Of courteous discourse and lasting brand ethos

Have you often felt that you landed on another planet? A first-time visit to the Deira Fish Market will probably lead to such thoughts.

There are the pungent odours and the ears strain to decipher the many languages clamouring around you. Naturally, you would have prepared yourself for such a situation. But how would you react if you are made to feel like you're an extraterrestrial … when you least expect such an experience?

About a month ago, I had sauntered into a beauty store looking for the perfume "Jewel" by Alfred Sung. It is a Chinese-Canadian brand that does not seem to be available around these parts.

Despite expecting a negative response, I decided to ask the staff if the brand had appeared since my most recent visit just over a fortnight earlier. Looking around, I honed in on a young sales assistant who seemed approachable.

Dressed all in black with kitten heels, her dead straight hair fell to her shoulders in a flawless blunt cut. As she turned toward me, I observed her bright pink eye shadow and perfectly matched lip gloss. Her eyelashes too had flecks of pink glitter.

In a sing-song style, she chirped: "Hi Ma'am-Sir. Good evening".

She listened to my enquiry and paused. After an uncomfortable 30 seconds that seemed interminable, she clinched both her hands together like a soprano choir girl pouted her lips and said in a squeaky childlike voice: "No Ma'am. We don't have that". And so I left.

Emotion scale

While walking, I replayed the incident obsessively in my mind until I was certain that my behaviour was indeed not childlike. "Why did she talk to me like a toddler?" I then wondered.

On the emotion scale, I felt as though I had remained neutral throughout.

But the sales assistant seemed to have oscillated from extreme happiness to extreme sadness in a matter of minutes. Her over-the-top attempt to placate me made me question if I was in the wrong somehow. In the case of this particular sales assistant, her exaggerated behaviour can be understood by analysing her culture.

Some cultures place significance on politeness and etiquette at the expense of all other responses. It is no wonder then that many local retailers directly recruit sales staff from these places. People from nations that take pride in courtesy and propriety are able to deliver a negative message in such a way that it mitigates the severity of what is being said.

In this case, childlike mannerisms made the assistant's statements seem gentle, agreeable and kind.

If retailers today want to maximise revenue, no shopper should be made to feel like an "alien". Businesses must ensure their sales force comprises multiple nationalities.

As individual members interact with "foreign" colleagues in such an environment, the sales team collectively becomes aware of racial nuances and quirks that govern pronunciation, body language, emotional engagement and voice intonation. Once awareness sets in, such transferable skills will soon take root as the dialogue between sales assistants and shoppers.

Refuge in friendship

A workplace that brings unlikely people together will tap into a wider social network. New expatriates in particular tend to find refuge in friendships with their own kind.

Although instructional communications with similar ethnic staff is easier, the firm will inevitably have to bear the cultural training costs so as not to artificially siphon the intended target market.

It is this very discourse that leaves an eternal imprint of your brand ethos in customers' minds. Alienation instinctively makes a shopper feel rejected and such exclusion will have a negative effect on sales.

Some would also argue that such exclusion comes with the territory. But to that I say the retail industry is just too magnanimous to tolerate such balderdash.

The writer is a Dubai-based entrepreneur, specialising in the retail sector.