The key elements of Execution include:

1. Party details: Imagine you communicated to your guests that you would havea buffet at your party, but then didn’t have time to make the food? What would happen if your guests didn’t eat dinner that night because they expected to eat at your party? What if your guests brought their kids because you told them you would have kid appropriate games and toys, but then forgot to buy them? Would this impact their experience?
   • Optimize accountability: Ensuring that all details required to host a party at Our House are executed successfully and in a timely manner is critical. There are two tools to help you ensure all tasks are completed successfully and on time.
     • Execution Standards: Execution standards enable us to track and follow-up on tasks that haven’t been completed to ensure a memorable, 5-star experience. The execution standards that are tracked focus on the key activities required to run a successful, memorable party in Our House. These standards include, but are not limited to: scheduling to labor forecasts and staffing properly, ensuring clean and organized stores, completing all customer orders on time including In Store Pickup, and completing the training and executing against the Rally House “Let’s Party” experience model.
     • “What’s Next” list: This is the list of actions and projects (e.g., no overdue orders) that each store commits to completing on a daily basis. This list includes the most important tasks and projects to help improve the customer experience.
2. Party logistics, timing and help: What would happen if you communicated to your guests that the party was starting at 6pm, and then you realized that you wouldn’t be ready until 8pm, but you didn’t communicate the time change to your guests? Would that make for a great party experience? Imagine you hosted a party which took days to prepare because you didn’t want to or didn’t feel comfortable asking for help? What would that do to your stress level? What are the chances that you would forget something or wouldn’t achieve the level of quality you strive for?
   • Communicate, communicate, communicate! Communication is essential to executing a successful party at Our House. Appropriate, timely and clear communication reduces risk, prevents revenue loss, reduces shrink, and decreases customer and/or employee issues. Communication should focus on your store’s challenges and what help you need from Rally House leadership to resolve those challenges. If you don’t communicate, the assumption is that you are successfully executing all elements of the “Let’s Party” model and completing all of your operational tasks. When considering the appropriate times to communicate always remember:
     • “Bad news doesn’t get better with age”; communicate as soon as you become aware of the issue.
     • If a task can’t get done, communicate it upward.
     • If something doesn’t work, communicate it upward.
     • If something isn’t right, communicate it upward.
3. Party complications: Parties will inevitably have issues and in many cases unforeseen issues that are out of your control. Can you positively impact the guest experience and is it a good use of time at your party to focus on what went wrong?  Would it help make the party more memorable if you made excuses as to why the food was cold (your microwave broke) or it didn’t taste good (the grocery store was missing one ingredient)? How would that impact your guest’s perception of the party?
   • Be solution oriented: Making excuses (e.g., “we’re too busy”, “you keep changing what you need us to do”, “our store’s performance was down this year because our teams didn’t win.”) doesn’t solve your challenges, and takes your focus away from what’s most important—ensuring a memorable, 5-star experience. Focus on what you can control, identify and implement solutions, communicate upward and ask for help when appropriate. Be accountable to solve problems, and be inspired to get it done.
4. Party prep prioritization: What would happen if you left the most important tasks to the last minute prior to the party starting because you had to deal with other unforeseen issues?Imagine you setup all of the decorations, put out all of the plates, utensils and glasses, but hadn’t yet purchased the drinks or the groceries to prepare the food? You then receive an urgent work call, and realize you’re not going to be ready before your guests arrive. How would that impact your experience as a host? What would you do differently to avoid this at your next party?
   • Enhance Prioritization: During the course of a day or a week there will always be unforeseen tasks and issues that are presented to you as “urgent”. Just because it’s urgent to someone else doesn’t mean it’s urgent for you. When an unforeseen “urgent” task is presented to you consider how it will impact the important tasks on your list and most importantly the impact on the customer experience if you’re not able to complete one or more of the tasks. When in doubt ask your supervisor how best to prioritize to ensure the most important tasks are completed first.
5. Party budget: Would you overspend your budget for party supplies without thinking through the monetary or guest experience impact? If you didn’t think it through and then realized you didn’t have enough money to cover the costs, what would you do? Imagine you’re hosting a party and you need some help cleaning your house and you hired a service to make sure the stage is set for the event. After the cleaning service finishes, the owner of the cleaning company collects the check and says, “your house is done”. Later, just before party time you go into the guest bathroom and find out that they didn’t finish. You call the owner to ask what happened to the guest bathroom and the owner says, “oh, we ran out of time.” What would you do?
   • Own the business: Treat your store as if it were your own, because really, it is! You have the ability to make or break the customer experience in Our House with the decisions you make, the tasks you complete, don’t complete, or partially complete, and the level of quality in which you complete them. Make decisions and perform your tasks as if you owned the store.

