As part of a small company, I understand the opportunities and challenges that lie in customer relations. On your email issue:

- every obstacle is an opportunity. For one, most people won’t read the email. If you guys did your job well, you can see how many people actually opened it (which I’m guessing is in the 10% tops). The good thing is: you got their attention. Why not use it for a special promotion? Hi, we made a mistake. But we value your business, so we’re offering XXX. Refer a friend and you get XX and they get XX. A “redemption” redemption code if you will.

- take corrective measures. There seems to be a problem with the sanity check process for emailing. Add a barrier before anyone can hit the “click” button (like special authorization codes from managers for emails sent to over 1 million users?)

On a side note…. I’ve had other bad CS experience with BB myself…
I went to Best Buy to buy a DDR combo pad + video game. But since it was my very first purchase after I bought the Xbox 360, I didn’t know that if you open a game – any game – including combos with hardware, if you open it, that’s it. No returns. The salesperson I talked to in the isle about the DDR didn’t know the songs that were included, and didn’t tell me about the return policy. The cashier didn’t tell me about the return policy.

I’m not trying to simply state a CS issue like millions of others you have daily: I’m saying that trust comes up front as well as after the fact. $90 out of my pocket later, Best Buy has lost my trust forever (I resold the combo at a loss on Craigslist because I really DID NOT want it). And unfortunately for you, the competition with other brick and mortar as well as with etailers is fierce.

Good luck!

Caroline

I think a survey to those consumers who got the email asking how the program could be improved is a great idea. I think we will go ahead with that idea.

Thanks for the response. If it’s cool with you I may drop a comment or two here to update you periodically with what we’re doing as far as new creative ways to engage potential talent. So often it seems recruiting works in a vacuum and the rest of the enterprise is unaware of what we’re doing, when some things we’re working on have potential impact to the brand.

Thanks also for the response.

Cheers,

Josh

So, yes, I see your point and agree with it. And the idea of using our advertising as a means to connect with employees and consumers is a good one that I hope we make some progress on this year.

following your request to expand on my employment brand=consumer brand. Hope this is an ok spot for it. In a way it relates to your post above.

This topic is worthy of a conversation but I’ll do my best to represent my point(s) here.

1. Everyone we interact with as candidates for our jobs (whether hired or not) has an image of Best Buy in their mind.
2. The ‘candidate experience’ we provide them impacts their impressions of us overall. I know people who were pissed about their candidate experience and subsequently bought their plasma tv at Circuit City.
3. Currently we have separate budgets, resources, and headcount for communicating the consumer brand and the employment brand and little connection between the two parties unless initiated by an individual.
4. A job opportunity is not so different than a product. Except that its more personal, emotional, and therefore potentially more powerful for swaying buying decisions and evangelism or anti-evangelism.
5. There are a lot of eyeballs that come through the career site. Eyeballs looking for a closer connection to our company, brand, and culture.
6. We’re pretty good at treating our internal people well, but how about our potential internal people?
7. Do that well, and distinctly and you’ll never have to pay an agency fee, job board posting again, or referral fee, again. (see Google, Industrial Light and Magic)

I have many more points, but I’m sure you get it as does Crispin. (so glad we’re with them) ask them about the Google Billboard for recruiting.

The gist is we have pitifully light resources for employment branding, when that, done well, I predict would have a huge impact on your bottom line and street cred and smooth the bumps in the coming “War for Talent” that people like to talk about.

I have lots of ideas for how to do this if you’re interested. Some I’m working on right now, others we haven’t started yet.

Cheers,

Josh

PS – Kudos on blogging, honesty and transparency.

To me, the core issue is that this is about relationships and that’s the metaphor for gauging the response. In real life, sometimes saying “oops” seems to be enough, sometimes its not and its up to someone’s gut to give them some guidance.

For this instance, feels like having your spouse see a gift you got for someone else and mistakenly think its for them. Sorry is helpful but probably not enough. You got people’s hopes up and then basically ‘dissed” them by saying ah, actually you’re not that special and the gift isn’t for you. Feels bad no matter how you spin it, even if it was just a little gift.

If this happened to me at home, I’d buy my wife a little something a couple days later and tell her how much she meant to me, feels like you should treat customers the same. This was an honest mistake and people understand mistakes so no need to go overboard. A $5 bonus cert AND an assurance from BBY that they truly value ALL their customers and hope they visit soon so BBY can have a chance to do right by them and continue to earn their trust- that would take the sting away a little if I just found out I wasn’t really invited to the party.

In the grand scheme of things, its the thought that counts. If people use the cert, great. They feel good and BBY gets a store visit. if they don’t, many will probably appreciate and potentially remember the gesture. They probably won’t remember anything about the “we’re sorry” note except that they were dissapointed.