Best Buy Apps

3/22/10 – John Bernier (@bernierjohn)

Connections:

As the Twelpforce Lead for Best Buy, I’m very interested in where people think we can improve the experience we’re offering in this space. One issue in particular that I’m paying attention to revolves around how well we’re linking the experience people have online with the kind of experience they have in-store. Are they the same? Are they different? What’s at the root of any difference?

Why am I paying attention? Well, these days, it’s not uncommon for customers who have a poor experience with a brand to reach out to their social networks to vent/complain.  Just how powerful can one experience be? Well, I’m not sure who hasn’t seen this yet, but this article is one of many that summarizes how Kevin Smith, AKA “Silent Bob”, was removed from a flight by Southwest Airlines in early February of 2010. He disagreed with their actions, and took to Twitter to vent his frustrations. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/16/entertainment/la-et-kevin-smith16-2010feb16

He’s got 1.6M followers, and makes the case that a platform like Twitter is a perfect way to “get the word out” about a poor experience…However you want to look at it, it’s a sign that the customer has more control over their experience than ever.

Here’s a quick list of the 10 things I think I’ve learned thanks to Twelpforce

1. Enthusiasm and Passion are traits common to all our employees, and especially those who help via Twelpforce. These DNA traits seem to be shared across platforms, and is a key reason Twelpforce is working.

2. If we don’t know what’s wrong with our business, you can safely leave it to our customers to tell us. Like millions of canaries in the coal mine, it’s a beautiful thing to be able to listen so closely.

3. Trust is a fragile thing. Proving your worth every day is hard. Admitting we’re (I’m) not perfect no matter how hard we (I) try is humbling. The effort is very, very worth it though.

4. Talking about technology comes easily, but finding the answers to all the different questions consumers have can be hard when the info lies in so many different places within our four walls.

5. Sometimes I wonder if the anonymity that is offered online allows people to shed any guilt that comes with talking to people in a way that they would never consider in person.

Recently, I was sitting at my optometrist’s office, and noticed that their office had laid out issues of ‘Life’ magazines dating to the 1950’s for patients in the waiting room. How cool is that? As I was reading through them, it struck me as ironic that many of the same issues people were concerned about back then are the same issues we’re concerned about today such as; the military, health care and government (I’m generalizing, as my point isn’t about politics).

But what also struck me as different was the advertising, and how different it is from what we’ve grown accustomed to seeing. The tone in which “brands” spoke to customers was very direct. You should smoke these cigarettes so you’ll be as cool as Arnold Palmer. Or, “this car company” is a brand you can trust because we supply the most aftermarket parts. There are other examples, but the main thing I took away is that these brands were spending a lot of time, effort and money telling consumers why they should trust them, much as brands these days do.

As one of the Twelpforce leads, one thing I’ve learned so far in this journey is that there are a lot of companies who are very interested in what we’re doing. To-date, I’ve had conversations with our Best Buy Canada and UK teams, the CarPhone Warehouse team, as well as with other major corporations like HP, Home Depot, CarMax and Turbo Tax. I’ve been happy to share my POV on how we did this, and when boiled down, most people want to know how we got “Leadership Buy-In”.

In our case, leadership was already convinced that “social” was a way for us to change the way brands and humans interact. How we did it was still up in the air, but admittedly that leadership “got it” gave us a head start. When I relay this information, I also usually pair it with the comment that any Senior Leader who doesn’t know that conversations are happening about their brand, or their product in the social space shouldn’t be in their leadership position anymore. Seriously.

It has bugs.   It’s a major bummer.

Our Weekly Deals iPhone app has it’s share of problems.  Most notably, it doesn’t seem to display weekly deals.   That rating of “1″ on the AppStore is probably generous at this moment.  We are aware.

The most frustrating part is that the app worked fine prior to committing the new version to the AppStore.

We are working to reveal if the problem is in the code or if the issue is in the service from which the application calls the deal information and digital assets.

On behalf of all of us, thank you for your comments, your candid feedback, and (hopefully) your patience.  We look forward to sharing a completed application that works well and brings value to your experience and service from Best Buy.

Update 8/20/09 2:26 p.m – We discovered that the weekly deals did not appear due to a combination of human error and horrible timing.  This is not to say that all the problems are fixed.  Just know we are working on fixes.  Our roadmap is long and our process is iterative.  We hope to earn “Most Improved App” accolades and strong ratings in the near future.

Here’s a list of the new features in the latest IdeaX deploy. Enjoy.

rt @wkornewald: @appenginepatch has new maintainers: Giftag devs @gumptionthomas and @iffius will take over development – thanks guys!

get it here: code.google.com/p/app-engine-patch/