To be fair, it seems unreasonable to expect a detailed breakdown on cooling and the type of fan in the GPU after you specifically told her you weren't tech-savvy.
Same thoughts, More than enough information about things will likely scare the buyer and make them feel confused. Planting unwanted doubts about the purchase.
That's what I was thinking. But I guess you could say that it could have been a good teaching moment but perhaps the phone people have time limitations and she didn't want to open a new can of worms.
All things considered, I think that first girl did a great job recommending the computer. I would say it's safe to assume that if you're going to be getting a computer with a budget of 2,000 that you also have spent some money on your monitor(s) as well, so I wouldn't fault her too much for not asking about resolution or anything about your monitor. I'm actually fairly surprised about how good that transaction was for the phone call, gold star.
I think she did a great job too. I know Kyle mentioned she could have mentioned more about thermals and a few other things, but considering he told her he wasn't very 'techy' I think it's good she didn't. For someone getting into PCs mentioning all this extra information can overwhelm people and making it harder to decide without taking an absorbent amount of time explaining everything
@@Shadow-us4oq Agreed, that was something my missus pointed out. A non-techie person won't know what a blower style card is and more often than not, you can end up overwhelming someone by putting another possible obstacle in their way. They do the job and that's exactly what a non-techie person wants.
@@EvoBeard Agreed. My mom is not a techie, while my dad and I are, so we geek out over the details and specs of stuff, but my mom, if we get into the weeds of tech talk, that will overwhelm her and confuse her. But if we keep it super basic, like “this computer has good performance but bad thermals.” Or “This laptop is thinner but loses out on performance” or talk about refresh rate and stuff like that, she gets it. However, when I get into nitty gritty details, that’s like speaking a foreign language. She’s explained it as exactly a foreign language, where she can understand conversations going on, and gets the gist of what’s being said, but the nuanced stuff is confusing and she understands the language but can’t speak it. I think that’s a good way of putting it for techie vs non techie.
Ok, as someone who worked retail for 6 years, if you come in and say 'I dont know anything about anything,' I'm not going to start spouting off terms like resolution and blower cooler. Most of the people I encountered would immediately gloss over at the mere mention of those words. Most people buying a pre built at Best Buy just want to play X game and have it not look and run like shit. And most people who have a 'budget' actually don't, and when you start quoting them items at that budget, they say 'wow it's so expensive' and ask for cheaper options. Retail trains you to treat people like idiots, most of them won't hear a damn thing you say, they'll hear a price and that's it. Although that first in store guy, holy hell. There's no hope for some people.
RenegadePandaZ That's funny. I've been telling my friends for years that wait-staff and clerks never listen to what you say. I'll order a dish on the menu but ask for something to be changed (no onions etc). They smile, say yes and they always, ALWAYS bring it the way they do for everyone else. It's the clerks and wait-staff that are the idiots often. Not all of course. You just didn't care about the customer. You were just punching a clock. I'm thinking that retail was lucky you finally changed careers.
@@williampotter2098 What? You're describing an entirely different situation. People being sensible and conversing with me is one thing, but when people admittedly don't understand something yet claim they do, but then tell me to 'put it in simple terms' or just cut me off is another. Not every customer is this way, but many were. Rude to me because I try to explain, then proceed to not listen and ignore everything I said.
@@williampotter2098 Conversely, saying "I don't understand this' and getting upset when those helping don't use technical terms or dig into the reasons why x is better than y without any prompting or reason to do so is silly. People want you to help them using your expertise, they want a product, not an explanation.
@@williampotter2098 Also, I hope you called the wait staff on that and got your food remade, because in food service especially, subs are no joke, that's bordering on irresponsible. Food sensitivity, allergies, cultural norms, etc., they don't know why you asked for it that way, and they have no right to deny a simple request, or at the very least they should say 'no substitutions' up front.
So one big thing we were trained on is not to confuse the customer, saying you weren’t tech savvy put limitations on what we should let you know without confusion. But overall Best Buy has such a good work culture that people like being friendly and enjoy going to work. That’s why Best Buy is one of the only major nationwide brick and mortar stores. It’s because they care about the employee just as much as the customer.
@@meowemoeowmeowmeoeowmeoemeow if you are interested in it then why not. as long as you can show up to your shifts and follow instructions you should be fine. first job will come eventually so don't sweat it if you don't hear back from some places. good luck!
You are very lucky to work in a good one, I have had nothing but trouble out of Best Buy to the point of me being done with them after giving them a few extra chances. You can never get somebody when you call them, I've had one tell me I literally didn't know what I was talking about when it came to the extended warranty despite the terms clearly stating one thing and he tried telling me something completely different and even called me a stupid piece of sh**. I recently had trouble with them telling me one thing and I went back in to clear things up and the manager wouldn't even give me a chance to explain as he kept talking over me getting louder and louder telling me he knew what his employee said when I was trying to clear up what I was told and the manager called me a liar. I've had one or two good experiences with Best Buy, but way too many bad ones with employees being rude, not knowing what they are doing to the point of causing me a lot of grief, and a manager calling me a liar and refusing to even listen to what I was even trying to ask.
I don’t know. I went into a store a couple weeks ago and said I had a budget of $1200. I told them I was pricing out parts to build it myself (this should identify me as somebody who is tech savvy). So the sales rep is helping me price out parts. PSU: Corsair 650 ($80) GPU: RTX 3060 ($295) CPU: R5 5600X ($160) Mobo: MSI B550 Tomahawk ($170) RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2x16GB at 3600Mhz ($90) Storage: Crucial P3 nvme 2TB ($90) Case: Corsair 4000 RGB ($140) OS $100 So that puts me at 1125, right under budget. She then tells me “But with that case you need about nine fans to keep everything cool. And we only sell them in 3 packs. So at “$70 per pack, that’s another $210. You’re almost at $1400 already, it might be smarter to just go for the prebuilt Corsair at $1700.” So she first suggested I needed NINE FUCKING FANS for a mid tower atx case. Then she suggested I blow past my budget by $500 for the same cpu, less storage space, less ram, and a 3060ti instead of the 3060, stating “the prebuilt will run circles around your intended build all day.” Like, yes, the ti will put out more frames, but not for a difference of $500. I was so upset by the dishonesty that I left and ordered on Amazon. Actually got a 750w psu for the same price, and shaved off enough cost from the other parts that I added a Thermaltake Peerless Assassin cpu cooler, and still came in at a couple dollars less. Nine fucking fans my ass.
There's nothing wrong with teaching a customer. It makes you a more reliable, trustworthy salesperson, as he explains in the video. Part of customer support training is learning how to explain things in a way that doesn't talk down to customers you meet them at their level and build them up.