Parties, whether in our homes or in our stores, require significant prep to ensure a memorable, 5-star experience. Imagine you are hosting a party would you host it without doing any prep? Without purchasing any food or drinks? Creating memorable experiences start with prepping for the party in Our House.

The key elements of Party Prep include:

1. Location, location, location: Would you only talk to the same person for your entire party? How would your other friends feel?
   • Visualizing Merchandise Checklist (Updated): Reorganized to be Department-based to ensure optimal customer focus by enabling Associates to cover all parts of the store.
2. Shopping list: What would happen if you forgot a couple of key ingredients for a new recipe you were making? Would your guests enjoy your food?
   • What’s Next Checklist: Imperative to consistently complete the What’s Next checklist to ensure priorities are set, communicated and accurately executed.
3. Dietary restrictions: What would happen if one of your guests has a nut allergy and you were unsure if there were nuts in the food you were serving?
   • Product Knowledge: Ensuring our people have maximum knowledge of our products is paramount to helping provide an optimal experience including helping increase our Associates confidence in engaging with customers.
4. Bedrooms & Bathrooms: Would it be a memorable party if the bedrooms and bathrooms weren’t clean, organized, and lacked soap and towels?
   • Dressing Rooms & Restrooms: Organization and cleanliness of dressing rooms and restrooms significantly impacts the experience and perception of our stores. Always ensure they are presentable as you would in your own house or would expect in others.
5. Children entertainment: Would you be able to go to a party if you didn’t have activities to entertain your child(ren)?
   • Coloring Tables (Future): If a parent comes in with a child(ren), offer the coloring table to help improve the experience for both the parent and the child. They will thank you, and you will have an easy way to start a genuine, authentic conversation. Always have fresh paper and crayons out and ready.
6. Food: Would you provide food at your party for 10 people if you were having 100?
   • Cash Wrap Lanes: Always be sure your cash wrap lanes are full to maximize the buying experience.
   • Replenishment: Although leftovers can be good, we want our guests to get what they came for.  Make sure products are replenished from backstock.
7. Party timing: Would you communicate to your guests that you were having a party, but not tell them the day or time? Would it end up being much of a party? If you needed friends to help you setup the party would you ask them at the last minute? What would happen if you did?
   • Store schedules: All schedules need to be completed on time, within labor forecast, and accurately. We need to have the right people and the right number of people at the right time to successfully host the party.

After you’ve done an exceptional job of prepping for your party, it’s time to warmly welcome your guests to Our House. Would you host a party without making your guests feel welcome? Would you let them walk into your house without greeting them? Imagine you are a guest would you feel comfortable walking into a party without being greeted? Would that impact your experience?

The key elements of Welcome to the Party! include:

