clean counter really can make the difference between customer satisfaction and repeat business and a bad reputation and diminished turnover. Over the years a huge amount of research has demonstrated that customers relate to businesses through split-second, often unconscious associations.
Cleanliness makes an immediate impact, and the things that staff won’t notice on a daily basis will immediately form a customer’s impression of your business as a whole.
The Value of Proper Presentation
When you see the impression you create, and the reputation you garner as a result, you start to see things like professionally cleaned carpets, regularly cleaned counters, hygiene stations and effective waste management in a different light – they are essentials for any business.
Nothing has a greater impact on your customers or your staff than image. What you present is essentially what you are, and what you’re worth.
Some Essential Good Practices
These split-second impressions are the reason that retailers invest so heavily in studies in the psychology of colour and on shop design. It’s the reason that sale signs are always in red, and that areas for relaxed browsing have ambient lighting.
To maximise on your impact, you need to make sure that your blue carpet stays a royal blue, for example. You need to make sure that all glass and metal is spotless, that surfaces are clean, and that your staff have regular access to things like hand sanitisers, even if they’re only handling non-perishable products or cash.
We all know that health, safety and hygiene are strict legal requirements for retailers. Finding a company that can advise and support you in meeting these requirements, and the fundamentally important expectations of your customers, is essential.
As a leading supplier to cleaning, janitorial and healthcare sectors for over 20 years, RGS Group is ideally placed to find the right retail hygiene solutions for you and your business. Browse our full range online today.