I hate these kind of opinions because you're right but imo you missed the point too lol if you know what your talking about and an unexperienced person asks for help you give it and lack of information vs to much information is a fine line. that person needing help implies you need to teach them a few things without going overboard and overwhelm them with to much explanation. what it comes down to is, best buy is a tech store, they should know tech or they shouldn't have been hired. that falls to the hiring management of the company. imo, only experienced people should be responsible in hiring or the staff will be giving bad business and giving some grandma a prebuilt with 5950x and 3090 when their grandkid plays fortnite or minecraft.
It's a Best Buy line. He's playing the part of someone who doesn't even know what CPU/GPU he needs, and he thinks they should explain blower style fans to him and talk about thermal performance. He's bringing up ridiculous crap just for the hell of it.
@@xkingluke5688 The problem is Kyle knows what he is looking for. From the perspective of a clueless buyer, explaining DLSS and other more "tech savvy" things, will just intimidate the customer. They know their budget and they know what they want to play and explaining everything isn't really necessary for someone who obviously doesn't care and just wants a PC. The worst thing that can happen is when someone tries too hard to look like they know what they are talking about and end up giving you poor information. I have had that happen as every time I walk into Best Buy I ask questions I know the answers too and catch them out all the time.
As a former BestBuy employee I would like to point out, depending on your area, these people are teens in college or just people looking for a job with retail experience. They are pushed to attach things to sales and offer credit cards (at least while I was there back in 2015ish). They are not trained on tech like you would expect from a micro center.
i’m 17 and i work at best buy but this is true. i love working at best buy but there’s so much to learn and even do at the beginning of working that it’s better to learn more as you go.
I work at Best Buy and this is semi true so many of my fucking coworkers are dumb it hurts my brain but people need jobs and the experience so it’s just something people gotta accept is people aren’t perfect and know every little detail about technology. That’s what google is made for if someone asks me something I don’t know I just google it.
Usually Geek Squad employees know what they’re talking about. However, I do know a lot of tech enthusiasts that work at the BBY sales team in my college town
To be fair, the second in-store guy you talked to was about as good as you get from someone being paid pretty much minimum wage. I think you can't expect much when most managers don't hire based on technical knowledge but rather personality and customer service. I worked at BestBuy and I was by far the most knowledgeable about PCs and other technology and I was stuck as a cashier because I wasn't as great at actually selling the products as my coworkers.
I worked in the store for years, now I do home theater installs. I would say 90% of the other employees didn't know as much as me and 60% didn't know anything but were decent at BSing.
I worked for bby and they make 15hr now at my store I helped train the computer department bc I had it experience some stores are definitely better then this interaction I love Bby I work on the Corp side now
I applied to Best Buy’s Geek Squad like 4 times when trying to start my IT career and they rejected me due to not having sales experience........ They definitely don’t hire based on expertise.
@@geeked_up you do know that every store is different right its up to the GM or asm they might not have liked you experience does not mean shit if you don’t have people skills
Hello, I worked for Best Buy from Nov 2019 - Sep 2021. It was primarily in the computer department, being a seasonal hire. There was so little training in the actual products themselves. I was not a straight PC guy at the beginning, so I struggled some with recommending certain gaming PCs and components intially. Overtime, with growing personal intrest in the products, I became much more capable at it. Actually, quite very good, to the point where I would get those customers. Unfortuatly, the company is much more focused on selling "memberships" (Credit Cards, Total Tech), than training tech experts with the customer's best intrest in mind.
@@anthonywhite2642 They’re not too bad. I’ve taken a handful of them but I’m also not a retail employee so I really can’t speak to the entire course for product-related e learnings.
I totally feel you. It's just like the "tech" stores here in Greece. Trying to sell you their own brands, which are significantly worse than the others, whereas the others are hugely overpriced. "You get what you paid for" does not apply here , if you try to buy from big stores. Local stores, e-stores etc may be a better solution, but then , the option to pay with your credit card is limited. Oh well..
Facts I worked there for a little over 6 months before I finally called it quits. We were the top store in our market and they kept trying to push us to get out those memberships instead of taking care of our customers.
I sent my old man to my local best buy once and told him to ask them for a low profile GPU to fit in his case. They sent him back with a full-sized card. I opened the box thinking there must be a different bracket inside that's low profile, there wasn't. So we boxed it back up and I went over with him. They refused to take it back because it was opened. I had to contact their corporate office and spend 3 days before their tech manager got back to me and agreed to accept the return. He told me my old mans mistake was asking his employees, because only the "geek squad" people would know what a low profile GPU is. My response was if those are the only employees who would know what it is, why are other employees working that department?
@@ianlyne4417 this was probably 7 or 8 years ago now, but their policy at the time was absolutely no returns of opened PC parts, even if they weren't ever installed. I haven't shopped with them since.
I mean are you surprised ? It's main focus to hire is retail employees. They almost NEVER hire people who know what they are talking about BECAUSE the ones hiring don't know what to look for and don't know what a low profile GPU is lol.
About two years ago I walked into a Best Buy with the intention of getting my first gaming pc. I was completely ignorant, as is arguably observable in my decision to walk into Best Buy looking for a gaming pc (I've learned A LOT in the past two years, thanks techtubers! lol). I feel like I received excellent advice, maybe even the best advice concerning a gaming pc anyone has ever gotten from a Best Buy employee - the young gentleman recommended about a one hour road trip to the nearest Micro Center. I followed his advice and that's the story about how I learned about Micro Center, a place in which I now willingly spend entirely too much money.
I worked for geeksquad/BestBuy for a long time and I can tell you there are people on the sales floor who definitely don’t know anything about technology. I will say that there are guys/gals at least in my store who did know about Computers and such. Unfortunately a lot of the time management will put someone in a roll they’re not intellectually qualified for only because we need the manpower or because they’re good customer service people instead of experts.
Was like that for me at a major electronics retailer here in Australia. When I started, the business model was just about selling the right item to a customer, commissions were more product based, add-ons were a bonus. I had the product knowledge and it worked well for me. It slowly morphed into an add-ons focus type model, where selling services like extended warranties, product insurance, Apple Care, anti-virus and accessories like laptop bags, peripherals and dongles. I had mixed results, I did poorly using the suggested selling techniques where you technically don't lie to the customer, still had core product sales, but my commission suffered, and KPIs were no longer just about $$ value. I did good when straight out lying to customers, suggesting cheaper products so that they could afford that anti-virus and accessories in order to still get a reasonable commission, but that didnt sit right with me. I eventually moved to back of house customer service role, before changing companies, but the people management put in that role were more about sales numbers of the services and accessories than customer saisfaction with the core product. I noticed customers coming back complaining that what they bought was slow, unsuitable etc, some were because they were tight or had a small budget, but a lot were because they wasted their budget on the add-ons.