1. First impressions are everything: Would you invite someone to your house and ignore them or simply nod at them and go back to what you were doing? Every customer has been invited to Our House. We need to ensure they are welcomed with high energy to start the 5-star experience in a positive manner. Even if you are in the middle of another task take the time to welcome our customers.
2. Feel it in your heart and your gut: How do you feel when your first guest arrives at your party? What if your invited guests don’t come to your party? How do you feel in your heart and in your gut? When your guests arrive that sinking feeling disappears and shifts to relief and happiness. Without customers there isn’t a party in Our House. If your guests didn’t arrive at your party would you be excited about hosting another party? Let’s show our customers that we’re delighted that they came to Our House by feeling it in our hearts and guts!
3. Show your excitement and your authentic personality: When hosting your party at your house do you prefer talking to your guests or washing dishes? What’s more exciting at Our House, cycle counts or interacting with and helping customers? When customers enter Our House show your excitement about their presence and that they’re allowing you to take a break from other tasks. Do you remember the party host or the party guest that welcomes you with low energy or the one that clearly doesn’t want to be there? Stand out, be different (in a work appropriate manner). Give our customers a reason to remember you and Rally House from the beginning of their experience, in a positive way.
4. Project warmth and care: When hosting your party would you quickly and coldly welcome your guests and go back to making appetizers? Would you genuinely show them you want them to be there? Do you fondly remember the party host and party guests that are warm and genuine when you first interact with them or do you remember the ones that are cold and disinterested? Let’s warmly and caringly welcome our customers to Our House!
5. Always be productive: As hosts of your party in Our House there is always work to be done in addition to welcoming your guests, and it’s important that you stay busy at all times. Customers will feel uncomfortable if you are standing at or near the door greeting them or just standing around in general and not doing something else. We are not security guards and we don’t want our customers to feel like we are. When in doubt you can always do the DISHES:
   • Dusting: Ensures Our House looks it’s best for the party.
   • Including Everyone: Including all guests and making sure they are having a good time.
   • Sizing: Sizing product or putting correct.
   • Hanging: Hanging shipment or existing product.
   • Engaging: Engaging with all guests that come to the party.
   • Straightening: Straightening up our product to put Our House back together.
6. The Next Party Host: Our Party Hosts are entertaining all of our guests from the front door where you are welcoming guests and engaging in conversation. When this happens the Party Host should use the walkie talkie and call for “Party Host”. This alerts other associates that you have been pulled away and the next host should step up to welcome new guests.

Rally House Welcome: We must welcome 100% of our customers into Our House in a genuine, caring manner. The Rally House Welcome re-enforces our name and alerts customers that there is at least one Associate in the store. Even if you’re helping another customer, shout it across the store. Have fun with it! Make our customers smile!

The Rally House Welcome is “Welcome to Rally House“.

A significant part of creating a memorable, 5-star experience is how we make our guests feel in Our House. Would you enjoy hosting your party if at least some of your guests weren’t genuine and didn’t make you or your other guests feel great? Would your guests enjoy being at your party? Imagine you were able to make a genuine connection with your guests? How would that impact your experience and their experience? Our goal is to make the customer interaction between two close friends not strangers.

