Customer Disservice

F+ for Best Buy Park Meadows June 5, 2007

Objective: Customer Service
Target Items: some lightscribe dvd+r, hard drive enclosure
Date/Time of visit: 4 June 2007, 5:20PM
How busy: not busy

I gave Best Buy another chance to demonstrate that they deserve to take some of my money. This time, and mostly because of my last visit to this particular store, I decided to count the number of employees who walked idly past me without offering me any assistance whatsoever. How many do you think that number should be? Well, I know for a fact that it should be at most 1/3 of the people, and I have a strong bias towards this number being 0, making exceptions for employees who are actually helping other customers.

So, no. Today’s visit was yet again a clinic in how not to serve a customer. I did count, and it was 14. Yes, fourteen employees, including a lady who appeared to be in some kind of managerial role, strolled right past me — within 5 feet — and didn’t bother to say hello to me or ask me if I need some help. That’s really all there is to say about it. I mean, yes I found what I was going in the store to look for, but I decided not to buy and I went across the street to CompUSA and spent some money there.

Service grade: F-. It was without value in a store of that size.
Store cleanliness: D+. They needed to get some janitorial people on the black rubberized floor.
Store organization: D-. I have seen other Best Buy stores that are very eye-catching as soon as you walk in. This isn’t one of them.
Ambient noise: F. All I could hear was the awful music playing, the TVs in the back, and employee conversations that weren’t about work, oddly enough.
Today’s Overall Grade: F+. Sadly, this is an improvement over the F double minus, but I felt that this visit was actually worse because it’s a repeat offender and I’ve had multiple consecutive visits of this type.