I currently work for geeksquad/bestbuy and can totally verify this. A good chunk of the time, the sales team is learning while teaching others. There's no training on product knowledge so a lot of employees (first guy in-store) fumble around to learn on the job from the more experienced or knowledgeable staff (the second guy in-store) and that can usually leave the experienced workers very overworked. Probably why the first guy didn't jump to grab another employee.
As a lot of the other comments are saying if you say you're not familiar with electronics we are not going to go past the surface level of details with you. Going into fine details would just confuse them. You underestimate just how technically stunted the vast majority of people who shop at best buy are.
I've done this at Microcenter... my wife quoted ron swanson and laughed. Especially when it's young sales staff that clearly don't know PC tech world as much as us enthusiasts. But that's the other aisles like monitors/peripherals/etc. The DIY staff is usually on point about tech knowledge and 80% of their diy section staffers are PC enthusiasts also with their own custom liquid cooled rigs with current products so they could speak from experience about cpus/gpus/list goes on for parts LOL. Last thing you want to do is be at a Lamborghini store buying a Lamborghini, and the sales staff don't even own one.
I’m an engineer at a large tech company that sells hardware at best buy. It’s really weird feeling to see products that I helped build be sold in real life and even weirder to watch the store staff explain to me what the product does.
@@matthewgarber5517 I used to be on the sales floor at best buy near a Corning office. We regularly get engineers coming into our store during their lunch break or after their shift. They often poked around whatever products had the latest Gorilla Glass, or Gorilla Glass in a product that doesn't often have it. We also are close to some Commscope (they own ruckus) locations and they poke around routers a bunch too. Now I work GS, but I always keep an eye out for Corning/CS employee badges. they have a wealth of relevant knowledge and if you get an engineer they love to talk shop.
Worked at Best Buy/Geek Squad, that first guy in the store probably worked in another department and was hoping to stumble into a easy sale that would count for a few hours of his normal goal. Also, almost anything the employees know is from personal research or what they have learned by reading the boxes at work over time lol.
Huh? Idk when you worked at best buy but that's not a thing nowadays. Nobody is looking to make sales at best buy, we're paid only by the hour. And reaching any sort of "sales goal" takes 0 effort, if you literally just show up to work, people will buy. I work at best buy in Florida so idk how it is in other places.
@@masift1494 about 5 years ago. Our goals were set so only 1 or 2 people in the department could ever hit them at once. If you didn't hit them your hours were lowered too. Basically it created a commission sales environment without the pay lol.
To be fair, the first associate that you interacted with In-person did say he was new to he store. That may mean he's new to working at Best Buy or that specific location. He may not be as knowledgeable yet.
As an ex-best buy employee I feel like people expect too much, in terms of knowledge, from a Best Buy employee. The management focuses on customer service more than product knowledge. Anytime you get a really knowledgeable employee it’s really just because they have genuine interest in the technology and go the extra mile to know about it. When you work there you find more employees like the first guy in the store. I remember trying to train people that didn’t care and they all sounded like that first in-store employee. Point is you literally gotta hope you get someone that is the “expert” which is a term every employee there hates
My thought exactly. I have asked customers simpler questions before, like whether they want a laptop or desktop computer, and they didn't even know the difference.
definitely. I'd helped some non tech-savvy computer user before. Some of em complaining why their computer won't turn on, when they're not even switched on the power on wall-plug....SMH. And we expect em to know stuff like their monitor size? let alone refresh rate, resolution etc
Their recommendations are consistent, cos the only high-end system for maxing out your budget, is this ROG system. And if you say upfront that you're not tech friendly person, why would she explain RTX to you? On the other hand, I would be suspicious, if somebody told me "I got a 1440p monitor" and then asking me what to buy. In 99.9% of the cases, the non tech friendly persons, don't know what monitor they have (if they have one) or in most cases ,they have old 720p up to 1080p (at best) monitors. Having a 1440p monitor and not knowing what parts to get, almost never happens. The video is informative and represents more than half of the tech stores' employees out there. There are a few times that employees surprised me. I've done what you've done today, just not filmed it :p
you are right... it's easy to be uniform when there is 1 option that stands out above the others.... try next time to research ahead of time so you can set a limit of 1900 or 1800 instead so they can't chose the easy path..
I disagree with your point about monitor resolution. Many people bought pre-built machines in the past with monitors and have no idea what that monitor is or what components should be paired with it. I worked with a friend a couple months back who was having performance issues. Come to find out he's been using an alienware with a 2080 ti. His actual issue is irrelevant but while troubleshooting I found he didn't even have his display plugged into the GPU. It was plugged into the motherboard. He knew he had at least a 1440p 155 hz monitor but his machine was set to 1080p 60 hz. Unless proven otherwise it's better to assume users are ignorant of the tech and explain how things work.
Your exception is worse than any other exceptions (that's why I don't say 100% of the people) someone could expect :p Owning a beast, but don't know how to use it. It's bad.
Lol, same. Had to replace my aio, and added some more fans and did a repaste at the same time. Had to talk to 4 employees to learn that the fan splitters on the site were not in store, despite the website saying they were, because nobody knew what they were. They also had no clue what a Wi-Fi card was when I went to get one of those. I gave them the item number, and showed the website saying they had it, and they were clueless. I eventually asked the geek squad, who immediately looked it up and said no.
The graphics cards on these systems, unless otherwise noted, will include whatever 3080 then can source at the time of manufacture and not necessarily the exact one pictured when they first started selling this model probably a year ago. I bought a pc with a 3080 in it fro, Ibuypower at the end of last year and they specifically said that it would be whatever 3080 they could get their hands on at the time of assembling it.
Yeah I was gonna say, if I were the sales rep, I would definitely not commit 100% to what is seen in the pictures unless there were exact details in the description. And even then I would hesitate to be 100% on specifics like that. Because it absolutely could vary. So to call that out twice just based on the picture, I think he's definitely off on that and perhaps a bit out of touch with what you might actually get in a system like this.
That is on the SI 100%. They source different comparable GPUs and even memory all of the time. There are times when they may have a bit more inventory of one brand and will guarantee a particular model but a lot of times it's just a random or in house GPU.
I have so many issues with this video. For one a "noob" shopper wouldn't have any idea about resolution. Having worked in electronics retail youl be surprised people are about tech. People have bad time plugging cables in. As a gamer and tech enthusiast i still won't know which camp all the games out there are optimised for without looking that up. You can't expect to go in as a noob and answer technical questions.
