The Fry’s store finally opened in San Marcos. The theme is “Atlantis” (or perhaps “Jules Verne”) and it’s really pretty darned cool, with fishtanks and electrical sculptures and a giant water marble. And even fairly well organized!
I went to the grand opening the other day – the place was packed, and the line to get in stretched around the outside of the store. Of course I’d been there already – went on the first afternoon they were “beta test” opening; in fact I’d already bought stuff. And even returned something!
So as I was wandering around I noticed the “suits” milling about the big round fishtank near the entrance; and sure enough one of them had a nametag “Randy Fry, President”. So I shook his hand and told him I was a long time customer, and then he got a call on his cellphone.
I’ve been meaning to write to him with suggestions for a while now, so I’ll just start ranting here.
“Welcome High Tech Professionals” is one of their mottos (on ugly banners outside the otherwise beautifully facade’d building). Seems to me like Fry’s has two classes of customers: Joe Schmoe consumers just looking for the lowest price, and geeks, er, High Tech Professionals. The science of selling to the former is well studied (“Hi, I’m bait!” “…and I’m Switch!”); but selling to the latter, while probably much easier, is rarely done well. It requires several factors.
-Vast selection of techie products. This they have, and in fact this is one of the reasons I’ve always liked Fry’s – they have everything.
-Great organization of those products. Not so much. A while back, we tried to find 505 timer chips – one of the most basic items a proto-geek would ever want – in the San Diego store, amid a selection of probably 5000 chips. The little chip bags on peghooks on the wall were badly organized, badly labelled, wrong chips on labelled hooks, and in a badly lit ghetto of the store. I used to work in the plumbing section of a hardware store, and I could see right away that the problem was that noone was minding the section; people pick up things and put them back in the wrong places – noone was putting things back. Noone was ordering – or making visible – the popular items. And noone in the area (including the help desk) seemed to know anything about chips. Another example is when display products are damaged or broken – I actually like this, ’cause I can see where the failure points are – but it looks like hell.
-Provide the newest, latest, greatest stuff. Get it as early as possible, and display it proudly. It’d probably not get past manufacturers, but I’d really like to see an “Akihabara” section with products you can normally only get in Japan.
-Prices, customer service, etc. aren’t really that big a deal to geeks – they can figure things out for themselves and they’re more likely to waste a knowledgeable salesperson’s time than actually get any useful information from them; and if they can find the precise item they need they mostly don’t care what they pay for it – $2? $5? Doesn’t matter, I need it.
Customer Service. Everyone I talk to complains about Fry’s customer service, automatically – it’s sort of like when someone talks about The Claim Jumper and they say with wonderment, “The portions are huge!”, leaving out the fact that the food is generally mediocre. Personally, I’ve never really had a problem with their customer service – but as said earlier, I’m a geek and I expect to figure things out for myself.
That said – I talked to one of the new hires at the San Marcos store, and apparently they’re paid about $7 an hour. Slightly better than minimum wage; even in this economy a reasonably skilled computer person should be able pull down $15 an hour doing support or designing web pages. So give ’em a break and be surprised when they actually know something – some of them are great. As discussed above, they do need more work on stocking and keeping up display items.
Product Returns. I’ve got mixed feelings about this. High tech products often fail to live up to expectations. Either they’re not compatible – or they don’t solve the problem you’re trying to solve – or they’re just a PITA to use. Heck, some of them are even actually nonfunctional. Every time I’ve tried to return something – as long as I’ve kept the boxes and doc intact, and have the receipt – they never give me any trouble. It’s surprisingly easy – waiting in line is often the most painful part of the experience – along with the disappointment of yet another crappy electronic device. On the other hand – I don’t like to buy merchandise that’s been opened. There are so many connectors and parts to some of these things, that there’s no way to know if the last customer brought everything back or not – or even if they tested and were sure it was working properly. Plus it’s just “worth more” to me if it hasn’t been handled. Personally, I just avoid the white sticker disclaimer’d boxes – at least they do that. I’d rather see them ship all returned items back to the manufacturer so THEY have to deal with their own faulty or unacceptable products.
Rebates. Ooh, rebates really suck. Read somewhere yesterday that on rebates of over $100, something like 40% of them are ever redeemed – for lower rebates the numbers go down to about 5%. You’ve got to cut apart the packaging that you have to save – so you have to wait to be sure you’re not going to have to return it. Then there are time limits, and you’re supposed to photocopy everything (everyone has home photocopiers, no?) – at least they’re providing duplicate receipts lately. And even after you manage to successfully mail it in, there’s an 8 week wait till you get your check, so by then you’ve probably forgotten about it and wouldn’t notice if it never arrived. They should automate this process: submit the rebate electronically at time of purchase (or, say, 30 days later if the item hasn’t been returned) – all I have to do is provide my address to the cashier (which they already have) – no mess, no fuss, and force the manufacturers to actually pay out their stinkin’ rebates.
Extended warranties. Come on, you know everyone hates these. Just honor the manufacturer’s warranty – offer extensions on that if necessary, but don’t cram a FUD down my throat everytime I buy a product I’m already unsure of. Especially considering that many of these products are obsolete in a year or two anyway.
Finally, there are the horrible beeping alarms that are set off with the slightest touch of the demo merchandise. Next time I hear one I’m going to start yelling “ALARM! ALARM!” till someone figures out how freaking annoying they are (…or kicks me out for being a loony). Thing about these alarms is, like muzak (excuse me, Muzak(tm)) – if you’re around them all the time you get so you can’t hear them anymore. Instead – give section employees pagers that go off instead of the alarms – but more importantly, build them so they don’t go off by accident.
Other suggestions:
Product kiosks where you could look up location and availability of any products they carried. I’d even provide detailed, printable/emailable information about the items – specifications, speeds, compatibility. Have the manufacturers provide you data sheets in a specified format (html/xml). Put the information storage in a computer where it belongs, rather than expecting minimum wage customer support people to know everything.
Second, I’d have training classes for floor employees – anyone who wanted to come to them, pay them to be there. Train them on how to hook up a car stereo, how to build a home theater system, how to install Linux, how to create an LED circuit. Heck, even invite the public, like Home Despot does.
Finally – a radical idea – recruit your best customers as customer support. Give me a name tag, and a 5% discount if I wear it any time I’m in the store – and if people have questions, they can come up and ask me. This already happens – a lot – this would just formalize it. Make up rules for consultants soliciting – I’m allowed to hand out business cards, if I want, but nothing else, and they can revoke my card if they get any complaints. The Fry’s card could even have encoded my name and address, email, or whatever information I choose to give them, so I don’t have to provide it every time. Heck, even a hosted email address if I want it (they already offer this – but I’d give it away with the Frequent Customer card).
And, as mentioned earlier, if they ever open stores in England, they need to call them Chips.