Hod Irvine recently visited the Best Buy store in Richfield to look for a new camera. The first employee Irvine spoke to referred him to another Blue Shirt, who expertly answered all of Irvine's questions.
"He was very friendly, very helpful, and, most importantly, very knowledgable," said Irvine, a 53-year-old Stillwater resident who sells advanced electronics like semiconductors. "People say 'Best Buy is going away.' If it goes away, what do you have left? God, I don't want to shop at Wal-Mart."
Despite Irvine's glowing review, he didn't actually buy a camera, preferring to do more research at other retailers.
Here lies a paradoxical problem for the consumer electronics giant: How can the retailer provide customers with information and a pleasant shopping experience to boost sales while not laying on the aggressive sales pitch that has long been a part of Best Buy's culture?
In other words, how do you get customers to buy something without pushing them to buy something?
Since joining Best Buy last fall, CEO Hubert Joly has invested considerable cash and time to improving customer service in an effort to boost sluggish sales. Under his tenure, Best Buy has retrained its Blue Shirt workforce and instituted a new system to both measure customer opinion and evaluate and compensate employees. Beyond the store, Best Buy has added resources to its vaunted social media team, which monitors and responds quickly to customers who complain about something on Facebook and Twitter.
By focusing on customer service, the company hopes that knowledge and some tender loving care will produce enough goodwill to convince a customer to eventually pull the trigger. The key word is "eventually."
"We're not out there pounding you to buy," Shawn Score, president of U.S. retail, told the Star Tribune. "We're out there making sure we answer enough questions that you feel intelligent and confident in your purchase decision."