Bruh Cyberpunk, RDR2, and Control are all very well known intense games tho. I do think he might have been a little picky about them, but BitWit is like that. If something isn’t absolutely PERFECT, he’s gonna point that out. He’s not complaining, just saying how it could be better
I used to work in store for geek squad and there were times that people would walk in wanting something as simple as ram or a SSD installed. I would take them to the side and explain to them how easy it is and how quick it can get done before charging them damn near $100 just to do it. People are extremely intimidated by computers so i get it, but ive shown several customers how to install their own parts just to help them out in the future. It varies depending on the state and the store but everyone at best buy that ive worked with so far have been great and care about the customers they interact with.
That’s not quite true.Anyone that uses YT understands resolution and knows that 1080p isn’t as good as 1440p and that 2160p/4K beats all of those.They may not get the technical aspect of all that but most people do have a basic understanding.
Having worked there for 7 years in the Geek Squad, I can 1000% tell you that the people they hire are NOT computer people at all regardless of what they say. The "consultation agents" are literally just glorified service writers told to take down the issue and push the expensive "all inclusive" tech plans that are about as useful as the cold call "extended car warranties". Yes, they are calling to ask you about your cars extended warranty. The Advanced Repair Agents are the people most likely to know anything computer related, however it's based on store by store basis. Contacting other stores for parts/tools I quickly found that maybe there was less than 1% of best buy employees who had any real knowledge of computers outside being "just google it" techs. Embarrassing. So trust me when I say your experience would have DEFINITELY been the same regardless what store you went to. PC department people are just car sales people - sans any cut of the sale. They're only pushed to sell high ticket items, computers they have high in stock and especially End of Life units that are about to hit the stores budget due to old age/decay. Management used to get pissed off at me when I would re-cable manage desktops, maintain cooling systems (repaste, upgrade to liquid or better than OEM air cooling).. Not a good place to work at or shop at. Just my 2c.
I was a CA and i can say for my old store that we were all into building PCs and being on top of the latest tech more than our ARAs. Honestly it seemed switched around for us, there were ARAs who didnt know how to install certain components or how to even distinguish them.
I still work at Best Buy at the moment, and our precint is extremely careful at which ARAs they choose to send to the back of precint. Though I do agree, alot of the front of precint agents dont really know much of anything, and use geeksquad as a way to learn computer and the technology. I used to work geeksquad but went back to salesfloor because there were too many people bringing in crappy computer from the salespeople in PC. I do build PCs and am pretty knowledgeable able computer parts and specs, but there are people that come from other departments that try to "help" but just look for a way to get a credit card app or total tech. I honestly dont care about those, yes I do sell them to people who actually will benefit off of it, mostly large spending returning customers who spend alot on warranties or dont want to spend on installations. Other than that I try to put people with good computers, and if they can get a good deal, even better.
@@Josiuh it was about making money doing the least amount of work possible. They rather check in a simple PC setup than a full PC build because the store benifits off of those more. A PC setup can count up to 3 or 4 different services, which means more labor, which means more hours for employees. An AIO takes more time and we get less labor off of it.
@@Josiuh The store actually doesnt make much off of PC parts, but more off of accessories and services. The store will probably make 20-30 dollars off an AIO but services and Best Buy Accessories are 100% profit.
You’re being way too critical on these people. Having them explain why nvidia over AMD because of the game titles. The guy at the store isn’t wrong. You can get more than enough based on what he recommended and he’s just being honest and trying to save half a grand
I agree. All Kyles critiques about Alexa over the phone were ones from a tech savvy perspective. Most of my family is not tech savvy and all the things Kyle pointed would have went over their head if she had explained that to them. Mentioning that the card was a blower would have elicited a "what does that mean?". That's why nine times out of ten I get asked what would I get or can you come with me? Having worked for Best Buy I know (at least when I worked for them) that the big ticket departments are treated as a promotion and quite often they aren't knowledgeable about that department. I can speak for experience...they had me in appliances 🤷🏾♂️.
It’s fair criticism because hypothetically the pc could have a 3050 or a 3060, but the other pc could have a 6800 xt. It’d be stupid to say the 3050 pc is the better choice just because “it’s Nvidia lol” unless you have a hateboner against AMD. Dude got lucky that the pc had a had a 3070 in it. I’m pretty sure he would’ve still recommended a Nvidia GPU even if it’s a low tier card, which isn’t a good choice if you want performance.
@@Yeeterzz Exactly. Kyle said he was a noob and he got recommendations on that level so he could understand it. If he had revealed himself as a tech savvy he would have had a completely different conversation.
indeed. a non-tech savvy person like the "character" that he played won't give a damn about which card, what brand, what type of monitor, as long as u can played the said games with decent fps/quality and the PC are in his budget range
I think the reason his advice on the sweet spot changed was becasue the first recommendation $1400 - $1800 was regarding just wanting to game but not being bare minimum and also not being over the top. When he said a $2000 sweet spot I think his wording also indicated that if you're looking for something with a little more to offer (before mentioning 2.5K for streaming) and a PC that's gonna for sure be good. His opinion could have also been changed based off the fact that you sounded more inclined to spend most of your budget as opposed to saving money
lol, To me it seems that she asked you 2 questions, was on the website and checked the same boxes you did. So of course you both ended up with the same recommendation.
If you lead a call with "I'm not tech savvy", don't expect to be asked "techy" questions. A non-savvy person would've just answered "What is resolution? Where can I find that information?" and the call would've just been prolonged by 10-20 minutes for no reason. The lady on the phone did a really good job to be honest. The only "mistake" was that she didn't confirm whether you were looking for a laptop or desktop. But other than that she did exactly what one would do; only mention things that a non-savvy would understand. If you do another video similar to this, go with an angle like "ELI5", meaning after a sales-pitch, look at it from a 5-year olds perspective. If a 5 year old would've gotten the gist of the sale, then the seller did good. If a 5 year old would've been confused from all the different technical terms such as resolution, DLSS or other specifications, then the pitch was too technical. Majority of customers don't know what DLSS is, and would never even bother turning such feature on. They just want to open the game, press Play and start gaming. Majority won't fiddle with Graphics Settings. Majority won't be comparing whether they get 144fps or 110fps. Majority will only care about that the game actually runs on the computer, and that the gameplay is smooth (meaning not going below 60fps).
@Transistor Jump Often times you don't get a static 30 fps like on consoles, but it fluxuates a lot more, therefor it isn't smooth. However, from 60 and above, even if it fluctuates, you barely notice it. On consoles I agree, 30 fps can be smooth (smooth enough to still enjoy the games at least).
