I was at Best Buy’s corporate headquarters today in Minneapolis, MN for the CMMA Professional Development Conference. The agenda for the events today were as follows:
- Keynote Dialogue: Video Fueling Culture. Brad Anderson, Vice-Chairman and CEO, Best Buy
- Fueling Communications Culture Topic & Discussion #1: Advocating for the Audience (Best Buy’s TAG TV Team)
- Fueling Communications Culture Topic & Discussion #2: Listening to Employees (Best Buy’s Employee Communication Team)
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Presentation #1:
Keynote Dialogue: Video Fueling Culture. Brad Anderson (Vice-Chairman and CEO) and Brian Dunn – (President/COO), Best Buy
- Best Buy did a video series where they asked customers who walked out of the store why they were leaving the store without merchandise. They were able to get lots of insight into why they were missing out on potential sales.
- In our old days “we sold products to customers instead of solutions for customers”
- Best Buy’s China operations: one of the first two Best Buy China employees hired was named Arial. The reason she was hired was in her interview she was asked why she wanted to work for Best Buy. She held up her hand and said to the CEO: “Mr. Anderson do you see this (pointing to her lifeline within the palm of her hand)?” She continued saying “in that time I want to help change China.”
- “We want to be the kind of place that attracts people who have big dreams” (Brad Anderson)
- An audience member asked “what are your customers telling you where you need to be 5 years from now?” Brad Anderson answered by saying “people feel like they are slaves of their devices. People engineering their devices engineer them to fit their needs instead of consumers needs. It isn’t a good excuse because of scale any more. Best Buy will be successful if we can enrich people’s lives by solving that complexity for the customer”.
- People want to be able to do business with companies they can trust. How do you get to a place where you are transparent so people can trust you?
- They do spots where employees tell the stories of customers they have affected
- Communications is the conscious of the organization and they were never accepted and they were a little dangerous in that they let a story go out that challenges a premise of a company. Talked about a book called the naked corporation.
- The leaders that have a tough time with it end up being the butt of the jokes.
- Sending DVDs to the stores of “Tag TV”
- Not actively measuring video effectiveness but when employees pull a corporate video that was pushed it is a sign of something that is working
What is the story of Best Buy now and how does it end?
- The center of Best Buy is its employees.
- Things that don’t have a reason to exist tend not to
- Organizations as large as Best Buy can’t grow without communications and technology that support those communications
Listening to Employees
Jennifer Rock – Director Employee Communications
Barry Johnson – Director Employee Communications
- Best Buy reduced employee discounts to save the company money and created “The Water Cooler” which is a forum for employees (54 pages of feedback). The Executives went back and changed their minds about reducing the employee discount after 5 days.
- Sent out an IOC saying “We heard you” and we made a mistake on this one and we want to hear more.
- Four types of dialog (note: the more complex the change the more active you need the dialog to be)
- Measurement – “Rate This”
- Survey
- Annual Audit
- Poll
- Download with Feedback loop – “Get, then tell”
- Meeting w/ Q&A
- Post event survey
- Suggestion box
- Survey
- News w/email
- Communicate & Discuss – “You jump in”
- Town Hall
- The Chair
- Discussion Boards
- Social Network
- Learning Session
- News w/comments
- Listen, plan, target, discuss – “Give insights, drive strategy”
- The Chair
- Group Summit
- Survey
- Discussion Boards
- Virtual Town Hall
- Poll
- Focus Group
- Measurement – “Rate This”
- Perform a Yearly Communications Audit
- Measure how important each attribute it is to you and how well you are doing in each attribute
- Strategies & Values
- Managers as Communicators
- Tactical Info
- The Chair is a 1:1 feedback mechanism where there are 2 chairs in a busy traffic area with an easil with a sign asking for someone that walks by to sit down and talk.
- They have “If you were COO for the day” where employees can say what they would do if they ran the company.
- Have an Employee News site
- Used to convey tactical information to more strategic communications
- “Why Do I have to Change my “#@&$#*$(” Password? is the example they used
- Can rate every comment up or down
- No comments are anonymous except one which dealt with health care. They originally had the ability to make each anonymous but the community told them they wanted it turned off so they listened.
- Water Cooler
- is the online discussion board tool at Best Buy and the number one way they listen to employees within the walls of Best Buy. Not pretty, highly functional, uses open source tools.