The key elements of Be Genuine include:

1. What do you do to make your guests feel special and to get them to smile? Do you show interest in the way you listen (or don’t listen) or in your body language? How do you build trust with your guests? How do you create a connection with your guests?
   • Actively listen (be a good listener): Can you tell when someone at your party isn’t listening to you or is half-listening? How does that make you feel? A big part of making our customers feel special is actively listening, which requires fully concentrating, understanding, responding and then remembering what your customer said. When listening, don’t respond with “yup”, “uh huh”, etc. that can be annoying. Show your understanding through complete sentences: “okay that makes sense.” This helps show that you really understand them. If you’re able to genuinely listen, the customer will in most cases feel comfortable continuing to talk with you, which is a key component of developing a connection.
   • Eye contact: Good eye contact (not staring) is an important part of active listening and is another component of developing a connection with the guests at your party. It’s difficult to be a good listener without eye contact. Not only is eye contact a good indicator of someone’s interest, but it also has the power of persuasion. To make a great impression, the key is becoming that likable person who is aware of their surroundings. Eye contact is the single best way to establish likability and trust. Keep your eye contact casual, warm, and engaged, but not locked in. The minute you’re locked into somebody, it feels uncomfortable and unnatural. When you’re first interacting with a customer, use eye contact to convey your energy and enthusiasm. When you have softness, openness, eagerness and friendliness in your eyes, trust is easy to build. Get in the habit of looking up or looking to the side versus looking down. The minute you look down, you’re showing insecurity. When you look up, you’re actually strengthening your energy and confidence and keeping yourself open to receiving the energy of the other person.
   • Exhibit genuine and caring body language: How do you know if someone’s body language at a party tells you that you are important and special? Can you identify through someone’s body language whether they’re being genuine and if they care about you? Do you know when someone isn’t being genuine even if their words are? We all innately know these answers by reading someone’s body language and so do our customers. Always be aware of your nonverbal communication. If you display genuine and caring body language you will help make a connection with your customers. If you’re not sure of your body language ask a friend or a family member, and/or watch yourself in a mirror. You may be surprised by the message(s) that your non-verbal communications are sending to others.
   • Build Trust: Can you build trust at your party when you avoid talking to your guests? Can you build trust in Our House when you point to a location where a customer can find what they’re looking for? Can you build trust if you keep folding shirts (because you know you need to finish folding before your shift ends) and looking down while talking to a customer? Trust is built through genuine interest and caring. A lack of trust not only prevents a 5-star experience it can create the 1-star experience. When a customer trusts you, they will open up to you and share additional details about what they’re looking for, who they are, where they’re from, who they’re shopping for, etc.
   • We are NOT selling: When you are talking to a guest at your party are you worried that they may try to sell you something? We invited our guests to Our House and we are going to make sure that they enjoy themselves and want to come back. If you actively listen, are genuine and caring in your conversations, in your body language and eye contact, and if you build trust you won’t be selling. You will create a meaningful, memorable connection and help the customer find the perfect item.

