An internal crisis taught us the invaluable lesson to base our work on common sense and not numbers. For this reason, we no longer use KPI or any other quantitative assessments to measure our employees' efficiency. And we never will.
We knew from our experience with Izbyonka that sample tastings were the best way to sell unfamiliar products to customers, so we relied heavily on well-stocked sample tables throughout the stores. Salesclerks kept up a brisk pace, steaming, frying, boiling, and cutting something or other, and the customers ate and ate and ate.
In September 2011, several people went to London to study British retail. Alena Nesiforova recalls, "We could not afford a dedicated retail tour to study other companies. Instead, we visited Tesco, Waitrose, and Asda stores like regular shoppers. We came at six in the morning to watch how employees unloaded goods, how they worked the cash registers, and how they served customers. We noted what we liked, and, in the evenings, we discussed how we could replicate this back home."
We created a newspaper for customers, which focused on the health benefits of dairy products, rather than announcements about sales and discounts. We filled the business card website with information, slowly evolving it into a web portal about healthy eating and lifestyle.
