“Sorry, we don’t carry it!”
Oh my does this ever bring back memories. Remember when the Tablet PC first came out in retail? None of the sales staff had any idea what it was, and those who did had no idea how to demo it. It was just positioned in conversations as an expensive notebook PC, with no compelling reason to pay extra for it.
As we posted the other day, the Samsung Q1 Ultra-Mobile PC is now available at Fry’s stores nationwide. We had a roving reporter actually snap a few shots of it in a Fry’s store, and were disappointed to see it displayed under a sign designating it as a “notebook” PC. Well, the guys over at Only UMPC had an interesting experience at Fry’s as well:
“Samsung should have gone for a launch training(of some sort) to all the Fry’s Stores. I don’t want to blame Fry’s or anything. I wanted to pick up a Samsung Q1 from Fry’s Exlectronics. When I asked the Mobile Section Manager – “Hey, I’m lookin for the Samsung Q1 UMPC – Do you kow where i can find ‘em?” he goes “UMPC? Sorry we don’t carry it.
It took me few minutes to explain to him that all the 32 Fry’s Stores was to have this according to Samsung and had to explain how the device looks like and explain it in detail; then he goes “Oh! that small computer thing without a Keyboard! Yes it’s over there!”
Sigh ….. How is it that this same mistake gets repeated over and over. I understand that the typical sales person in these stores is not a high paid and greatly qualified individual most of the time (although I have had some great ones in my day). The issue here is that you cannot put a $1,000 plus tech item in a retail environment without giving some kind of training to those who will attempt to sell them. I realize that the training is an investment, but how much is it going to cost them if they do not manage to sell these things? So you produce a training DVD, and require that the retail outlet make their staff view it, is that an exorbitant expense? In a 30 minute video, I could get tech oriented people excited about this thing, and that would translate into them passing the excitement on. Sorry — I just don’t think it is that complicated, yet they make the same mistake again and again. I am not naive to the fact that Fry’s has a gazillion devices and that they cannot afford the time to train their staff on them all, but a new platform like this warrants it. My son works for Circuit City, and he spent his first 3 or 4 days on the job viewing video after video of tech stuff to get a handle on terminology, etc. Applause, applause to Circuit City.
Or hire me — I’ll go to the Fry’s stores and educate these guys. It would be a blast.
Read the whole painful experience that Only UMPC had here.
Source: Only UMPC