You now know how to make your guests feel great and special at your party, but if you really want to get to know them would you stop there? Imagine you met someone with your same interests (e.g., you’re both from Dallas) would you ask them questions (e.g., where did you go to high school? Are you a Cowboys fan?) to make more of a connection? If they were looking for a job and asked for your help with Rally House would you tell them you don’t know how to help or would you ask questions to better understand if they were a fit for the company?

The key elements of Be a Detective include:

1. Party conversations and interactions:
   • Ask genuine, NOT scripted questions: When talking with your party guests do you ask them scripted questions? How would that make them feel if you did? How would you feel if someone you didn’t know asked you scripted questions at a party? Our customers will see through this, which will make it practically impossible to create a connection and a memorable experience. The goal of asking questions is to help you help the customer find the right item(s)/gift(s) that they or the person receiving their gift truly loves. If a customer says: “I want a Ursinus College sweatshirt,” or “I want a Phillies hat”, first repeat back what you heard to confirm you heard it correctly. Then Be a Detective and ask genuine questions, such as:
     • “Have you visited that college campus before? I hear it’s pretty small, but we pride ourselves on carrying our local colleges.”
     • “What draws you to these Phillies hats?”
2. When you engage in this type of dialogue it will make it more comfortable to question their perceived needs. This is genuinely helping the customer, not selling, and you’re learning more about the customer by picking up clues as to what they really want and need.
   • “Have you visited that college campus before? I hear it’s pretty small, but we pride ourselves on carrying our local colleges.”
   • My son just got into Ursinus and I want to get him a sweatshirt as I’m so proud of him.
   • “What draws you to these Phillies hats?”
     • My partner is an avid hat collector and would really enjoy this style, I think. I can’t wait to give it to them!
3. Recognize when someone needs help and help them: Do you notice when someone at your party needs another drink or is looking around and not sure where to go to find something? Do you ask them what they’re looking for and if you can help them or do you let them continue to struggle and figure it out on their own? Do you notice when someone at your party isn’t talking to anyone? Do you go over to them and introduce them to someone with which they may have something in common, or do you let them continue to look and feel uncomfortable? How would this impact their experience at your party? We should always focus on our customers’ body language and actions. If they look lost or confused help them. This is a great opportunity to start a conversation and Be a Detective. Acknowledge Our House can be a little overwhelming, but that you would love to show them around. If you don’t help in this situation, we most likely will lose them as a customer on that day and in the future given their poor experience.
4. Unexpected party conversations and interactions: Do you know all of the topics of conversation that will arise during a party at your house? Do you respond to these topics in the same/similar manner during each conversation when you’re not sure what to say or even when you know what to say? How do you make sure to have a positive conversation and Be a Detective when a customer asks you something unexpected?
   • Be genuinely curious: You may not know the answer to every question you receive (e.g., “I’m looking for a Franco Harris throwback jersey, can you help me?”), but instead of telling the customer you’re not sure tell them with passion and excitement, for example: “I love throwback jerseys and we’ve had a lot of customers asking about these, but I’m not entirely sure where the Franco Harris jerseys are. Let’s go take a look.” While you’re walking with the customer, with genuine curiosity and interest ask them something like: “so, what is it about Franco Harris that you really like?” This is one way to start an organic, genuine, and authentic conversation that will help open up the customer to additional questions to uncover their full set of needs.
5. Think on your feet and tailor your approach: Can you tell when someone is “feeding” you the same, canned approach at your party because they’re not sure what else to say or aren’t interested? Does each guest react in the same way to the same statements and questions? Think on your feet and tailor your approach based on the customer, , who they’re with (e.g., if with younger kids show them the coloring tables), what they’re looking for, their body language (e.g., are they calm, are they stressed, etc.). Each customer interaction is unique and we need to make each customer feel special by thinking on our feet and tailoring our approach and questions to each situation. Don’t just stop the interaction if you don’t know the answer.
6. Party problem solving: What happens if you run out of food or drinks at your party? Do you figure out how to replenish your supply or let your guests figure out on their own that you ran out and guess if there will be more? If you decided not to replenish your food and drink would your party be memorable? Would your guests be excited to come to your next party? Would your guests tell their friends about your party? What could you do to keep your guests happy in this situation?
   • Following the replenishment program, we can ensure that product in the back of house is also represented on the salesfloor. Replenishment is done by following the team sales report from the previous week- the best-selling team is replenished first. Apparel is also pushed based on seasonality. When replenishing product on the salesfloor, make sure that the face outs of full but not overflowing or bulging.

