BARELY five months after opening, 313@Somerset shopping mall has already attracted some 15 million visitors - far exceeding its target of 10 million.
The preparations and effort it took to achieve this demonstrate that shopping malls need both 'hardware' and 'software' to continue attracting visitors, labour chief Lim Swee Say noted yesterday.
By hardware, he was referring to the physical attributes of the malls, while the software refers to customer service.
The operator of the mall, Lend Lease Asia, yesterday shared the recipe for its success with other players in the retail industry during a visit.
In February last year, when the mall was still under construction, its operator signed up to Spring Singapore's Customer- Centric Initiative (CCI).
This programme, rolled out in 2005, reaches out to help companies in the retail, transport, food and beverage, and health-care industries raise their service standards.
Everything - from the mall's layout to the position of the concierge desk - was planned with the customer in mind, said Lend Lease's development marketing director Karon Cameron.
This included launching the 313 Training Centre, which trains retail staff at the mall for free. The centre is the first of its kind in the local retail industry.
Case president Yeo Guat Kwang, who is also co-chairman of the CCI working committee, said the committee is working with many malls in the Orchard Road belt, such as 313@Somerset and Ion Orchard, on areas where improvements can be made.
'For the existing malls, we can still study the systems they have in place and training that they provide for service staff so that they are able to meet customers' expectations,' he said after he accompanied Mr Lim on a briefing at the mall.
The Government has put $100 million into the Gems Up movement which was launched last year to improve service standards. Some 56 per cent of the funds allocated has been disbursed for various training programmes.
Source: Straits Times, 15 May 2010
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