Retail in Tashkent: PR guarantees you save your clients during crisis

In the context of large shopping centers any buyer is difficult to convey an opinion or suggestion to the administration. Lack of PR puts organization’s brand at the level of high risk. Thus in case of negative background information the absence of well-established PR-services will not allot to respond quickly and take the necessary measures to offset the negative effect.

Let us consider the example of the possible situation in mall “X”. Buyer refers to the assistant with the claim. Assistant who works the first day of course doesn’t know what to do. Cause the manager of the hall is also unavailable. In the result the buyer is being annoyed, he refuses to buy and leaving the mall. But the story does not end there.

Irritated buyer decides to spread negative rumors through his friends in the Internet. The company's reputation of this may not suffer, but what if this is not an isolated case?

What if the buyer will be a representative of the media, having more than 1000+ subscribers in his personal blog? Just one negative review from a person like this will be known to numerous people.

The absence of elaborate system of reaction to negative reviews in the long run can destroy the reputation of any company or brand. This work must begin well before the situation is out of control. Any problem arising from the client must be resolved before he leaves the mall.

If the problem that addresses a buyer cannot be solved at once, one should call the responsible person authorized to make the necessary decisions - to replace of defective goods or make a refund. Also in case the client undertook even minimal damage the mall should compensate not only the damage, but also make some gift to the frustrated client.

Do not forget that usually your buyer is not going to waste time figuring out relationships and what is called "to seek an end". If the fault of the shopping center is proven the buyer suffered even little damage as wasted time, PR policy should be directed to the fact that such a person has gone out of the mall at least without negative emotions.

The logic of some merchants, whose value is only momentary profit, has no right to exist in a major retail network with a focus on European corporate values. A buyer should be able to apply directly to the company, bypassing the barriers associated with many major shopping centers.

Problems related to consumers in major retail chains are of the belief that "we have already thousands of customers every day - one buyer does not make forecasts", and "if you do not like shopping here - no one is forcing you". What is a fundamentally mistake itself. Together with other problems mall can get like supermarket “Meram” (former “Metro” by metro station “Hamza”) after opening the “F-mart” right across the road. There’re few customers at first one now especially in the evenings and in general it looks almost empty.

Ask yourself - why?

Artem Safarov is author of the section “People and Brands”. He is specialist in marketing and PR. He studied crisis management at World Technological University. He worked as manager and director of marketing and PR. He launched his first product in the market at his 20s.