5 ms·

Best Buy had very good training during the tenure of the previous CEO. It was emphasized as an important part of one's duties as an associate and incentivized w

by bsanr2 5y ago

Best Buy had very good training during the tenure of the previous CEO. It was emphasized as an important part of one's duties as an associate and incentivized with generous accommodations (I'm watching a large OLED I was able to buy for 1/3 retail; I was able to truthfully attest to its quality thereafter and made quite a few sales on that). My understanding is that good and plentiful accommodations are essentially gone now (at corporate, not the vendor's, behest; workers looking to get a television accommodation will apparently have to win a sweepstakes), and that training focuses less on product knowledge and more on high-margin service and branded payment upsells. If you think you hate hearing about thowe as a customer, imagine how tired the salespeople are getting nothing but constantly chided for not ruining customers' credit. Leadership matters, and unfortunately, much of retail's are cynical number crunchers who don't understand the value of investing in labor. Guess what, not even Amazon can get away from the necessity of quality customer service; that need won't be automated away anytime in the near future, and you really don't want to anyway (algorithmic up-sell is terrible at edge cases and exhausts everyone else short-term).

dimmke 5y ago
>training focuses less on product knowledge and more on high-margin service and branded payment upsells. This to me is the death knell of brick and mortar retail. It's like this everywhere. There is absolutely no focus on actually helping a customer make a decision based on what they need/want. It's just a free mark to pitch whatever thing management is incentivizing. If I can't actually trust the intentions of a salesperson what on earth am I doing in there? But let's be honest, even if there was a focus on product knowledge- it's almost always better to do research on the internet. You can get a much better lay of the land from many sources instead of just one person. The products will be cheaper by 10-20% on Amazon usually, and you get to read a ton of reviews. This just happened to me at Micro Center this past week. I was bored, decided to go into the store to look at KVM switches. A salesperson approaches and asks if I need help, it's clear immediately that he doesn't know anything about KVM switches and he's reading off the back of the box trying to figure out the answer when I ask him questions. I decide to buy the one I was already looking at before he approached and he put his sticker on it. Afterwards, out of curiosity, I looked it up on Amazon. Was a full $20 cheaper. The switch ended up not even being able to support high refresh rates so I had to return it anyways. Plus they all want you to sign up for their credit card and give them your email and zip code. It's super gross.
- bsanr2 5y ago
  I have to push back a bit. Internet research only gets you so far and can be quite difficult. In the best cases, we were able to get into from our vendors that wasn't normally accessible to the public. And even without that, customers were happy to have someone who could answer their questions directly. Even when we had to look something up, they often appreciated that we were more familiar with the relevant terms needed to find the information they were seeking. Occasionally, a customer who was very knowledgable would come in; it was 50/50 whether they were someone we could accommodate by skipping past technical advice and focusing on inventory ("Is it in stock at the sister store?"), services, and deal-making. The other 50% were, frankly, assholes who definitely should just be buying possible counterfeits off Amazon. Sorry that we don't have time to research the differences between two high-end receivers that we'd have to special order anyway; for every one of your exceptionally rare requests, there are dozens of customers who need us to walk them through troubleshooting a basic system set-up (where components can be from one of a dozen different companies), so that's where the energy is going. Best Buy functioned most effectively as a sort of library-esque community center where residents could receive basic tech assistance across a wide range of microprocessor-driven products (which we would then sell you); something similar goes for much of retail. Workers are conscientious, but there is a limit to the advice the structure can afford to give for free. You wouldn't walk into a grocery store and expect the butcher to be able to walk you through preparing a sous vide steak with white wine sauce or whatever; they could point out what cut would work best, but beyond that, you'd hire someone to teach you.

by bsanr2 5y ago

dimmke 5y ago

>training focuses less on product knowledge and more on high-margin service and branded payment upsells. This to me is the death knell of brick and mortar retail. It's like this everywhere. There is absolutely no focus on actually helping a customer make a decision based on what they need/want. It's just a free mark to pitch whatever thing management is incentivizing. If I can't actually trust the intentions of a salesperson what on earth am I doing in there? But let's be honest, even if there was a focus on product knowledge- it's almost always better to do research on the internet. You can get a much better lay of the land from many sources instead of just one person. The products will be cheaper by 10-20% on Amazon usually, and you get to read a ton of reviews. This just happened to me at Micro Center this past week. I was bored, decided to go into the store to look at KVM switches. A salesperson approaches and asks if I need help, it's clear immediately that he doesn't know anything about KVM switches and he's reading off the back of the box trying to figure out the answer when I ask him questions. I decide to buy the one I was already looking at before he approached and he put his sticker on it. Afterwards, out of curiosity, I looked it up on Amazon. Was a full $20 cheaper. The switch ended up not even being able to support high refresh rates so I had to return it anyways. Plus they all want you to sign up for their credit card and give them your email and zip code. It's super gross.

bsanr2 5y ago
I have to push back a bit. Internet research only gets you so far and can be quite difficult. In the best cases, we were able to get into from our vendors that wasn't normally accessible to the public. And even without that, customers were happy to have someone who could answer their questions directly. Even when we had to look something up, they often appreciated that we were more familiar with the relevant terms needed to find the information they were seeking. Occasionally, a customer who was very knowledgable would come in; it was 50/50 whether they were someone we could accommodate by skipping past technical advice and focusing on inventory ("Is it in stock at the sister store?"), services, and deal-making. The other 50% were, frankly, assholes who definitely should just be buying possible counterfeits off Amazon. Sorry that we don't have time to research the differences between two high-end receivers that we'd have to special order anyway; for every one of your exceptionally rare requests, there are dozens of customers who need us to walk them through troubleshooting a basic system set-up (where components can be from one of a dozen different companies), so that's where the energy is going. Best Buy functioned most effectively as a sort of library-esque community center where residents could receive basic tech assistance across a wide range of microprocessor-driven products (which we would then sell you); something similar goes for much of retail. Workers are conscientious, but there is a limit to the advice the structure can afford to give for free. You wouldn't walk into a grocery store and expect the butcher to be able to walk you through preparing a sous vide steak with white wine sauce or whatever; they could point out what cut would work best, but beyond that, you'd hire someone to teach you.