When hosting a party would you try to “hide” from your guests by focusing on other activities? Would you be short with your guests when welcoming or talking with them, and then move on to something else or someone else? Would you rush through your conversations just to go do something else? Imagine if someone did these things to you at a party how would that make you feel? Would you want to continue talking to the host/guests or stay at the party?

The key elements of Don’t Be include:

1. Leaving your party early: What would cause your guests to leave your party early?
   • They feel out of place and don’t know anyone.
   • It’s too crowded and difficult to move around.
   • The house is messy.
   • The host and/or guests aren’t fun to be around (e.g., you’re stuck talking to the person that doesn’t listen to you or only talks about himself/herself). No one wants to get stuck talking to that person. Don’t be that person.
2. Preventing customers from leaving Our House early: What would cause customers to leave Our House early, and what can we do to prevent this?
   • Not being helped: Research shows that the primary reason customers leave a retail store is when they are not being helped. Let’s truly help our customers!
   • Insincere help: Can you tell when someone is being insincere? It’s very easy to detect and has a negative impact on the customer experience. Be genuine and sincere in all of your customer interactions.
   • Chaotic, messy stores: No one likes a messy house party and no one wants to go to and buy from a messy store. Everyone needs to take pride in your store appearance. The appearance of your store can make or break the customer experience and could make the difference between a raving fan and a customer that leaves early and never returns.
   • Associates trying to sell to them: We are NOT selling! We are helping them find the right item by problem solving. We are party hosts who are working to ensure our guests have a 5-star experience.
3. Never be idle at your party: When hosting a party at your house there is always something to do (e.g., replenishing drinks, cleaning up a mess, cooking more food, etc.). Would you just stand around in the corner of your house if there was “nothing else to do”?
4. Never be idle in Our House: There is always work to be done. If you’re not sure what else to do, ask your supervisor. Standing around and doing nothing is unproductive, insensitive to the rest of your team and unacceptable. When in doubt you can always do the DISHES:
   • Dusting: Ensures Our House looks it’s best for the party.
   • Including Everyone: Including all guests and making sure they are having a good time.
   • Sizing: Sizing product or putting correct.
   • Hanging: Hanging shipment or existing product.
   • Engaging: Engaging with all guests that come to the party.
   • Straightening: Straightening up our product to put Our House back together.
5. Never settle for mediocrity at your party: When hosting your party is your goal for your food and drinks to be mediocre? Do you want your guests to remember your party because they had a great time or because it was an average experience? How would you feel if one of your guests complained to their friends about their negative experience, which reflected poorly on you?
6. Never settle for mediocrity in Our House: Our goal should always be to create the 5-star experience. Anything less is a disappointment, and one-star reviews are unacceptable. In order to be the best we have to strive for excellence in everything we do.
7. Off limit words/phrases at your party: Would you ask “conversation-ender” questions at your party? Would that help you build a connection with your guests? Would you complain to your guests about how hard it was to prepare for the party, how busy you were and how you just never have time? Would your guests want to listen to you? Would they leave your party with a memorable experience? Questions like “Who are you shopping for?” come later in the conversation with a guest and generally are not used to start a conversation.
8. Off limit words and phrases with our customers: There are certain words and phrases that should never be uttered to our customers in Our House.
   • Any form of the word “sales”: We are not selling; we are hosting a party and problem solving.
   • “Can I help you find something?”:Innate response: “No, I’m just looking.”  Now what?
   • “Crazy weather out there, huh?”:“Yes, it is”. Now what?
   • “Let me know if I can help you find something.” or “You doing okay over here?”:Intentionally allows the Associate to look like they were helpful, but really wanted to do something else.
   • “Have you been helped?”: “Yes” Now what?
9. Off limit words and phrases among our staff: There are certain words and phrases that should never be uttered among staff in Our House.
   • “We’re too busy.”: If this is true, ask for help.
   • “It’s too hard.”: What makes things easier? Practice, practice, practice!
   • “You keep changing what you need us to do.”: Change keeps us competitive and helps us innovate. Embrace change as it is a key component of the Rally House culture.
   • “Our store’s performance was down this year because our teams didn’t win.”: This may be partially true, but there are other indicators of success (e.g., 5-star reviews). There are also other ways to increase your sales during these periods including consistently using the Let’s Party model and practicing and perfecting your customer interactions. Poorly performing sports teams is not a reason to stop pushing for and achieving results.
   • “We don’t have enough time.”: You might not have enough time in certain situations, but always plan ahead to the extent you can by ensuring you have the appropriate staff and delegating appropriately. If you can’t get something done by the deadline, communicate the challenge and ask for help.

Be Memorable is the final step in creating the 5-star experience for our customers. What can you do to ensure your guests at your party leave happy and smiling? Have they made new connections and friends? Have they deepened their existing relationships? Did they enjoy the food and the drink? Did they enthusiastically tell their friends and family about it the next day? That’s the experience we’re striving for at Our House. We want our customers to leave Our House as raving fans who want to come back for their next sports apparel need or want. Imagine our customers told their friends about Our House at their next party, their next interaction, or on social media? Would our customers increase? How do we ensure our party guests and our customers leave on a high note? Let’s make the party at Our House memorable!

The key elements of Be Memorable include:

