Lessons from the Retail World

Pastor and church consultant Carey Nieuwhof wrote the following observations about what the decline in retail/mall shopping can teach churches. It’s worth reading. Pastor Bill WHAT THE SLOW DEATH OF RETAIL CAN TEACH CHURCHES It doesn’t take keen observation to notice that malls are not what they used to be. Retail as we’ve known it, is slowly dying before our eyes. As some major news outlets (themselves in transition) have outlined, malls are closing, formerly dominant chains are in decline, and flagship stores are changing. All of this has implications for how we accomplish our mission as a church. Wise church leaders change their approach to not just preserve the mission of the church, but to advance it MY RECENT FRUSTRATION I recently wanted to pick up a garment bag for travel purposes. I thought that rather than wait for shipping, I’d drop support my local mall, which at this point I only visit a handful of times a year. The mall I chose is the premiere mall in our region. The mall has over half a million square feet of retail space. You’d think I would have had a good experience and walked out with a garment bag. Only three stores carried luggage. And among those three stores, there were quite literally three garment bags. Think about that. Half a million square feet. Three options, which took 60 minutes to find as I walked from one end of the mall to the other and store to store. In two out of those three stores, the staff were nowhere to be found (I was told by one person I chased down that it was not her department). They kicked me out of one store 5 minutes before closing. The staff was clearly more interested in getting home than making a sale. Guess what I did? Ordered one from Amazon instead—after really wanting to support local retail. And people wonder why retail is dying. The point is not to vent my frustration, but to think through the implications for the church of the massive cultural shift from physical retail to online retail that our culture is experiencing. The very people we’re trying to reach have a shifting mindset, and to ignore it is simply unwise. Here are 5 Things the Church Can Learn from the Slow Death of Retail As We Know It 1. INCONVENIENCE HAS TO BE OVERCOME BY REWARD The inconvenience of retail has to be overcome by the reward of the experience. Think about it, to attend anything physically you need to: Budget anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours of time Drive there Ensure you have enough fuel to get there and back (how many times do you end up filling up your car?) Find a parking space Initiate your own personal search for the object you want Manually sort out pricing, brands and options Track down sales people to help you Pay for your purchase Haul it home When I got home, I literally did 10 minutes of searching on Amazon without leaving my couch and bought my bag. It’s being delivered to my door. Bottom Line If retail is going to survive, inconvenience has to be overcome by reward. Implication For Church Leaders The reward of attending your church has to overcome the inconvenience of attending it. If you make people battle traffic and busy schedules to attend a sub-par, impersonal experience at your church, people won’t bother. 2. ONLINE OPTIONS ARE REAL OPTIONS I realize until current generations die off, people will say things like I will never give my credit card to anyone online. I prefer the retail experience. Among Millennials, online shopping is widely accepted, normal, and growing annually. I’m not even close to being a Millennial, and I buy most of what I purchase online. Bottom Line If you have a frustrating, uncertain and expensive option for getting what you want (retail), why would you choose it over something that’s simple, convenient and actually less expensive (online)? Implication For Church Leaders Today, people have a sea of online options for sermons. Anyone who attends your local church can listen to Steven Furtick, Perry Noble, Craig Groeschel, Louie Giglio, Joyce Meyers, Joel Oosten or Andy Stanley any time they want for free. And many do. Not only can they listen to other pastors preach, but they can be ‘involved’ in their congregation through church online. You can argue all day long about whether this is good or bad. Here’s the reality: it’s happening. Online is here to stay. The internet is not going away any time soon. When someone offers a better option than you provide, people will choose it. 3. YOUR PEOPLE ARE YOUR SEARCH ENGINE Everyone who shops at a mall is looking for something. The difference between physical retail and online shopping is that in a mall, your people are your search engine—not some algorithm. The challenge for retail is that their sales force is a dwindling number of people who are paid minimum wage to do a job most don’t care about. When you show up at mall (or even car dealership) to buy something, it’s not unusual to meet sales people who know less about the product than you do AND care less about the product than you do. This is a major problem. Online options become better options because an algorithm actually produces better answers than “I don’t know” or “we sell a lot of those” or “if we have any they’re over there somewhere.” A caring associate who is genuinely interested in helping a customer achieve his or her goals will almost always beat an