@Transistor Jump so non-savvy people vsync lock their computers? I doubt that. You can literally do anything if you know how, but that's not the point with what I wrote, now is it? The point was to go from a viewpoint of someone that is not tech-savvy, that would include locking your computer to a certain FPS just to get a stable fps. Literally; go from a consumers standpoint where the consumer would power on the computer, log in to their user, then start up a game. That's it. Not fiddle around in settings or optimizing anything, because that's when you start doing tech-savvy things.
You told the first person that you were basically computer illiterate (and acted like it during the call). Why would she expect you to know your monitor resolution? And what difference would it make anyways? You said gaming monitor, so she probably inferred a a high hz 1440p or a very high hz 1080p.
I work at Best Buy, as a salesperson if a customer asks me for advice and set a $2000 budget I also offer the highest cost item without crossing their budget.
Having worked in retail selling computers many years ago, it can be very difficult. If someone comes in saying they aren't tech savvy, asking them about what resolution they play at would often results in blank stares. And while it can't hurt to ask, staff are often under pressure to be as efficient as possible with customers. Especially if they aren't buying anything that day. It sucks, but that's the reality of the business. Provide good service as efficiently as possible and move onto someone with their wallet ready. At least these were the pressures I was under. Mind you, this was a good 15 years ago.
I know this is not the topic of this video. Great video btw. But your chassis from you white desktop pc in the background would you share which one that is?
Hey there Bitwit, you said at the beginning of the phone call that you're not too tech savy so why would she talk about the card beeing blower style or otherwise, or that it does get hotter? If you're not into that kind of stuff I think most ppl can't do much with that information! Same with Nvidia supporting the games you told her, the information about dlss and raytracing is in my opinion a nice little touch, but as a complete PC newbie I guess you won't do much with that information! Also as customer support, if the customer doesn't explict asking for it, I would focus on the main topic you asked for and that is a gaming pc which can possibly do the task best as possible, but I agree she could have asked about visuals. Otherwise great video! Great content and keep it up 🙂 PS: Please don't hate me
its videos like this that make me sad at the perception that youtubers give bestbuy. I work at bestbuy and we aren't just trained in one department, but to sell everything that is in the store. I know enough about pc's to give competent answers but knowing things like blower style cards and non-blower is something so niche that the average consumer won't care all too much. The tech youtubers like Linus and bitwit make us seem like we only recommend crap and to no matter what build your own. Again general consumers won't have the time or sometimes the knowledge to do that. While yes bestbuy has some bad practices like to push the sale no matter what, I always tell my management that I would rather the customer walk away happy and having a good experience with me and get nothing or something suitable for them, rather them thinking I forced them to buy the most expensive thing there.
That's awesome for your locals that come to your store but sadly not all BB employee's are like you. Been given way too many empty promises at my local store to even go back. And I've never even thought about asking about computers.
I don't know if I should hate or like this video, because there are some points on both sides. Kyle's expecting a little too much from employees - especially about the resolution part. I know myself, I would not really ask about the resolution, because I know there are people out there, who just want to game at the most absolute max performance. SECOND, when people are buying a pc, the focus is usually on the tower itself first, and the monitor/kbm/mouse all of that later.
The resolution is important to know if youre trying to recommend a pre-build tho. Thats the whole reason why Kyle even mentioned that he already have a monitor. Yet the seller never even touched on that. An RTX 3080 is a HUGE waste if Kyle was using 1080p 60fps monitor. a GTX 1070 is already enough for that and anything beyond a 1080 is wasted performance.
What are you talking about? asking about resolution is so easy and REALY important. plus, youre basic assumption is dangerous, max performance for everyone? that's just wrong. some people aim for casual 1080p 60fps. some for competetive 1080p 144hz, some for 240hz and even more. and some people realy don't care about that, and just want the Full-On single player experience 4k/2k 60fps all ultra settings. that matters ALOT. Hardware wise, and monitor wise. if that's your job and you're answering clients questions while trying to aim them to a product which will serve them the best according to their usage.. You should know that. it's like a salesman braggin on every spec about a premium car for customer then selling him a manual transmission car when he can only drive automatic and just assumes he can drive manual without even asking.
The 2nd Employee’s in store Recommendation on the budget was not inconsistent. He clearly specifies that for ONLY gaming $1500-1800 is good however, if you wanted to do video editing or streaming than a $2000 budget is good. As you mentioned, he overlooked FPS and resolution with his recommendation. When you pose as someone that doesn’t know much about computers and only list’s gaming they are looking to play it’s natural for people to assume you are looking for a entry-mid level gaming PC on a typical 1080p-1440p resolution not 4K. Realistically speaking, someone who is not tech savvy is not going to game on a 4K (TV maybe) monitor to begin with. I would give the 2nd employee’s advice the benefit of doubt because he was trying not to get you spend more on a gaming PC ONLY for gaming than you needed too even though he overlooked the resolution of your monitor that could affect FPS.
You're picking this apart with no good reason. He didn't look at every pc in the company before he showed you the cheaper system. Once he looked in the $2000 realm he found one and stuck with that as his recommendation. Not every employee is going to be as knowledgeable as a tech tuber.
I think he's picking it apart because there's no glaring issues. It just seems overly negative because of the video length and not trying to look like a Best Buy shill.
I haven't kept up with the market but a prebuilt from a decent company that has a 3080 in it that costs under $2000 seems like a solid deal, especially when this video was posted. The first woman did a great job imo. If you're not tech savvy it doesn't make sense to go into specifics about all the stuff. The non tech savvy customer isn't gonna want to know specifics, they just want a computer that plays games and does it well, which this computer should do in spades.
I know for a fact that in a lot of Best Buys they have made everyone become somewhat knowledgeable in every area of the store. Not to mention that if it was busy usually you just have to get who they have available.
As far as retail workers go, they did a pretty decent job at recommendations compared to other locations. As someone who has worked retail in the past (not best buy) they don't really train you to know much of anything for the department they assign you to. They kinda let you learn it on the fly which can be pretty irritating. Great video overall! Maybe working undercover at a best buy in the future would be a great video idea!
I know you wish these customer service reps asked about resolution or other stuff like that but if you are coming across not knowing some of the basics I think it will just confuse a real non techie about the specific technologies. There has been times where I try to get into this with my buddies and it becomes memory overload that they want to hold off buying it in fear of not understanding it. They want to keep you interested without scaring you off or overwhelming you with information. Imagine talking about Raytracing, refresh rates and Resolutions with your parents. That’s how the average customer is.
He said “2,000 is a sweet spot if you’re doing more than gaming” technically the best buy employee is right!! He didnt mess up, you heard wrong! 😂 2,000 or more if you’re streaming x gaming!
