A Surefire Way to Get Some Attention From the Sales Clerks at Best Buy

by

Start taking photographs.

5 thoughts on “A Surefire Way to Get Some Attention From the Sales Clerks at Best Buy”

  1. I’d argue it’s the ONLY way to get their attention.

    And you still haven’t solved the problem of finding anyone who has the slightest idea of what they’re talking about.

  2. I thought the sales clerk “thing” was confined to Filene’s, Lowes and Home Depot. Just trying to establish eye contact with some of the “sales associates” is a problem of major proportion. —Something seems to be missing in our population, of late. Humanity, perhaps???

  3. I think it’s more a matter of the incentives faced by the store’s employees. Unless they are on commission individual clerks have little to gain by being available for customers who need assistance. OTOH clerks might get into trouble for ignoring customers who are breaking the store’s rules. So for a customer sometimes the easiest way to get the staff’s attention is to break the rules.

    The obvious alternative to the current imperfect situation is to pay employees sales commissions, but doing so might create other problems such as pushy salespeople who antagonize some customers and have an incentive to be dishonest to get business. I don’t know how BBY pays its store employees, but I assume commission on individual sales does not figure prominently and that BBY does it this way for a reason. One would think that they could figure out how to get non-commissioned employees to be more attentive to customers. However, the prevalence of less-than-ideal service in large retail stores suggests that the problem is either very difficult to solve or simply not worth solving given the economics of the stores.

  4. I’ve never had a problem getting attention at Best Buy. The two near my house seem to be overflowing with salescritters. It doesn’t mean that they are helpful in any way but they are there. Home Depot is getting pretty bad though. What help exists on the sales floor is pretty clueless. Lowes on the other hand was great. We were at one yesterday (first time at one) and had trouble walking 20 feet without someone asking if we needed assistance. No problem with me taking pictures either.

  5. The problem is that the floor staff is overwhelmed. The big box retailers cut staffing so badly that employees now go out of their way to get a few minutes of solitude, away from customers.

    I guess it’s worth it to the stockholders to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales everyday as long as you save a couple grand in payroll.

Comments are closed.