PROTECT YOUR BUSINESS FROM CUSTOMER THEFT
There are a lot of people who are hurting financially and some of them will not hesitate to take what they want from you if they feel that they need it more than you do and if they believe that they can get away with the deed. There are common sense steps to take to make it hard for a customer to feel that they can get away with stealing. Here are some ideas for your consideration.
1. Provide instruction to your employees on what to look for and how to respond to a suspected theft by a customer. Sometimes the police department will present this information in a town seminar or they may send someone to your store to give a short presentation to the employees. You may also want to ask your attorney about how to approach this situation so that everyone is on the same page running the same rules when the situation comes up. And it will come up.
2. Put the cash register and an employee at the point of the store where a customer must pass by in order to leave your store.
3. If you have sales people available then you can make it a store policy that the sales staff must be helpful to customers. They must go up to a new customer and ask if the customer would like help looking for something. These same staff should be scanning the store all the time and if they see a customer acting unusual move closer to them. There are other steps to be taken here but first contact your attorney and then have the employee seminar.
4. Install mirrors around the store so that employees can see around-a-corner and spot what a customer is doing when not fully visible.
5. Do you have video surveillance cameras in place? If you don’t have a system yet, you can try this: set up some cameras in visible locations throughout your store that you can turn on even without the video tape. Just having the cameras is sometimes enough to convince a customer who is not really a thief to not become one because the likely hood of getting caught is high.
These are just a few ideas on how to keep employees and customers honest. Would you like to discuss other ways to keep your assets and business safer from theft? Please contact us to discuss your situation.