I use to work for Best Buy as one of my first major jobs after finishing up HS. Myself with like one other person were heavily knowledgeable in gaming and I was one of the only ones beginning the custom built route. Back than BB at least carried all parts back than akin to what Micro Center does now. I still use BB but mainly for laptop purchases, the occasional physical movie, console game purchases, Audio/Video purchases and only some computer accessories. Good piece though Kyle and seems phone support is better these days than in store..
I work at Best Buy and found this incredibly educational. Even though I know a lot of this stuff already from being a gamer, big techy and from watching tech channels regularly, I still found it helpful to consider what questions to ask and information to share with others when giving a recommendation. Sometimes shopping for yourself is different than shopping for someone else. I know what I'm looking for when building a system for my needs but I don't always think about how to "sell" that knowledge (so to speak). So thanks for this video. I personally found this to be more educational than best buys own "training" and this video could be a great tool and training exercise. That said, the lack of training in these departments is also why I think a lot of these comments and questions are a lot to ask from minimum wage workers that are thrown on the floor to sell. Price to performance is true for services as well. Just food for thought. 👍
I currently work at Best Buy, and have for quite some time. I think that overall she did relatively well. That being said, I totally agree with Bitwit. As a sales agent with them, whether OtP or In-store we are trained to ask probing questions to make an assertive pick. Great video!
Thank you Kyle. I ve been a long time viewer of your channel, through the ups and downs it's been a wild ride! Thanks you for pushing these videos out even though its been rough. Keep it up
The listing picture doesn’t tell the whole story. The pc actually comes with different variants of the 3080, usually the tuf 3080 not the blower card. You can see this if you look at the reviews of the pc there are customer photos
as a former best buy employee, I can tell you that while yes they are trained to find the wants, needs, and desires of the customer to match a product that best fits them... they are also pressured to leverage items in a certain order. In stock in your location>in stock in another location>in stock online. He knew what he had on hand and was trying to leverage you into buying it. It would get the job done at the expense of some benefits, just to make the sale. as the interaction continued, his understanding of your needs evolved and he had to adjust his tactics accordingly.
This is flawed. You're asking people who make $15/hr to know about things that are very very very niche when they are taught the very basics about computer parts. I really think this is unfair to the people in this video. Best Buy does not invest resources into making sure someone knows every detail about every computer, especially a gaming computer. You've made some good videos Kyle, but this is not one of them.
Pay doesn’t necessarily matter. If your working in the computer section of Best Buy there should be the desire to become an expert in what you do, no matter your job/pay.
I worked at Best Buy for 5 years. Had you ended up at my store and got me or a few my other coworkers for this, we woulda killed it. My store had some of the best techy people. Most of us went on to work in higher tier professional IT. Good actual techy people aren't really a thing at most stores in the last 8-9 years though.
I remember helping my friend back in 2016 or so to find a laptop for gaming and while I knew the games he would mostly play weren't demanding (Factorio mostly with maybe a hint of Warframe) I did know that at that time most of the laptops they had weren't going to work at all since most of them had 4-8 GB of RAM and since I also knew that laptops aren't good at cooling that he'd see performance drops either because of RAM limitations or overheating. After getting recommended about 5 laptops with only 4GB of RAM I looked at some of the displays they had and found one with 16 and told my friend that with the way games are going he would probably want this since both of the games he liked were going to be getting updated and that could change how the game works. To my knowledge he's still got it even though less than a year later he built a desktop that was better than mine and everyone else he knew. But because of that I would just rather suffer and not know where anything is and struggle to find things than get help at Best Buy because at least when I'm looking I don't have an NPC following me around asking me if I get to the Cloud District often. Because let's face it...of course I don't.
So I worked in retail for a few years in the fishing department. When someone says “I’m brand new and I don’t know much but want to get something to get started” you never want to overload them with detail you want to start with general questions and go from there. Now this was for fishing but my first question was price. Price point dictates what you can buy and narrow it down from there. Usually my next question is what do you want to do with it. I would say for me it takes a good 10-20 minutes to get something that really fits what the person wants. Also I didn’t make commission so I had no problem telling people “you don’t need this $400 setup when you could spend $150 and do everything you want”. It’s really hard to help someone with 0 knowledge but they both did well. I’m sure if you talked tech with them they would of talked tech back.
Having been in a retail tech sales position before, he handled it exactly as we're trained. You were forthright about not being tech-savvy; it's not that blower vs non-blower is not important but it's not a convo you have with someone who doesn't know tech. It can be very overwhelming and confusing to be told i7 this, 12th gen that, rtx, amd, nvidia, 16gb of memory, 512GB storage...we have to simplify it all for the customer in front of us. "Quick processor", "best graphics", "fast storage", "long lasting parts", etc. Whereas if you have a tech savvy customer, you go straight to specs and performance because that's what they typically care about: price to performance. It's interesting to see this interaction from a 3rd party perspective but they did well given the circumstances!
Gonna be honest, complaining about the kind of cooler you get on the GPU seems really weird to me. I'd say 99% of people don't give a fuck what of cooler is on their GPU. He's also not inconsistent, he didn't speak properly though. You asked for the £2k computer and him saying it's a sweet spot is different if you consider the amount someone is willing to pay. Wanting high end stuff? £2k might be a sweet spot for great graphics and price. But £1.5k is also a sweet spot if you want good graphics and price. You feel me?
You're right, it is weird especially since not everyone even knows how different coolers on a gpu works. strange he would even bring that up since most people are just looking for a gpu to help play their games better and not know about the physical details of the hardware involved in them.
Ok, so, look. This is just my take on the second in-store guy's recommendations. At first it sounded like he was being considerate about your wallet, thinking you might not have the most money to spend on a gaming PC, and that you probably weren't a very avid gamer and streamer, so he found what would be good enough for the most part. But then, after you gave more and more information that would indicate you might just be an actual avid gamer, and that you might be streaming as well, that's when he started offering suggestions for higher priced PC's, because it became clear that the original PC wouldn't do it anymore. Then you gave even more indication that you might want something more powerful, and that's when he decides to tell you a little about what you could expect over the $2000 mark, and saying anything under $2000 probably isn't something to go for, also bringing up upgrading RAM and stuff. In other words, not being inconsistent, but rather adjusting his recommendations according to where the conversation went, and what type of PC he figured based off of the new information given to him that you would probably want. I'd take this guy over some douche bag that either automatically tries to sell me an expensive ass PC, or the guy that recommends a shitty cheap PC that my mom wouldn't even want to use, all the while claiming that it would be more than enough for me. This guy sounds professional and honest, which is rare to find in sales people, as most sales people I have experienced tries desperately to make a sale, or treats you like an ass with no knowledge of anything, or get pissed when you tell them you know that their recommendation is shitty and you would like something better.