algorithm. Bottom Line A passionless work force will always lose out to a well designed online retail experience. When your sales force stops caring, your customers will always find an alternate source. Implication For Church Leaders Every person who walks for your door is looking for something (ultimately, Jesus). Your people are your search engine. If all you do in your church is replicate the deadened customer service experience most retail places provide, you will kill someone’s search for meaning and faith. Get your most engaged, thoughtful and intuitive people on guest services. Find people who can help people take their first step or their next step. Recruit people who realize what’s at stake when anyone walks in the door and who can custom tailor an experience that helps them find what they’re looking for in a style and at a pace that suits them. This isn’t easy…but it’s so important. If retail is going to survive, it has to get rid of its I-don’t-care workforce. If the church is going to thrive, we’re going to put some of best people on the door and in the halls. A first impression is the last impression some people will ever get. 4. THE IMPORTANCE OF USER REVIEWS One of the things that really jumps out at me in physical sales experiences is the absence of user reviews. In the online world, you have full access to user reviews from people who actually bought the product. As an author, have zero control over those reviews. If you really want to know what a book, or product is like, read the reviews. In a physical retail space, all you have is what the product says about itself and what the salesperson says about it, both of which are inherently biased—unless, of course, you get an exceptional sales person (and exceptions means they tell you the truth, even if it might cost them the sale). Bottom Line In the emerging culture, people trust what others say about you more than they trust what you say about you. Implication For Church Leaders Facebook provides a tremendous opportunity for church people to post user reviews of their experience at your church. You can stand up on a Sunday and encourage people to do it. The other option you have is with your guest services team. Encourage them to speak personally to guests about their experience at your church. Obviously, there’s a bias, but every guest realizes that unlike the pastor and church staff, your volunteers are not getting a paycheck. As a result, people will tend to trust their opinion even a little more than the staff’s opinion. So let your people talk openly and honestly about their experience. If you’re worried because it’s a bad experience, then get to work as a leader and change the experience for everyone. 5. THE MIDDLE IS DISAPPEARING If you look at many malls today, the middle is disappearing. One of the stores where I used to buy my shirts is now a calendar store. And that’s on trend. Stores are either becoming more high end or more low end. The low end will be driven by price. The high end stores will be driven by experience, excellent service, and unique products. Bottom Line As the middle disappears, opportunities open on either end of the spectrum. Implication For Church Leaders The implications for church leaders are a little more difficult to see in this instance, but they’re there. No, we’re not selling a product. And no, we don’t cater to the rich. The stores that are driven by price make something accessible to people who can’t otherwise afford something. Our message is free, and our experience should always be open to everyone. But there’s no reason in the world we can’t take the best of a high end experience (relationship, personal attention, perks) and make them available to everyone. Guest services team at Connexus Church brings umbrellas into the parking lot and escorts people from their cars on rainy days. On snowy days, sometimes they’ll clean people’s windshields of snow before church lets out. Those are touches you’d be surprised to see at high end retail, but we offer them to everyone. We also have special parking for first time guests and single moms. And our guest services team is trained to escort people to their environments rather than point. Concierge type service is called the “Next Steps Kiosk” where we help people figure out what their personal next step might be: baptism, getting into a small group, serving or whatever it is. That team is trained to listen, and try to come up with a solution that best fits where that person is at. The point? It’s personal. It’s caring. It’s relational. Great conversations get struck when you offer this kind of personal attention to people. And, we think, it reflects the way God relates to his people. When you treat people personally, they’ll be more likely to engage relationally. WHAT DO YOU SEE? Those are some learnings for church leaders I see as we watch retail slowly die. Rev. Bill Schram began his ministry with Westminster in March and is the current Interim Minister. Bill attended McCormick seminary in Chicago and met his wife Jenny there. They have served as co-pastors and in separate positions. He has served churches in urban, near suburb, small town, county seat towns in various positions such as pastor, associate pastor, interim pastor, and hospital chaplain. He and Jenny have two natural and one foster daughter. Delightfully, they now have a granddaughter to enjoy.