The last four series of this important topic have built the case for quality, speed, people development, and training as parts of the foundational pillars of competitive advantage for any service provider. Today, I would like to talk about something that most service providers overlook entirely: parking spaces and the security of the customer’s most valuable asset on your premises.
If you run a restaurant, a hospital, a supermarket, a spa, or any other service-providing entity, and your customers have to circle the block three times before they find somewhere to leave their car or, worse, park on the main road and spend their entire visit anxious about their vehicle being towed away, then you have a problem that no amount of excellent food, skilled doctors, or well-trained staff can fully overcome. The customer’s experience began before they walked through your door. And it began badly.
This is exactly one of the premises upon which Shoprite was built in Nigeria. They always have a large parking space. This was not an afterthought in their site selection process. It was a deliberate commercial criterion. Shoprite’s leadership understood, from decades of retail experience and rigorous consumer research, that friction at the point of access directly reduces footfall and that footfall is the oxygen of a physical retail business. When competitors were selecting sites based primarily on rental cost and foot traffic, Shoprite was also asking, ‘Can our customers get here easily, and can they park safely?’
