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.

Best Buy has not been immune to critique in this space either. A couple weeks ago, Best Buy drew criticism from a user on twitter (@thebrandbuilder) who shared with his 26,000 “followers” how disappointed he was in the service he received (or didn’t recieve in his case). He recounted through tweets how he was literally standing within a department at one of our stores, tweeting out how he couldn’t find anyone to help him for 45+ minutes. It led to many, many comments from his group of followers who fed us valuable information about how Best Buy should consider changing, and improving, and presented an “Ah-Ha’ moment for the store leadership. It’s true that you learn the most from your harshest critics, even if the lessons learned are uncomfortable.

The Revolution

So, how do we handle a disconnect like this? I’m thinking about the literal question, “What should we do?”. I don’t believe there’s a clear-cut answer, or one-size-fits-all solution. I do believe we’ve been able to fulfill on the original intent of the service; real-time access via twitter to people who help you know all we know, as fast as we know it.  We hope it creates relevance for us in the space, and better relationships as a result. Yes, our team is well connected, and know who to turn to in order to make things happen quickly. The shortcoming is that since we’re working from virtual desks, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we can get a Manager from the store you are in on the phone immediately, get someone to turn around and help you if you need it, or make someone answer an email inquiry faster. But we’re participating, listening to the feedback, and understand that if you ask, customers will tell you how they want you to run your business.

It also means our social presence gives us better visibility to these opportunities, and a better opportunity to adapt. We now know you want your local store to be as responsive as you tell us we are with Twelpforce. We also know the problem we’re aiming to fix won’t go away completely with the introduction of another “tool” or platform, but that a large part of it will come in the form of a cultural revolution, and won’t happen overnight. Thinking radically, here are a few ‘What If’s”

• What if we had the option to re-assign people, or shake up elements of the retail operation to create a system that had thousands of employees manning terminals in which they kept their finger on the pulse of the social-sphere, or scanned tweets/posts for references to their store? Should we? Or is it more important that we take that feedback and do something about it, even if it’s to inform leadership that we need to do a better job somewhere in our operations?

• What if Twitter/Twelpforce/Facebook/Best Buy Community Forum posts served as an early warning system for Best Buy, allowing a select group of people to do most of the listening. If those people had a direct line into the store or business/policy “owner”, it may save labor and capital investment, as long as they had the ability to get a hold of someone who could fix the situation.

• What if we chose to invest more capital in training that allows people explore the space on their own? The result might be that some of those early adopters/explorers will guide us with their experimentation with different tools.

• What if we had the tools at our disposal to help our employees know everything that everyone else knows?

• What if a new platform comes to take the place of the old? Will we need to re-org again?

Whatever tactics we implement,  I’m certain that it will be a failing effort if it becomes just another task assigned from the top. Like many of our customers, our team members have been focused on navigating through the tumultuous last 18 months, and most likely haven’t been able to divide their attention in as many places as they need to. Remember, the idea of “social media” is still new to some people, and I’m sure others might have tried it once and seen no value.  That said, many of our employees are already active in this space, and what’s brewing is a groundswell based cultural revolution.  Our leadership has been quick to endorse the idea of getting active in this space, but need to more actively jump in so they can experience their own “ah-ha” moments, and truly grasp the depth of the opportunity in this space.  If that happens, it’s going to be a truly ground up re-invention of what we believe we are empowered, and expected to do for the customer.

Commitments

With Twelpforce, we know have not succeeded in every case or solved every issue, nor have we perfected the art of the “hand off’ as described above.  What we have done however is seed the organization with a sense that change is coming. With the idea that our roles will be evolving in this new landscape of the truly connected customer. We’ve seeded the beginning of a culture changing movement in which every employee can and will find themselves in the role of “customer service”. While we don’t have the luxury of being able to create a culture from the ground up like our much-admired Zappos friends, or even the team at Google, I admire what those companies have done to empower their employees. Changing the culture of an organization that has had 45 years to build much needed SOP, processes, and systems will be no small task, nor will it be the responsibility of one team, initiative or individual…it will take a commitment from all of us to make it happen, because we’re hoping to change the culture in radical ways.

Radical changes are scary to contemplate.  As humans, we’re wary of change, but today, we should also be acutely aware that every single interaction counts. Customers are looking for us to live up to the promises we make them every day, and not simply most of the time. We need to be fully committed to the cause, each and every time. If we’re going to compete in this new, digitally connected world, we cannot poke our heads into the sand and pretend that if we ignore criticism that it will go away. Or say “But I think it works pretty well now, why change things if we don’t have to?” That’s silly, things are broken, we just didn’t know it before, and we now have better ways to hear what they are. Our commitment should be to take action to fix what we can as soon as we hear about it. Empower our people everywhere to make it right, and suggest ways to fix things. In that regard, we’re truly taking advantage of what “social” can mean to our company.