Maria Bartiromo of Business Week interviewed with Home Depot's CEO, Bob Nardelli and asks him this question:
The customer-friendly culture that was once a hallmark of Home Dept seems to have deteriorated on your watch. Has cutting costs at the expense of customer service backfired?
Nardelli answered, "I think when you are in retail, you wake up every morning focused on customer service. We are blessed to be No. 1 in home improvement. We can never rest on our laurels. We recognize that every day you have to improve every aspect of retail. We have demonstrated that by taking our average ticket from $38 to $60. We are responding to the customer. We are continuing with self-checkout to reduce lines on the floor. We will spend $600 million this year on training for hourly associates. We have added signage, points of purchase. The stores are brighter, cleaner, and more navigable."
I was just in Home Depot today and didn't notice any big difference except that yes, there are more self-checkout lines. However, everybody was still standing in the regular lines.
Has anybody else noticed a difference?
I was working with one of their major competitors not too long ago and found that they were thrilled with Home Depot's overall lapses.
In some of their stores it was literally staggering. Not only in the checkout lines, but when we checked it out, there were places where people would literally have to climb over empty pallets left laying around the floor.
It seems they think that they can put up a big box and let things go.
Maybe Jack Welch did see a reason for not choosing Nardelli to lead GE!
Posted by: Gary Bourgeault (managersrealm.com) | July 20, 2006 1:35 AM | Permalink to Comment