Being a Personal Shopper
Personal shoppers give professional opinions and the uppermost level of personalized service to customers. For those customers who want an enhanced purchasing experience, they would engage the services of personal shoppers with help them with their purchases. Personal shoppers have become reliable authorities to help shoppers to make good purchases.
Personal shoppers assist customers with outfit and other product choices. The scope of their tasks range from souvenir shopping for customers to giving opinions for a makeover of the customers’ image. In this rising vocation, a number of job titles are used, such as fashion consultant and image consultant.
Communications Skills
Personal shoppers communicate with their customers via mobile phones, e-mails, and also face-to-face communications. Being a personal shopper, listening is usually more important than discussion because the details given to you by your customers will guide you along your job. The customers will hail your communication capabilities with optimistism and enthusiasm.
Being a personal shopper, you will also have to develop a customer base of loyal shoppers who you’d shop for regularly. You will have to get in touch with them as often as you can as a specialized advisor. You will need to build deep and long-lasting relations with your customers if you want to be successful in this job.
Crafting the Customer Experience
In general, personal shoppers usually devote their time to one shopper at a time. Being a personal shopper, you will guide each customer through their shopping experience, leading them to products and services that they need and are suitable for their requests.
Each customer will want to have their individualized style of dressing. They would love to feel as if they are the only customer you have. Hence, it is essential that you always follow-up and keep your promises in order to keep the strong relations that you have with your customers.
Criteria for a Personal Shopper
As a professional personal shopper, you must always keep up your professionalism in both outlook and appearance. Personal shoppers are expected to be trustworthy experts with appealing and outgoing behaviors.
Successful personal shoppers are also innovative, self-motivated and hold an entrepreneurial spirit that flashes their creativity and imagination. On top of that, tolerance, suppleness, diplomacy, and reliability will also be anticipated by your customers, as well as your employers.
Skills Requirements
Being a personal shopper does not require any formal certificates. However, by having a retail or industry-related degree will reveal your standard of commitments and make you an outstanding applicant. If you want to further enrich your knowledge, sharpen your skills with online workshops and tutorials, read up on the latest fashions and other relevant products and you may also choose to continue your studies by getting the relevant certificates. Yes, you may not need it but it may be useful in the future when you’d want to tak a step further in your career.
Wages
The wages of a personal shopper ranges from $25,000 - $100,000 or more per year inclusive of commissions and bonuses. However, wages for personal shoppers may also vary based on the types and level of services provided, factors such as location and employer type, as well as the reputation of the shopper. The starting base income may be the same as any other salesperson.
As your customer base develops, you should be able to negotiate for a better pay, including expense reimbursements and other privileges. In general, a freelance personal shopper may charge from $25 to $30 per hour for consultations or $20 to $80 per hour for shopping time. The range of median salary for a personal shopper is $30,000 to $57,500 per year.
