Rochdale Town Centre Business Awards

Rochdale Town Centre Management Logo

The first ever Rochdale Town Centre Business Awards is now well under way with all mystery shopping done its time for the decisions to be made! 

Two of the categories for awards are Best Independent Retailer and Best National Retailer.

During the competition 15 Independent and 39 National stores were reviewed by Storecheckers' Mystery Shopping team.  All entries to the competition were visited by members of the Research team who went into the relevant shop and made an enquiry or purchase and used the opportunity to assess the branch standards and appearance of staff, as well as looking at the key areas of staff attitude and service.

All entries to the competition were monitored using the same criteria, thus allowing true 'like for like' comparison to be made between all of the businesses within the centre of Rochdale.

Best Independent 
Official Sponsor of this Award is SRB5

Esther Shepley from SRB5 said: "One of the key aims of SRB5 is to strengthen the local economy by supporting local enterprise.  We recognize the significant contribution that independent retailers make to Rochdale, both in terms of wealth creation and employing local people.  We are please to be supporting this celebration event".
 
The average score achieved by the Independent stores was very high at 96% which proves that we give a fantastic experience to the majority of shoppers in our town!  The Independent stores seemed to do consistently well, with 9 out of 15 (60%), scoring above 90% and all bar two of the remainder scoring between 85% and 89%. 

Best National
Official Sponsor of this Award is Rochdale Exchange Shopping Centre

Lorenzo O’Reilly, Centre Manager said: “As home to the majority of National retailers in Rochdale we feel that supporting this award is an ideal way to offer our support and encouragement to our tenants.  We constantly strive to provide our customers with an enjoyable shopping experience and a high level of customer service is an essential part of this.  We are only too happy to support this great initiative”

The results for National chains was much more erratic, with only 11 of the 39 entries (28%) scoring above the 90% cut off and a further seven (18%) scoring between 85% and 89%.

This, coupled with a group of three entries which scored below 50% meant that the National's averaged 78%, 13% below that of the Independents.  Although these scores are still of an excellent level it does prove that you can’t beat that old fashioned one-to-one service!