The holiday season was a bust. Q4 retail numbers are garbage YOY. Employees hate working at them and are leaving in droves. Customers hate going to them and are not visiting them in droves.
Big leases, big overhead and nothing in return. Growth is gone and they are obsolete. Close them already!
You know how nice it is to wake up and go to work and NOT get bombarded with fake "team huddles." Forced to take unauthentic Instagram photos to pretend were all happy, and enjoying what we're doing. Not being pressured after every transaction to slam sh--ty products (cough HUM cough) on every customer. To not have two Friday meetings every month (even the ones I don't work) to get talk down on, and criticized for not hitting goals that were made to be unattainable in the first place.
F--- Verizon DM,SM,GM(s) and all upper VP management. Almost all of them got where they are for being sh--ty sleazy sales people with ZERO morals in a booming market(previously). How sh--ty this company is run proves how many sh--ty people were/are in it.
This is what the company wants....we've been told that the company is driving business out of the store and to the internet. We are absolutely training customers to not need us. Our only saving grace may be all of the horrid surveys we are receiving saying we " refused" to help customers move their c-ap or trouble shoot their device. We are now being reprimanded for our surveys saying the company is botching about all the detractors and this is unacceptable, we are being threatened with write ups because the company wants us to push these people out, all the while other companies are improving the customers experience.
If you want to see traffic patterns reverse. Fight against the smart setup initiatives. We are teaching customers to not need us anymore. When we don't transfer content, push troubleshooting to tech coach. Customers discover they don't need the store. Send them Salesforce links that they may use to check the promo but not use it again when they place the order. Or they have problems with the order and online chat or telesales helps them and your mylink is null and void. We created the problem of the lack of traffic by thinking these things will help us help more customers. But when everyone is doing the same thing you have the same mix. Bring back giving customer service. Make our customers rely on us. Verizon is trying to eliminate brick and mortar. Only we can save it.
The Holyoke Mall location closed on 12/31.
Which MA mall location closed??
@2egj Those are most likely 3rd party stores. They are being modeled very closely to corporate stores now. Eventually, you won't be able to tell the difference as they shift to a 3rd party first model.
I keep seeing all this talk of store closings but I am curious. In my area I keep seeing new stores popping up and existing stores being remodeled with major expansions. I work on the wireline side in Virginia in an area where there is no FiOS. Anyone wish to speculate?
Mall store in NE area, MA to be exact, closed its doors on 12/31. Rent too high and store not profitable.
I'd also expect drastic cuts in B2B for 2019. The recent national outage revealed the limitations of putting all your cellular eggs in one basket. In every impacted market our competitors now have a narrative; essential services can't relay solely on Verizon.
Over a year ago someone mentioned that all mall corporate locations would be closing once lease has expired. Since that time I have only heard of one mall location closing. If most of these locations had 2 year leases then I imagine by the end of this year we should hear of dozens of closings. I do believe a major consolidation is under way. With a consolidation comes less management across the board. Currently most stores are over staffed with reps and managers. It is clear the writing is on the wall.
We have 2 new hires in our store, been on the floor about a month, they are asking other reps how they are supposed to make money when we have NO CUSTOMERS IN THE STORE!! They have been on the sales floor for a month and they can see what's going on, why can't the id--ts running this c-ap show figure it out?
Directors behind closed doors meetings. Major changes. No person is safe. Even the directors that are pulling the plug on their staff, will also be impacted. If your a man and one of your peers are a women, your history. Stores closing, DMs reduced along with directors.
The stores close after the lamprey's in B2B are purged.
As the leases expire they'll strategically shrink the retail footprint.
I support them and took the VSP. I'm out in March. I am not sticking around to find out how they pull the plug on retail, but I know big changes are coming.