I feel like they both did good, you said you were a starter and not tech savvy just wanted to play games. There would be no reason for him to ask you the questions you wanted him to ask cause you wouldn't know what he was talking about anyways he did good you're picky for no reason.
You lost me 19 minutes in. 2000 dollars is *a lot* of money. It's rare to see sales representative in a store being reasonable instead of trying to max out what a person can spend. We need *more* representatives in stores with this character than the online rep that's trying to max out your budget. This is why so many people say PC gaming is expensive. There's *no way* I'm spending 2000 dollars on a PC build unless it's to make money. (Why this rep asked about streaming)
I agree. I have a great deal of respect for the guy that said you don’t NEED to spend $2000 to have a good gaming experience. There are too many people on UA-cam that think if you aren’t 1440p 144hz with ray tracing then you might as well get a playstation you silly noob
Yeah I get what he is trying to do in this video, but at this point anyone spending 2K on a computer is probably not going to Best Buy. And since the only computer they carry near that price point in the ASUS then no matter the knowledge level of the salesperson they can only recommend what they carry.
I used to work at Apple as a Technician (let the hate commence lol) but one of my favorite things, as a PC gamer, was when a customer would come in asking for a laptop that could game. Cause I’d just say “your best route is probably back out through these doors and go to Micro Center” I said it in jest obviously, but it’s true. I would always try and help people find the right stuff for them.
I hope more people do more of these secret shopper style videos. Could improve customer service overall. Then again Dell didn't improve after Linus put them on blast even though they were aware...
Companies aren't looking for people with knowledge about technology. They are looking for people with customer service experience at best. Most people. Then again, these are minimum wage call centers or floor sales job (i worked retail)
Okay, I'm sorry. I know this vid is alreay a year old, but I love it! - I always wondered if the recommendations in the store are like legit or not. Would love to see more content like this!
ive done this before but without the online part and it was interesting... i know they aren't there to actaully help people but they wanna make money but its a fun experience... i even helped someone who was waiting for someone to help them with their first build and gave them some choices but recommended ur channel before any major purchases.
I went to a best buy one time to get a mousepad and kid and dad where looking for pc parts there too. I usually mind my own business but for some reason I felt compelled to ask what they were looking for. The kid wanted to get into pc gaming and just play fortnite. I just ended up telling them to go to the nearest microcenter which was around 40 miles (tustin) because they would have better luck than best buy. I really hope that kid got to build his own pc instead of getting a pre built from best buy.
i bought my IBuyPower in the summer of 21 and it was pretty decent, for 700 dollars you kinda know what you're getting, just swap the graphics card for a RTX 1660 Super and its a solid setup
I honestly think they did fine man. Not every employee is created equal, but at the same time they are trying their best and not everyone is not going to know as much as a tech UA-camr
i worked at bestbuy in college. their screening process for which department they put you in is "what kind of products do you want to work with? ok done"
It took an hour yesterday for me to be helped in the computer section of BB. Funny thing is there was only one employee working that part and was totally overwhelmed but kept his cool and extremely professional to those unruly customers. I didn’t mind waiting because it gave me time to look around.
As someone who works in tech at a store similar to Best Buy (in Australia), we are definitely encouraged to direct customers towards staff who may be more knowledgeable about a product. However I do understand why the first guy you saw was trying to scramble some half-assed info (commission perhaps).
I've built multiple computer systems from scratch over the last few years without any issues. Some reviews of pre-built systems by other youtube channels has shown that some arrive with broken components such as the PCIE slot and loosely mounted hardware.
I feel that when he said that the sweet spot was from 1,400-1,800 that was for you personally. He mentioned again that 2000 was the sweet spot, but I think he means that from 0 to 3k+ it is the sweet spot with computer components.
its funny to point out when he says "I'm not tech savvy", and in the background you can just see his custom built PC, and his workstation behind him HAHAHAHA.
I honestly hate the question "what games do you want to play." It's a loaded question which should be followed up with "what kind of monitor do you have?" What resolution/refresh rate is the monitor? Do you intend on getting a new monitor with a higher resolution/higher refresh rate? Normally when I help someone build a PC I ask them what hardware they currently have if any that will be re-used. (If they have nothing then the cost of a keyboard, mouse, monitor, headset/speakers etc can greatly inflate the price.) What are they doing on the machine, gaming, productivity etc? What games they are playing and what resolution/refresh rate will they be aiming for? Do they prefer balanced performance/graphics or lean more towards graphical fidelity? How soon do they want/need the PC? What their target budget and max budget are? Depending on their response to these questions I may have other questions but in general this gives me a good idea of what they want.
As an employee of an auto parts store, you are definitely expecting too much of these people. Despite what people think, I don't know everything about every car.
Best Buy employee here. I can definitely say that customer service can wildly vary between stores. Even ones within the same district can have vastly differing experiences. In my area, we tend to have a lot of staff that are already tech enthusiasts and are knowledgeable about tech. Keep in mind that we do try to sell each customer the best PC for their needs (at least my store does). For patient customers (i.e. they don't need the PC today and are okay with placing an order for pickup later), it's much easier to land a good recommendation. But if it's something that they need immediately, then your mileage may vary. This was definitely a fun watch! 😄
Back in the day I worked at Best Buy, Circuit City, and Comp USA. Although it was 20 years ago, I am pretty sure not much has changed as I know with my experience at Best Buy as a customer is from time to time. Basically, getting a sales person that knows their stuff is a crapshoot. You won't find one very often. I was one, and literally any other sales man would come grab me if they had trouble with answering questions because I wouldn't steal their sale. Even when things were no longer commission based, sales figures matter to those wanting to continue working at the store. However, I will say that the vast majority of the sales reps would basically read whatever was off the info card to the customers. Also, back when I worked, there were almost never actual pre-built gaming PCs on the shelf. Every so often we'd get one, but most of the time back then there wasn't one. When I got someone asking for one, I'd tried to question the customer what they wanted, how much they had to spend, and steer them to buying as best a pre-built as we had for their budget while getting them to buy at least a video card that would work in that system as well as an upgraded PSU if needed. Not every system allowed upgrades for video cards and PSUs so I steered away from those. Before any of the service offerings were available, I would make a lot of extra cash installing those things for people on the side. I will say the vast majority of the other sales people had zero clues about computers. Most were less tech savvy than the average customer looking to buy a PC. Some of the crap I heard spewed from other sales rep mouths over the years would make anyone cringe. Worst part is if the customer was just as dumb they'd just eat up whatever tech sounding bits were being said by the equally un-informed sales rep. Also, the managers were usually the worst when it came to tech knowledge. Outside the car audio guys. Those guys in every store I went to at least knew their stuff. The rest of the sales reps in almost every other department back then were pretty bad. I would like to think that as society we have embraced more technology as a whole and the younger people working there are collectively become a little more savvy as sales reps but most of the time they are still just as knowledgeable as their average customer. I say that because I can tell the girl on the phone was reading off a card for you. She steered you to a particular item that they are trying to push in their price range cards. From my perspective as a previous rep, she did an adequate job overall still I can nitpick. She gave you a gaming PC at the tippy top of your budget as pointed out in the video without delving into alternatives. She didn't ask to many probative questions I felt which demonstrated that to me. What did surprise me is that she went for the top end PC without leaving room for all the upsell extras which is what most reps are trained to do. The training is to get what the budget is, and then pick a computer +2 peripherals + warranty and meet the budget with that. As for the first in person rep. It was about what I expected. They know what is on the cards and what is talked about in the sales meetings to push. The tend to focus on CPU over GPU when it comes to any computer. They are given a small bit of data on the products with which to push sales. Also, no sales reps like handing off their sales to other reps. They are rarely if ever going to steer you to someone else. It affects their numbers. The second guy was slightly better IMHO. Those questions are typically "canned" most of the time and reps are trained to ask them. Doesn't mean they know what the answers mean in relation to the sale usually. The second guy at least as pointed out in the video knew that the games Kyle responded with were more graphically demanding than other games. After which... he didn't even know what was in the product despite the card on the shelf he directed Kyle to. Again, typical. Lastly, the moment you mention you aren't buying today basically means most sales reps are done with you mentally. They are looking to offload you and move on to a customer willing to buy something right then.
