Is Best Buy next? — Page 2

BettyBoy---customer service isn't dead. It's just dead in this country. American customer service has largely been outsourced to the Philippines and India. All those jobs to help you with your services and products, most of which you bought or subscribed to on line.

Joe, I know your'e right to about the recipe for disaster. There has to be an answer. People want, crave, and "need" that face-to-face service, but they're not willing to pay for it ... at least not by buying the product in the actual store where they gathered their information and/or confidence to buy it. And I have no doubt that customers would gladly buy in stores if the products weren't marked up beyond a competitive margin. I've seen DVDs in stores priced $10-20 more than what you can get them for online. Why on earth would I buy it in the store? And is my question or two-minute conversation really worth $10?

I guess we're seeing the answer now. These stores are going away ... and probably for good. You'll either have to get a computer and Internet service to buy things or just do without.

And believe me there are those who will do without. Quite a few. That will be the next big revelation in the new "worldwide web age." We'll all see just how much it divides this country and our world. Talk about "haves" and "have-nots." Just wait and see.

To use a pop-cultre example, that #1 best-selling pop CD you just bought won't be recognized by half the people in the U.S. I'm not saying that they won't care for it, I'm saying they won't even know it exists.

---

Besty, when I say customer service is dead, I mean in-store customer service. You can barely get a zombie at Target to smile as they drag you items over a scanner. 20 years ago when I got my first part time job, I trained for weeks before I hit the floor.


"People want, crave, and "need" that face-to-face service, but they're not willing to pay for it ... at least not by buying the product in the actual store where they gathered their information and/or confidence to buy it."

The only solution I could see would be to have showrooms, where you can look at the actual product, speak with a trained salesperson who then orders the item at competitive rate and has it sent to you. There would be no inventory in stores. They could even possibly price match that way and have much smaller stores with less overhead.

---

Speaking of good customer service and its lack these days, these stores like Best Buy (I've been in the one near me and found their customer service lackluster, with maybe one or two exceptions) could learn a lesson from the grocery store chain Publix. Not sure where all in the country they are, mostly southeast I think? This is going to sound like I work there or have some other vested interest, but I'm just a happy customer due to their terrific customer service.

It's never hard to find someone to help you at Publix. If you're looking for an item, an employee won't just tell you where to find it, they will walk with you to the item, then ask you if there's anything else they can do to help, and tell you to have a good day before they return to stocking shelves or whatever they were doing before. It's not unusual for the person assisting you to be a manager. Everyone who works there smiles at you, is helpful, and their motto "Publix - where shopping is a pleasure" is pretty much true. Sure, you luck out at other stores (whatever kind it might be) and find that employee here and there who goes out of the way to assist (as already mentioned in this thread), but to find a store where that is the policy across the board is a rare thing these days.

Speaking of Amazon, I'm not sure I want to give them my business anymore.
Lehigh Valley workers tell of brutal heat, dizzying pace at online retailer

Craig is correct. Shopping is a sensual experience. It is one of the things people enjoy doing-using all their senses to experience a product before purchasing.

Music used to be like that too-going to the record shop, flipping through the album covers, looking for art that intrigued you, holding the album, anticipating the sound (you couldn't listen to samples then), getting it home, removing the shrinkwrap, smelling the new vinyl and cardboard case, running your hand over the vinyl to remove static, putting on the album and immersing into the artist's entire journey they chose to be on this album.

I honestly think there will be a psychological impact of all this online shopping and cherrypicking songs. Something will be lost, even if it is people's ability to be slow, thoughful, sensual creatures.

---

It's all about virtual purchases, virtual lives, virtual experiences, and virtual emotions now ... (says the guy on the chat board).

---

Music used to be like that too-going to the record shop, flipping through the album covers, looking for art that intrigued you, holding the album, anticipating the sound...

I miss that the most. Flipping through the albums and finding those treasures that you never knew existed. It's hard to browse like that online.

I see it with my young cousins. They cherry pick hot songs they like off itunes and go so far as to delete them when they are bored with them. I had a 16 year old relative's computer crash and he lost most of his music. His response, "I was sick of most of those songs anyway." As someone who has 1000s of CDs each which have songs that speak to a different era of my life and elicits different emotions, my cousin's reaction distrubed me greatly.

You raise a very interesting point, Bettyboy. This "cherry-picking" consumerism is creating a very strange behavior, especially in younger generations who never grew up "waiting" for anything.

I've said this before, and it's something my dad taught me when I was a kid. "Nothing is of any value unless you choose to value it." He was right. What you're talking about is a generation of people who've had everything they ever wanted "on demand." They didn't have to wait to watch a movie until it turned up on TV, or at least until they got into their car and went to a video store to rent it. They didn't have to wait to hear their favorite songs until they were played on the radio, or until they got home to play them on their stereo systems. They didn't have those "tangible" experiences of having a collection displayed on shelves, where they could reach for a record, book, or video, and take it out of the cover before sitting down to enjoy it.

All they did was find it on a dial and push a button. That's how they bought it, and that's how they access it. It creates a strange "lack of value" for what it is. I don't see younger people treasuring their collections of music or books or videos. They can "throw it away and start over," as you say, when their computers crash. It doesn't mean that much, if anything, to them. Because their lives are all "of the moment."

I wonder, as they get older, what exactly are they going to "choose to value?" Maybe the only thing they'll value is what they are currently experiencing. To me, that sounds horrifying, but that would be based on MY values, not theirs.

What it will do is create a whole bunch of "has-been" artists, musicians, authors, and filmmakers, very quickly. They will be popular for the moment, a very brief moment (even shorter than our average one-hit wonders) before they are chucked aside for the next "moment." They won't be remembered or revered for a body of work or even an "album" of material. They won't exist in anyone's tangible collection, taken out, and dusted off for a later "moment" of valuing. They won't even be treated like an old pair of trendy shoes that were worn a couple of times and then buried in the closet to gather dust. They will just be forgotten as if they never even existed at all.

Very strange consumer behaviors now. Another byproduct of the Internet-raised, on-demand generation(s).

---

Updated On: 9/22/11 at 06:54 AM