The other day I went to Best Buy and realized a great opportunity to improve customer experience. The idea came to be because I had the exact same experience a week or 2 before at Henrys. This isn’t an issue directly with Best Buy or Henrys but clearly these stores have some opportunity to improve upon my experiences. I can think of a number of other stores that would run into this issue too.
I went to Best Buy to drop some cash – Literally an envelope of cash to purchase an iMac. I asked for the iMac of my choice and the sales person said that their location was out of stock; however he took the liberty to check the other location, in North London, and they had 4 in stock.
There I was, standing in the store and ready to buy; however, I actually had to get back in my car and drive to the other side of the city. I could have gone to Future Shop to see about a purchase but that wasn’t the point. The sales guy went on his merry little way.
I was annoyed and tired. I didn’t know if I wanted to drive across the city. I had already jumped through some hoops to get the cash out of my account. My experience was pretty low.
Opportunity
Wouldn’t it be an amazing experience for these brands to remove me from the issue? I’m certain that people are having the same negative experience for products at the North location as well.
What if the brands had runners throughout the day that would move between locations within the city? For instance, Every 2 hours the runners would make a move. The North runner would go to the south with the stock that’s been requested and the South runner would do the opposite. Or it could be the same runner going back and forth.
Implementing an idea like this would mean that I could be given a time to return and the stock would be there or I could drive across the city. I would be given a choice.
I needed to eat some lunch. Imagine if I could have gone home or to a nearby location, grabbed lunch, and came back to get the merchandise. Or gone on with my day to return in 2 hours to pickup the merchandise.
I don’t go out making many purchases, but I’ve become really sick of people not going that extra mile and seeming like they care. I know, internally, these companies/brands stress customer experience but they always get it wrong.