Design For Dignity
Retail Guidelines

What matters to customers with disability?

Good Customer experience

It makes sense that the more a customer enjoys the shopping experience, the more goods and services they will buy.

The better the store design and customer service the more likely they are to recommend a place to friends and family.

Researchers looking at drivers of customer satisfaction for customers with disability find that both store accessibility and customer service factors are important for customers with disability.

Goodrich and Ramsey (2011)^{*Goodrich, K. and Ramsey, R., (2012) Are people with disability receiving the services they need?, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, p127} found that ‘accessibility appears to be an overriding issue in the service quality domain for consumers with disabilities’ but that ‘service intangibles’ such as empathy and assurance ‘have the strongest effect on perceived service quality.’ The physical accessibility factors that they tested and found to be significant were:

• Ramps are not too steep.
• Aisles are sufficiently wide and not cluttered.
• Store layout makes it easy to move around.
• Rest rooms and fitting rooms are accessible.
• Availability of working wheelchairs or motorised carts.
• Doors are sufficiently wide.

Intangible service factors that positively influenced customer satisfaction were also quite clear:

• Employees are consistently courteous (assurance).
• Employees help make the overall experience pleasurable (assurance).
• The behaviour of employees instils confidence (assurance).
• Employees are never too busy to respond to requests (response).
• Employees give prompt service (response).
• People feel safe in their transactions with the company (assurance).
• Services are provided at the times promised (reliability).
• Employees speak to individuals as they would every other customer (empathy).
• Employees have the knowledge to answer questions (assurance).