Changing and Communicating Your Hours of Operation

The key to keeping customers happy and avoiding staff burnout, while maximizing sales and mitigating loss, is balance. Weigh these factors to find a happy medium:

• Customer Types: Determine when your target audience and current customers like to shop. Many unemployed and retired folks partake in a.m. outings; young adults and busy people shop in the afternoons and evenings. However, your customer base is unique and you may have customers who visit at lunch, after work or on days with less city traffic. Review your customer demographics to find peak traffic times.
• Staff Schedules: Get input from your employees, especially because changes will affect their schedules. They can help distinguish lulls and high-traffic times to help you make decisions.
• Finances: You must generate enough sales revenue to cover your overhead costs (payroll, utilities, etc.) for each hour you stay open. Check your sales data and financial statements to determine your break-even point (how much you need to make considering all factors to break even) and select business hours and days that help you stay in the green. Your point-of-sales system can likely generate transaction data by hour to help identify patterns.
• Competition: Know your competition’s store hours. If a neighboring business is open when you’re not, you might drive customers away, putting your business at a disadvantage. However, if few people shop during your competitor’s extra hours, the loss of customers likely outweighs the benefit of staying open.
• Sales Trends: Evaluate your foot traffic and business volume to understand daily, weekly and quarterly ups and downs. These trends should influence your work schedule.

What to cut while maintaining consistency

Whether you cut a few hours or a few days throughout the year or a season, strive to keep the changes you make consistent, day over day and year over year. For example, if you change your busy-season store hours on Aug. 1 and the off-season hours on March 1, keep the “change dates” the same next year. Additionally, if your hours change from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the busy season to 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. during the off season, try to maintain the same working hours each day you’re at the office, if possible.

Setting different seasonal dates and daily hours is confusing. Consistency is easier to track for longtime customers and their satisfaction. If you must keep a slow hour or two for consistency, make the most of it by cleaning, restocking, merchandising, marketing, analyzing data or organizing future events.

What about holidays and special occasions?

Many small businesses have unique hours during the holidays and special events. Thankfully, most customers anticipate these changes, so the switch isn’t as unexpected as an industry-specific change based on hunting or tournament seasons. Still, you should communicate the temporary closure using the tips below.