Best Buy President and CEO Hubert Joly knows that customer experience is the great differentiator in the retail marketplace today. He has discussed it many times and during the company’s first-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday that point was driven home emphatically.
“As we invest, we will keep the obsessive focus on the customer experience that forms the core of our strategy,” Joly said, according to Seeking Alpha. “We operate in a retail world where good service is expected, therefore, we have to continue to identify and eliminate customer pain points as quickly as possible and in parallel, continue to focus on building uniquely engaging customer experiences which will be the basis for stronger long-term customer loyalty.”
During the first quarter, Joly noted that the company’s strategy of delivering Advice, Service, and Convenience at Competitive Prices continued to resonate with customers.
“While merchandising, marketing and operational execution were the tactical drivers of our better-than-expected first quarter financial results, strategically, we believe the cumulative impact of the progress we have made to improve our multichannel customer experience is what has allowed us to consistently outperform the market,” he explained. “We have made real progress and it is showing in our results.”
Company investments related to customer experience are imperative to driving future growth, he said.
“Today, we interact with customers in three distinct and complementary channels: Online, in-store, and in-home,” Joly said. “We believe our ability to do this, particularly in-home, is a strategic competitive advantage that with these investments will further differentiate Best Buy from the competition and allow us to deliver uniquely personalized experience to our customers where, when, and how they want to be served. In fact, in the first quarter, we saw early progress in improving our Net Promoter Score in appliance delivery and installation.”
Best Buy also launched an improved version of its multichannel gift center to deliver a better customer experience by significantly expanding the curated products to include more price points and more occasions, Joly said. This was accomplished by supporting both Canada-based events like holidays, as well as using Best Buy’s Athena customer database to capitalize on other key events, such as birthdays and anniversaries.