As business owners and operators, you spend a lot of time ensuring your locations are well maintained and appealing all year long. Lighting is one key element in ensuring that your customer’s experience is the best and safest it can be. Let’s look at a few key areas where lighting can play a major role in your operations.
Appeal:
Your team has worked hard to present: Curb appeal, brand image, store design, interior layout, and product highlights. This can all be diminished with poor lighting, and make your location feel unsafe. The atmosphere of a well lit location is inviting, vibrant, and brings out the best in your brand's communication.
Products can also shine within a location when it is well lit - customers will be drawn into categories that are highlighted, grab n go cases, perimeter callouts and beverage centers that are welcoming. A good balance of lighting is important as well as a customer might be overwhelmed if the lighting is so bright they can’t see anything else.
Customer Sentiment:
Lighting can help your locations stand out among other businesses - good and bad. Often customers will make a subconscious decision about entering a business based on how well they can see it. Driving up to your location at night will send signals on quality, safety and trust. A lack of quality lighting can cause a drop in customer transactions that have nothing to do with customer service, food quality, or pricing. They never made it in the front door.
On the other hand, a brightly lit location at night can be seen as a welcoming place that invites customers and builds trust.
Safety:
Having the exterior of a location properly lit is critical to maintaining a safe environment for your customers and employees. Most loiterers or nefarious characters do not want to frequent areas that are well lit, since it exposes them. All lighting must be checked on a regular basis; pylon signs, message boards, soffits, wall packs, dumpster areas, walkways and the building perimeter. Not functioning, dim lights, and poorly positioned lighting needs to be reported and procedures in place for teams to respond and correct.
Proper lighting inside can help ensure employees feel safe and seen as well. It’s their workplace and how you care for the facility will speak volumes for how you care for the employees. Once they see a reported issue corrected, you are signaling to the team that you value the conditions of their environment.
Being a Good Neighbor:
If your business is among other retailers, maintaining your lighting will also help build your relationship with them. Being the only business that is poorly lit can drive down the appeal of an entire pod of businesses. Companies also do not want their locations to stand out among a group because they are dim and unappealing.
Businesses that operate in a neighborhood also need to be aware of how you present yourself in the community. Properties and buildings that are cared for show you respect your standing in the neighborhood and care about the communities you operate in.
Here are a few tips to ensuring the lighting is set up for success:
- Have employees review the status of lighting on the inside and outside through regular store walks. A light that was ok yesterday could be out today.
- Ensure each location is fully stocked with light backups in the event that one goes out. If lighting orders have long lead times, a location may risk having improper lighting until an order arrives.
- Use a consistent lighting design. Consistency can be key to retaining customers and keeping staff safe.
How can Zenput help?
- Create store walk forms that focus specifically on lighting across multiple day parts.
- Utilize the photo capabilities within Zenput forms for locations to document the status of lighting.
- Utilize submission reporting to regularly review the status of lighting across locations, and close the gap on locations that may not be properly maintained.
- Use announcements to celebrate and share examples of well lit stores to your entire company. Reinforcing through celebration can have a positive impact on company culture while driving expectations.
If you would like to have this form template added to your Zenput account, please copy and paste the message below into the Chat function in Zenput and our Support team will add it for you:
“Hi Support, can you please add the form below to our account? Lighting Audit: Safety Pillar - 01723”
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