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MaxMara – Retail

Fashion retailer empowers store managers to manage difficult customers

Upskilled store managers to assess and adopt the most effective approach to match the unique demands of difficult customers.

Services: Customer communications

About MaxMara

Max Mara is an Italian fashion business established in 1951 in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Today it is now one of the biggest fashion houses in the world marketing up-market ready-to-wear clothing. The Group is now present in 105 countries with more than 2,500 single-brand stores and over 10,000 multi-brand stores.

Max Mara Logo

The challenge

In the two to three years post-pandemic, Max Mara, like many other retailers, noticed an increase of difficult and aggressive customers. Customer incivility poses threats to retention, psychological safety, and an employer’s duty of care. So the business knew it needed to equip their people for success. Particularly given that experiencing aggression at work can severely impact job performance and personal health – even leading to burnout and resignation.  

 

To avoid these undesirable effects, the retailer sought to provide frontline skills training to their Australian store managers. The aims were to: 

 

  • Train understanding and skill strategies to defuse aggressive interactions.
  • Learn how to say no effectively.
  • Improve self-management.
  • Apply best practice dialogue techniques when managing customer expectations.

What did CCS do

Retail customers for a high-end brand can come with a range of expectations – from quality of product and service, to their perception of how the salesperson prioritises their specific needs. The team at Max Mara required practical and tactile solutions that could be easily implemented in stressful customer interactions. 


The solution CCS devised was a highly-customised and easily implementable training workshop. It addressed the four critical areas of customer communications: profiling behaviour, self-management, communicating under pressure, and defusing and de-escalating. This covered a difficult customer interaction end-to-end, with techniques to use throughout. The training also incorporated retail-relevant examples and activities, in addition to support materials to enable post-session learning reinforcement.

The results

✔︎ Identified and analysed common behavioural drivers.

✔︎ Adopted company-wide response approach.

Success Stories

Providing dynamic learning experiences

Janette Collier

Acting Director, Australian Institute for Primary Care & Ageing
“Our partnership with CCS has been very successful and course participants have contacted me to say how much they enjoyed the training with CCS and how useful they found it. Many have incorporated the skills and strategies into their working and personal life. Their only complaint was that they wanted a longer session!“

Michelle Eddy

Director of Finance, Canadian Armed Forces
“David Patmore led us on our MARATE experience today and was a very engaging instructor. He made me feel confident and equipped to converse with difficult people/situations. This course will be relevant in all aspects of my life: work, family, friends and absolute strangers that I may encounter."

Kiery Pascoe

Organisational Learning Specialist, Southern Cross Community Healthcare
“It was great to have a session where the facilitator was able to adapt to our industry and provide scenario’s that fitted in with our organisation. Loved how interactive it was and real practical skills that can be used immediately. "






Southern Cross Community Healthcare

Naomi Cooper

Acting Health Services Manager - Digital Health, Royal Flying Doctor Service
“The structure and content was really well thought out and was spot on for the needs of the group. I’ve attended a few workshops on the same topic and this was by far the most practical and useful.“