I personally work in a high traffic retail location. 65%-70% of people that walk through the door are tech questions, billing issues, or bill payments. That is why you see a huge push on TMP/Tech coach. It trains the customer to seek online/over the phone help to resolve issues which leads to lower traffic into the store. That means less reps needed on hand and you reduce costs associated with non sale tasks. You charge for bill pay, this customer signs up for autopay or pays online= manning reduction. You trim the fat at the store and increase quota for the reps remaining. They will be doing more sale related transactions. You should really look at your store location and see where these 30% of buyers can walk in and completed a buy...ex. BestBuy, Wal-mart, Indirect agent, Online, etc......Retail Locations are a huge cost on the company and will eventually be turned into indirect or shut completely. If Verizon had there Online layout established and easier to use, it would already be in place. I imagine the team with Oath will help transition to a smoother online platform for sales in the future. Just be aware of your surroundings and have your finances in order. The company owes you nothing, it is a business and will do what is profitable and needed to change. The unlimited plans and reductions in monthly charges, requires an eventual offset which in turn means you'll see a reduction in manning and locations.
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If you work in a brick and mortar retail location they you know these locations were created to draw customers inside. The stores were not created for cold calling telemarketing type services. Solution Specialist A. spends 1 hour doing 5 star calls and sales force only to net ZERO sales. Solution Specialist B works the door turns and gets 2 sales in that same hour. Does anyone know what the sales percentage rates for doing 5 star calls is? Historically its 1-2%. Call 100 customers maybe net 1 sale. You can drink the cool aide all you want and be postive and network online and do 5 stars and salesforce but it will never get you to quota like a walk in customer will. Thats the truth Ruth!
I somewhat agree with @1sfg.
Big thing i wont agree with is 5 stark at least the way Verizon pushes it. For 5 star to be truly effective you want to be calling customers the shop has personally dealt with and of course you went to position growth but you want to position upgrades as well. Instead reps are cold calling which has an extremely low success rate especially when you’re calling after 5 and on the weekend. And on top of that its used as a punishment. Its slow stay in the back and make calls. Taking a rep off the showroom floor and shoving them into the back and sticking them on the phone isn’t doing any favors for anyone. And why not utilize 5 star for emails and text messages as well.
To @ 1s5g-Didn't want to upgrade management cretin a---w-pe, if you say that there is opportunity in every walk- in you have used this propaganda with sales reps so many times that you actually believe it! Also, the tools you have named on the most part don't work, ask a rep what they really feel about Retail Salesforce( it doesn't work) so keep playing the game we trouble shoot but no one her is qualified , so let's sell you a new phone instead .
Brick and mortar will always be a thing. Possibly more indirect than corporate but still a thing.
The posters b--ching about troubleshooting and helping customers need to realize that each customer that walks in is an opportunity. That 3 year old iPhone was probably upgrade eligible so you just sent a box for you to Apple, where they can process the upgrade themselves. Good job!!!
Door swings are way down. No denying that at all. But being an inexperienced salesperson and not taking the time to scrub those troubleshoot and bill pay customers falls on you not being willing to take control of your own piece of the business.
Verizon can advertise all day long (with horrible commercials but at least it’s branding) but if you aren’t doing your part as a salesperson and would rather stand around b--ching about traffic instead of taking advantage of every opportunity that does come in the door, that’s on you. Not management. Not Verizon. You.
Same with not embracing the tools you’re given. How many leads did you add to Salesforce today? How many 5* calls have you made? Are you registered with social advocacy and using the Dynamic app to share Verizon branded messages on social media?
Quit the b--ching and take ownership of what you can control.
Lol I find that the reps that never hit their quota will always troubleshoot a customers phone, in the real world they shouldn't do it , but for " we can still help" mantra from Management I understand why the know no better!
You're right Store Management has caused this over the years " We will troubleshoot your phone , but with no techs they have created this problem and even today I don't hear management telling customers to download the tech coach app even when they're paying for it. Just stand their and have non-trained reps being forced to diagnose the problem or just send out a replacement to quickly get rid of the problem while getting to the next customer to get a sale, Bad situation that's no being addressed by the Management
You’re putting the blame on the customer when you should put blame on the company. There the ones who created this mindset for customers that they go to the store for tech support. This wasn’t suddenly going to change when tech support vanished. Problem is rather than make it clear across the board and push for online or over phone tech support store managers were still pushing reps to do tech support and not tell customers there isn’t tech support. So now you’ve created a bigger issue. Of course if one store trouble shoots this guys phone and another store says no tech support he’s going to assume you’re lying.
The right thing would have been to keep tech support however they chose not to so at that point they should have made it clear across the board no tech support rather than play this “well we got rid of but we can still help” game.
A guy walked in yesterday and asked to see tech support about his speaker on his 3 year old iPhone, I said we don't have tech support and haven't had techs for quite a few years and he didn't believe me, he even started too look around the store trying to find them, I recommended the local mall that had an Apple Store, he still questioned me on we're the techs were?this is not an isolated incident, it happens everyday , a guy walks in and wants us to fix his radio app, another guy didn't get his baseball game tickets he ordered over the phone! You can't make it up! Get out of retail!
A) most T-mo stores are direct, not indirect. One of my best friends is a T-Mobile DM and we just had this discussion, it's a horribly incorrect rumor.
B) I've been with Verizon for over 10 years in 3 different channels. From day one I've been hearing them yammer on about how it was all going indirect, every 6 months some other jackass is running his mouth about how "it's all going to be indirect in the next year". Still hasn't happened.
The poster said indirect. Most of T-Mobile stores are indirect.
You have to sell a lot of devices and plans to pay for a retail store with the cost of labor, rent, benefits, Insurance, furniture, cleaning etc. Just does not seem doable in this day and age.
theres no traffic we have had 2 people walk in today both old bitter people... im so over this
I would say by 2020 half of all corporate retail locations will be gone.
There’s no sign of ATT and t mobile closing stores, i really doubt vzw will take the lead in this front. Will Verizon really let an ATT store stand unopposed in an area?
I would say by this time next year VZW will be only available from Best Buy, WalMart, Amazon and Ebay. There may be a few critical stores branded with VZW to take care of large pockets of Government and Top 50 companies doing business with VZW, but the retail stores as we know them will be gone.
Sure...we’ve all heard this yarn. BUT WHEN?!