do these fools in leadership really think they can have frontline employees tell customers to "just read these steps to backup/restore/activate your device" it is amazing to think they think the customer base is that competent , mostly older people have no clue what icloud is , what a sim card is , what their password for anything is , lock codes not a clue , but this isnt exclusive to older people there are plenty of teenage princesses and lil juniors whom have zero idea what to do yet their parents come to store for help then rudely ask their 15yr old numbnuts kid what to get. Transforming retail is a complete farce and will fail like plenty other initiatives , ie myaccount/myverizon transactions in store, sales force is bologna, the hub, sure response and god willing the HUM , GET THIS THROUGH YOUR THUCK SKULL LEADERSHIP , THE PUBLIC ARE CLUELESS WITH TECHNOLOGY AS THEY HAVE BEEN CODDLED BY VZW STORES TOO LONG , YOU CARE ABOUT NPS? lol this is a complete failure by leadership.
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I take the training at 11am (eastern). I'm excited. It may give me a time line of when to expect my store to close. An assistant mgr thinks the store will close by july. We're an A store but traffic is not consistent. (PTriState).
We only have 16 call centers left
ONLY 16 call centers LOL, somehow...somehow...they will survive after closing most of them
We are all in the same sinking ship. Customers have no clue about using their phones. Even customer service gets thousands of calls from clueless customers. Verizon is simply trying to reduce operating expenses. And we all will pay the price for it. We only have 16 call centers left. The rest are vendor centers. It is simply cheaper to outsource. In the meantime we have to put up with every stupid idea the company comes up with to increase profits such as the hum or go 90. The best thing you can do... is make as much money as you can.. if there is overtime... work it. Pay off bills and try to boost your financial position. We all know it is simply a matter of time. Focus on taking care of your own finances so when it happens... you will be prepared.
We still have people who come in with the dreaded.. FEDEX box... don't be boxed. They're here to "setup" their phones.
We are not d-fillers! Don’t just give the customer the phone in a box, set them up for success: transfer EVERYTHING, set up and test one of their email accounts, out on all their accessories (even if they bought them elsewhere), make a test call, show them how to browse the web and use gps, have them add their fingerprints and lock codes, and TONS more. If we don’t do it, someone else will and we will be out of a jog!
Also, if you truly value your job in the retail space you should consider the fact that a ton of people avoid retail stores specifically because the process is so arduous. Plenty of people seriously dislike the time it traditionally takes to buy a phone in a store so they opt for online purchasing. If we want to compete, we need to streamline the process and thus deliver the speed of an online purchase with the satisfaction of instant gratification. I would bet that for every customer that might be dissatisfied, you'll gather at least two that love getting in and out with their new stuff in a few minutes. I've been pushing this "do it yourself" angle since I came on a year ago from T-Mobile and I hear at least once a day something along the lines of "Wow, that was so fast! I expected to be here for an hour! Thanks!" That's a customer that had a bad perception of retail whose mind was changed by their interaction with me, and who is far more likely to choose retail over online going forward.
You grossly underestimate the customer. Even the ones that think they don't know how to do something can often figure it out with little help from a rep. My store sells almost entirely iPhone. Why does a rep need to tie themselves down to a single customer switching out iPhones when all they have to do is sign in to iCloud? You'll have a one-off here and there that wasn't backing up to iCloud or doesn't know their logins, sure. But that's increasingly rare, and even then it doesn't take long to teach them how to do it or reset their password. "Here's what you need to do. If you're more comfortable staying here while you do it, then please do. I'll be around if you have any questions. Otherwise you can do all of this at home where your WiFi is likely faster, and then you can swap SIM cards once you've caught up."
Done. Moving on.
OP - Are you kidding? Just go back decade when we did everything in the stores. We had flextronics techs and used Vision to make all kinds of adjustments to customers accounts and issue credits. We used to send out broken phones for repair and issue loaners. Phones used to require come programming and activation.
Now everything is automated and simple. Stores are not even relevant anymore and they are working towards closing them or converting them to indirect. There will be a fraction of the stores we have today in the near future.
Lowell has to cut $10 billion to save the dividend and useless retail stores are low hanging fruit.
Seems a lot of sales folks have forgotten why they are there...to serve the customer!. Not just slam items the customers don't need. Its the climate of VZ that puts the focus on Sell...Sell...Sell. Obviously the management doesn't have a clue either. In the meantime the competition will lure the VZ customer base away one at a time.
On Black Friday our location had a Solution Manager stand at the front door for about 6 to 8 hours taking people's names to put in the Que. He hardly communicated with any of the customers why they were coming in .So I helped a woman who waited 45 mins for me to tell her we do not disconnect lines in the store any more she has to call the "LOL loyalty line" What a farce. Train the bozo store management team how to run a high volume store with a smaller staff or hre a greeter for the holiday season.Having a guy that makes 80,000 per year to greet is waste!
What front line employees get asked everyday is"Will you get everything from this phone to my new one" they have no clue while acting sophisticated that they have technology that does everything for them..its a situation that Verizon leadership has created over the years in the stores in the guise of "Customer Service". Our customer base still thinks there are Techs still in the stores while store management still Hands off "tech " issues to employees who have no training in most issues that customers come in for. the main problem is that Store Management still run the store like they have 35 employees while actually only having 12 employees ( not including 1 GM and 3 ast mgrs) you could write a book about this rudderless ship.