1. Long line at the bar or food buffet: If your guests were unable to get drinks or food in a timely manner because the party was too crowded or the host wasn’t prepared would that create a memorable experience? Would your guests rave about your party?
   • Cash wrap lanes: Sometimes lines are unavoidable given unexpected (or expected) volume, but if our cash wrap lanes are stocked appropriately, the potential negative experience created by waiting can be minimized. In addition, if you see long lines and all of the cash registers are occupied spend a minute thanking our customers for their patience. Notice their selections and show your passion for them (e.g., “that’s one of my favorite hats for one of my favorite teams!) You may even provide a little humor and say, for example: “That’s one of my favorite hats for one of my favorite teams [then looking at someone else’s selection], but that t-shirt is my favorite team! Awesome selections!). Simply making them feel noticed and important will positively impact their experience. If the store is busy having these types of conversations may be hard, but quickly and professionally stepping away from a customer to have this interaction, and then quickly returning to the customer, almost every time will take the customer’s mind off of the wait and will make them smile, and it only takes a couple of minutes at most.
2. Remembering your party guests’ names: If you know the people at your party would you address them by their name? If you yelled their name across the room would they turn their head? What happens when you don’t remember their name or you don’t recognize them? Does that impact their experience?
   • Build another relationship: When you hear your name from across a room or in a crowded place do you turn to see if the person is talking to you? How do you feel when someone uses your name? Are you more impressed by the people that remember your name or the people who don’t? Do you recognize when you’ve met someone multiple times and they don’t remember you at all? How does that make you feel? The same should be true for our customers. When they are at the cash register and you remember them, use their name. If you recognize them but don’t remember their name you can say: “Good to see you again.” Or you could say: “I haven’t seen you in a while, how are you?” If an Associate brings the customer to you when they are done shopping and shares their name, repeat it. Research shows that when we say a person’s name it creates positive feelings in general and tells the person how important they are to us. Using someone’s name at the cash register helps develop another relationship and shapes a positive end to their experience.
3. Conversations with your party guests before they leave: When you talk to your party guests as they are leaving do you look down or around them?How do you feel when the party host or guests make, or don’t make, eye contact with you? Would you ignore your guests or thank them in a manner which showed you don’t know them or care about them? Would that create a memorable experience? Would you go back to or be excited to go back to a party where you weren’t treated well? Would it be a positive, memorable experience?
   • Have a genuine cash register conversation: Our cashiers play a significant role in the customer experience. Is it possible for an average or below average experience at the cash register to impact the customer experience? Show the customer you care about them. Show your interest and excitement for their purchase, compliment it (when appropriate) and warmly and genuinely thank them for coming to Our House; give them one more reason to come to our “next party”. When you do this asking for their email will feel much more comfortable for both you and the customer. Your goal should be to have them leave with a smile. Science has proven that smiling can lift one’s mood and lower stress. What a difference we can make in our customers and their experience if we’re able to make them smile before they leave the store.
   • Be a cash register detective: There are many genuine questions you can ask at the cash register to help better understand the purchase, their situation, who they are, etc. to help continue to build the relationship and end the experience on a high note. For example, if the customer is purchasing a baby onesie you could say: “This is really cute. I love our baby onesies!” If true you can then say something like: “I just got a Reds onesie and my brother and sister-in-law put it on my niece for every game. Yes, they do a lot of laundry!” “May I ask who is this for? If the interaction is appropriate you may even ask the customer to see a picture of the baby. Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles are almost always extremely excited to show off their baby pictures. This will most certainly make for a positive interaction and elicit smiles. You may even offer to have them take a picture of the baby in the onesie to put on our social media. Some people will be more excited about this than others so be sure to read the person (in many cases you can tell by their body language and their words if they’re open to it) make this suggestion delicately. In addition, if you’re comfortable based on the conversation, you can tell the customer that you would love to follow-up with them regarding whether they liked the item as we’re always looking for feedback to improve our products. This is yet another way to create a memorable experience and have our customers tell their friends and family about Our House. Finally be sure to ask them about a gift bag, but ask in the following or similar manner: “I want to make sure you don’t need a gift bag.” If they do, tell them their options. This is a more effective and disarming way of asking them if it’s a gift.    
   • Make eye contact: When ringing up your customers look them in the eyes when talking to them. Remember from Be Genuine, eye contact is the single best way to establish likability and trust (yes, you can establish likability and trust in a short interaction at the cash register!). Keep your eye contact casual, warm, connected and engaged. Yes, this isn’t always possible particularly when you’re scanning their purchases, but the more you can make eye contact the more special you will make them feel. Of course the eye contact must be genuine and caring as if you’re talking to a friend. The customer will feel uncomfortable if your eye contact isn’t genuine. Research shows that making eye contact makes your words more memorable.
   • Be different: The cash register experience is generally similar at most retail stores. Let’s be different by doing all of the above. Did we have an authentic, genuine conversation to build another relationship? Did we make eye contact?  Did we make the customer smile? Did we make them feel special? Did we make their experience memorable? These are some of the key factors that create 5-star experiences and raving fans.
   • Genuine goodbye: Just as the Rally House Welcome is a critical component of the customer experience so is the manner in which the customer experience ends. Every customer must receive a genuine goodbye sincerely thanking them for coming to Rally House.