- Main categories
- My Company
- My Location
- My Department
- My Groups
- 233 visitors in the last hour to the site when she took the screenshot
- 1,130,574 posts to date and 64,537 topics
- Main categories
- is the online discussion board tool at Best Buy and the number one way they listen to employees within the walls of Best Buy. Not pretty, highly functional, uses open source tools.
Deanna says:
I want to thank you for taking time to read this complaint. I dont know who is your general manager, was told his name was Adam, he is the biggest joke I have ever seen. All employes hate him, there was no teamwork, I watched standing at the side observing. All I saw managers do was walking around, turn down opportunity to help customers stated they were busy but would try to get someone. I ran a large store at one time and would never have put up with the actions of this at all. My General managers never asked anything they themselves wouldnt do. Gone is team work in your store. No wonder you are having mangers leaving. It makes you look bad because you are condoning this man Adam’s actions. I think it is time to ask your supervisiors and workers what they think would help since they are with the consumer the most. If you want to turn the store around you have to have a manager your staff will work for and look up too. Obivious it isnt Adam or you would still have the last 2 managers still there. I hope this has been ensightful, and helps. By the way your Jim Corbin was very enformative as was the other boy Bryant. Those are the kinds of employes you should be proud of. Please condsider removing the GM as I saw so many mistakes and see your store spiralling down because of his lack of knowledge. Just one corporate person to another. Thank you. Dee
maya.richardson29@yahoo.com says:
On Friday, October 14, 2011 I went to the store to pick up my pre-ordered iphone 4 with Sprint The young lady Jasime helped me the best she could, but then there was a young man by the name of B.J that rushed things in an abrupt manner and all I can say is I have a phone now that I did not want, I rushed to pay for phone just so I could hurry up and leave after begin there 1 hour and 47 minutes. The mobile department was ran EXTREMELY POOR had no organization at ALL. I could not properly ask questions to really decide on if I want the iphone 4 with Sprint or just the motorola photon with Sprint after leaving the store and going back to work I hate the phone and will return it today soon as I get off. Once I made it back to work I called the store location store # 572 and held on for 2 HOURS and no one ever picked up the phone not once to say I’ll be right with you or even to ask what I was calling for. 2 HOURS of me sitting at work with my work phone on speaker waiting for a rep to pick up, but no one ever picked up at all to say anything they picked up the line and hung up. I called back again and held and the same thing.
After work on Friday, October 14, 2011, I later went into the same Best Buy location to return my previous purchase of the iphone and I exchanged it out for the Motorola Photon. At that time I also had to return the outter box that I had purchased for the phone. The guy that was helping me was great. He also switched my numbers for me by assigning them to each line.
On Wednesday, October 19, 2011, I was finally contact by a Ms. Lakeisha Craft that works at the Best Buy location I went to. I explained what happened to Ms. Craft and she apologized to me for the service. She seemed very heart felt and sincere.
On Wednesday, October 26, 2011 I had an emergency going on and only had my work phone with me and when I went to use the phone I could not. It tells me that the phone is not activated itself. I was stuck without a phone and had to rely on someone passing by to ask them if I could use their phone to get in contact with my doctor’s office. So as of today 10/28/2011 I had not been able to make or receive calls on my phone at all. But yet, my cell phone provider will not want to hear that. I feel cheated and that Best Buy should be responsible. Don’t when you purchase a phone or do anything changes on a phone or account the sales person should make test calls and test the product out to make sure it is working probably?
I will be contacting the BBB and my local news station to inform them of the HORRIBLE situation. I would truly hate to contact legal reps, but if that’s what I must do to get people to hear my story and to assure this don’t happen to someone else I will.
Maya T. Richardson
(850) 358-1248
Eugene Elcik says:
Not satisfied customer: I purchase a HP computer Model QW699AA#AB SKU 4672416, Serial MXX21301D7, Purchased 05/29/2012. This item me trouble from day-one. Because of cancer issues I was not able to return or exchange my computer within your exchange or return time limit. When I was able to return to your Topsham, Maine Store; your store charged me $100 to back up the contents of the computer, they wanted to add another $199 for further service. That service fee adds up to 64% of the original cost of the computer. That’s a rip-off. I will not be doing business with your in the future.