So the company has been cutting hours all over the place. Meanwhile sales per hour in appliances has increased again. Makes no sense.
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Well, we all know what happened to the Plumbing Specialists right out of the “SPH Gate”. They didn’t up their SPH—they just eliminated the position. Raise your hand if you think we are next! 👋
Yes, raised the SPH again. Took our in house delivery guys, and appliance inventory still in the tank. Also forcing specialists to work 2-4 hours a week (sometimes more) on PSE lead generation table, but no adjustments to SPH while out of the department. Of course, we all know a while back they imposed the c-appy “Customer Centric” schedule that makes zero sense, and was imposed just to up the “misery factor” on specialists. Let’s face it: the “New” Corporate hates the Specialist position. They are drawing up their final plans for us.
Somebody has to make upthe sales numbers for the cut hours.
Millworks only ones banking.but not for long.we are not supposed to get full payouts!so now corporate is watching millworks
I mean no disrespect but CLEARLY you do not know how an XDT (express delivery terminal, aka cross-dock) market works. Stores intentionally have been stripped of practically all appliance inventory with the primary exception being over the range microwaves and dishwashers (which are currently still being picked up by the installer at the store but I hear that may be changing soon as well). You invoice/sell via GENESIS but the software then converts the customer's order into a STERLING order which "theoretically" gets assigned to the XDT location for processing. The XDT then issues a pull request the night before the customer's scheduled delivery and the ADC/BDC (Appliance Distribution Center/Bulk Distribution Center) transfers the appliances to the XDT location for pickup by the 3rd party delivery service (XPO in our market). Our XDT location is doing the deliveries for something like 65 Lowe's stores and we have over 100 stores in the state that are pulling from the same ADC/BDC location. As for ICB's, yes provided you are prepared to do it as a LTL (less than truckload) shipment from another state.
When the inventory numbers are low at the ADC/BDC the probability of systems and/or order issues escalate exponentially. Additionally, appliance allocation from the ADC/BDC to a customer specific XDT assigned Sterling order does not happen in anything close to real-time so even though the ADC/BDC may of had product in stock at time of sale they may be out of stock when it comes time for the XDT system to initiate the pull request. The probability of it ending well for either the customer or Lowe's is GREATLY diminished. HENCE THE ORDER FROM CORPORATE TO DM TO SM TO store employees that absolutely NO selling into the negatives in XDT markets. PERIOD. Order replenishment has even been directed by corporate not to place items with zero on hands on manual bill for stores within XDT markets.
As for the quotes/rainchecks they have been done with the blessing of management as that is the only recourse we have given the NO SELLING INTO THE NEGATIVE directive. If your store is still on the old system where you sell from store inventory, SOE (via local RDC) and SOS with it all being delivered via your own store consider this notice given as your reality is in for a very rude awakening when you transfer over to this new system. That being said you can send us a big thank you for being the Beta testers for this nightmarishly complicated system for over a year now. We are also slated to be the Beta testers for the new replacement software for Genesis/Sterling which we have already been told will likely be at the beginning of Q2 2021.
Why did you decide to provide raincheck to customers? Lowe's policy statement is no raincheck for out of stock. As for estimate from last fall, estimates are good for 30 days. The printed estimates, that customers are provided and you are supposed to sign CLEARLY states that.
You should've explained that to your customers, if they aren't happy with those facts the customer is free to take a walk, and try to get their appliance across the street. Often times they come back because depot and best buy even are facing the same problem.
The customer can complain to management who WILL INSTRUCT you to sell into the negative to make them happy, all the while having to end up waiting like everyone else.
Or you can try to find another store that has it, try to Icb it and end up paying the 3rd party delivery crew pick it up only to damage it employees en route to Karen's house. If they have it, if not they will have to wait.
As for a rigged system, I agree.
Agree that cutting hours to the bone is not going to help sales particularly in any department that requires an associate to order your product. As for the SPH thresholds, there is hardly any appliance inventory to sell in my area. Would estimate that better than 75% of the refrigerators and 90% of the ranges on our planogram are perpetually out of stock. It's been that way since even before the pandemic started. When product does arrive at the ADC/BDC we blow through it in a matter of hours/days and then we are back to nothing to sell. How can you sell when you have practically nothing to sell? In fact we have been directed by SM/DM NOT TO SELL INTO THE NEGATIVE on any stock/SOE appliances due in large part as to how the software can't handle it in XDT markets. Heck, I have close to 50 customer's that I gave quotes/rain checks to (some dating back to November 2020) that are still waiting on product to come. Almost impossible to even make it to one of the lower payout tiers and flat out impossible to make it to the upper tier. I would have actually done better in 2020 by getting the quarterly "Winning together" bonuses (which Specialists no longer qualify for) than the SPH based specialist payouts. Talk about a rigged system.
Too many specialists actually hitting their bonus