Best Buy and the Customer Experience
Over the last week or so, there’s been a very public debate about the future of Best Buy. It started with an article in Forbes magazine – Why Best Buy is Going Out of Business… Gradually. The article opened a powder keg of conversation about bad customer service experiences at the electronics retailer. The article illustrates how difficult it is for traditional businesses to evolve in a competitive, customer focused, environment.
After several days of very public discussion about the article, with responses from the author and a statement by the CEO, a second article was published – The People vs Best Buy, Round 2. The author of the article suggests that Best Buy has an opportunity to turn things around. However, he doesn’t seem very optimistic about the probability of the company doing so, suggesting they’re simply making excusing and talking a big game, but aren’t going to follow through.
While I haven’t read the author of these articles book, it doesn’t seem much different than the messages outlined in The Cluetrain Manifesto, which I read over a decade ago. Businesses must cater to the customer, not the other way around.
Whether your businesses is large or small, make sure you’re looking at everything your business does from the customer perspective, and changing to make sure you’re meeting even the smallest customer expectations. If you don’t let your customers expectations lead the way, you risk, eventually, becoming irrelevant and filing for bankruptcy. As the author of the two article above states, “Fifteen years after the invention of the automobile, buggy whip sales were also still going strong.”
One Response 
Leave a Reply 
haha cool ! I like this blog :)