Store maintenance:
What you need to know!

1. Maintenance types & management

The 4 main types of maintenance for stores:

This is the type of maintenance that must absolutely be prioritized: it involves all maintenance actions carried out regularly and systematically to avoid failures (e.g., oiling the iron shutter mechanism), optimize the customer sales journey (e.g., lighting changed every 12 months), and ensure compliance (e.g., annual verification of emergency exits and boilers).

➡️ Why it should not be neglected: well-executed preventive maintenance will reduce costs through better facility longevity and increase revenue thanks to improved employee motivation and a better brand image with customers.

Part of preventive maintenance but adds a personalized dimension adapted to the condition of the asset (e.g., wear points, floors, and racks, checked every 3 months and repaired based on their condition)

Corrective maintenance is the most common maintenance today, consisting of performing troubleshooting or repairs after a failure (e.g., replacing a socket that no longer works).

The set of technical, administrative, and management measures intended to improve the operational reliability of an asset without changing its function (Afnor) (e.g., switching to double glazing or LED lighting to save on energy consumption).

➡️ Formidably effective but… to be able to make these changes with full knowledge and track their impact, you need an organization or a tool that allows you to track data.

The 3 most common store maintenance management methods:

A technician or a maintenance team is assigned to a store and handles its maintenance. Often used by large retailers, this process is only profitable with a high number of interventions.

Corrective maintenance requests from each store are sent to headquarters, and the headquarters maintenance team handles the management. They also organize preventive maintenance for their network of boutiques. They may use an internal technician or an independent technical company depending on the need.

Headquarters signs contracts with external multi-technical companies and makes them available to the boutiques. Each boutique must therefore manage its requests directly. Sometimes the budget is capped per boutique. This option requires very meticulous tracking from headquarters for optimized maintenance.

2. The challenges of store maintenance

Beyond being theoretical, the challenges associated with point-of-sale maintenance are numerous. It is easy to forget because this factor is often imperceptible at first glance, but maintenance contributes directly to a store’s performance and more globally to the success of the brand and consequently that of the group.

The challenges of optimal maintenance for retail, key points:

A point of sale is, as the name suggests, created to sell. If the customer experience in-store is not optimal, the sale will not happen. One of the primary factors of customer dissatisfaction is neglect in terms of facility upkeep and cleaning. A clean boutique without failures is the gateway to a sale; you wouldn’t pick up a product displayed on a shelf about to collapse!
And to be able to hear and place intervention requests, it is essential that your customer service is trained in these issues.

This customer experience naturally converges toward brand image, because more globally, if one of your stores is poorly maintained, the image retained by the customer is disastrous for the rest of the brand, which has a direct impact on the trust placed in it, social media sharing, and sales both in-store and online.

The customer is of course the central component in a store’s success, but the employee is the central driver. No sales if there are no employees in the stores, so they must work in good conditions, be proud of their premises, and be motivated to convey a positive message.

➡️ The employees who handle maintenance must also be motivated to be effective and responsive; often what they lack for direct job satisfaction is the lack of adapted tools that allow for perfect management and tracking of indicators.

If we had to choose only one challenge, it would be this one. Neglected or disorganized maintenance can lead to oversights and more or less dramatic events, disastrous humanly and for the brand image.

No need to expand on this category; it is obvious that there are strict regulations for maintenance that must be followed, and a failure can result in a temporary or permanent closure of the store, notably for safety reasons.

If you combine all the challenges above, the viability of the store and therefore the concept depends indirectly on the quality and management of your maintenance for points of sale. And although on-site teams can work miracles, they cannot maintain, present, and sell all at once. Today, maintenance support tools such as CMMS should be a priority for the group. Even if most of your sales are online, the proper maintenance of your “flagship stores” is decisive for the brand’s positioning.

4. Case studies: problem-solving provided by Bob! Desk

Guides for your points of sale