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panteragstk
Audioholic Warlord
You are very correct. The biggest problem with so many types of business is they want entry level people to somehow have experience. On the job training only exists in certain jobs (apprentice type stuff) which is good, but work like I do now has no real training. You either figure it out, or someone else will.As a millennial who has spent a lot of time working in retail, its 100% corporate structure of these places. No training, skeleton crews, and stupid top heavy "productivity" systems that are a waste of time and produce no results at the store level. Walmart was doing poorly for awhile, and they eventually realized they had to invest in better training, customer service, and pay. Most of these places can't hire decent people because they offer 20 or less hours a week, low pay, and will work you to death, expecting you to do the job of what should be done by three or four people. There is no time dedicated to actually working with customers and receiving training to be knowledgeable on the product. Employers in big chain retail have made it an environment where it's last resort job that people take as a stop gap, so people don't invest time in it and turnover is extreme. How many times have you been in a store and you can't even find an associate to help you? There might be a total of two people on the floor in a huge store.
It's simple economics. If you want to attract and retain the best workers, you have to make it worth their time to apply and stick around.
The brick and mortar retailers that are thriving are doing things differently. The ones that aren't did it to themselves.
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Even when I sold A/V I already had some knowledge before I started because it was my hobby. I learned a lot more from our reps and my boss (HUGE audio nerd) so we had a great team. We even had the news come to our store "undercover" when the converter box things came out after they did away with analog broadcasting. My employee was asked if all TVs had to have one and he went into specifics as to why someone would need one. No BS.
We were asked by our upper management when they visited (this was a store in west Texas so they didn't come often, but we made a ton of money for them) why we didn't turn converter box sales into DirecTV sales and our response was "well, DirecTV customers are 80% of our converter box sales since DTV doesn't offer local channels here". Their response, "oh".
I haven't purchased anything from the BB near me, but have had to go to them for more than one customer service related issue. I ordered stuff online with my brother's discount and had tons of problems. The store manager fixed the problem without hesitation even though his store had nothing to do with the issue.
I was going to buy a TV (the one I wanted didn't qualify for a discount, or much of one) from that store, but the sales guy told me that another brand would be better for what I wanted. He was right, but he didn't get a sale because I ordered to get the discount. Dude was very cool about it. I made sure to tell his manager he was awesome and that I'd refer people to him.
It's funny that a company can suck, but individual stores and employees can change your mind. My BB did that with me.