That genuinely went better than I would have expected. Weird that the lady on the phone would ask you to look up something on the web site, which requires the computer that you haven't bought yet.
My local Best Buy is awful. The store is practically empty, their computer area is mainly laptops and barely any desktops. You has much more competent sales folks than I ever did!
To be fair, I think the reason they didn’t ask what resolution you play on is the fact that you have a set budget already. But it definitely would’ve been great if they did ask that question.
So I think they all did pretty well for it being Best Buy. I used to work tech support for a cell phone carrier and before that I worked for Walmart in electronics and the training isn't very good. I'm not sure how Best Buy is for training, but Walmart's training was non-existent on this stuff. Even tech support wasn't very good because they make you follow a guide and 90% of the people working there had no idea why certain troubleshooting steps worked or didn't work. It made it frustrating for me as an employee when I would hear people tell customers the wrong information or when customers had no clue if you were actually good at your job because reps would tell them what they wanted to hear to get them off the phone. The part that really stood out to me here was around 21:30 when he recommended you stay at $2,000 again. I get that it was confusing, but I also understand why he changed his recommendation. Before when he had mentioned the $1400-1800 mark, he had no idea there was a computer available for $2000 with a 3080 so he probably recommended a lower priced computer because he was looking out for you and didn't want you to waste $2000 on a computer with a 3060ti or something. People who know nothing about hardware will think that something is better if you pay more for it and if you buy a computer with an i5 and 3060ti for $2,000 then it's going to be better than a computer with an i7 and 3060ti at $1600, I see this a lot. So once he knew there was a computer with a 3080, an i7, and 16gb of ram, he probably said it was the best price range to encourage you not to lose out on that deal. I've done this before when helping people because the more information you give someone and the more you explain the differences, the harder it is for them to understand what your talking about and why you think something is better. It becomes overwhelming trying to teach 20 years of experience and knowledge in 20 minutes to help someone and expect them to understand everything. More questions would have been nice but I understand his reasoning for the confusion.
To be fair, it seems unreasonable to expect a detailed breakdown on cooling and the type of fan in the GPU after you specifically told her you weren't tech-savvy.
Same thoughts, More than enough information about things will likely scare the buyer and make them feel confused. Planting unwanted doubts about the purchase.
That's what I was thinking. But I guess you could say that it could have been a good teaching moment but perhaps the phone people have time limitations and she didn't want to open a new can of worms.
I was on my way to make this exact same point.
exactly. this is very true and she did great
Agree
All things considered, I think that first girl did a great job recommending the computer. I would say it's safe to assume that if you're going to be getting a computer with a budget of 2,000 that you also have spent some money on your monitor(s) as well, so I wouldn't fault her too much for not asking about resolution or anything about your monitor. I'm actually fairly surprised about how good that transaction was for the phone call, gold star.
Seriously, that’s exactly what I was thinking as well! Was quite impressed.
Twerk
I think she did a great job too. I know Kyle mentioned she could have mentioned more about thermals and a few other things, but considering he told her he wasn't very 'techy' I think it's good she didn't. For someone getting into PCs mentioning all this extra information can overwhelm people and making it harder to decide without taking an absorbent amount of time explaining everything
@@Shadow-us4oq Agreed, that was something my missus pointed out. A non-techie person won't know what a blower style card is and more often than not, you can end up overwhelming someone by putting another possible obstacle in their way.
They do the job and that's exactly what a non-techie person wants.
@@EvoBeard Agreed. My mom is not a techie, while my dad and I are, so we geek out over the details and specs of stuff, but my mom, if we get into the weeds of tech talk, that will overwhelm her and confuse her. But if we keep it super basic, like “this computer has good performance but bad thermals.” Or “This laptop is thinner but loses out on performance” or talk about refresh rate and stuff like that, she gets it. However, when I get into nitty gritty details, that’s like speaking a foreign language. She’s explained it as exactly a foreign language, where she can understand conversations going on, and gets the gist of what’s being said, but the nuanced stuff is confusing and she understands the language but can’t speak it. I think that’s a good way of putting it for techie vs non techie.
Ok, as someone who worked retail for 6 years, if you come in and say 'I dont know anything about anything,' I'm not going to start spouting off terms like resolution and blower cooler. Most of the people I encountered would immediately gloss over at the mere mention of those words. Most people buying a pre built at Best Buy just want to play X game and have it not look and run like shit. And most people who have a 'budget' actually don't, and when you start quoting them items at that budget, they say 'wow it's so expensive' and ask for cheaper options. Retail trains you to treat people like idiots, most of them won't hear a damn thing you say, they'll hear a price and that's it.
Although that first in store guy, holy hell. There's no hope for some people.
Exactly I’m gonna give you the base level terms🤣
RenegadePandaZ That's funny. I've been telling my friends for years that wait-staff and clerks never listen to what you say. I'll order a dish on the menu but ask for something to be changed (no onions etc). They smile, say yes and they always, ALWAYS bring it the way they do for everyone else. It's the clerks and wait-staff that are the idiots often. Not all of course. You just didn't care about the customer. You were just punching a clock. I'm thinking that retail was lucky you finally changed careers.
@@williampotter2098 What? You're describing an entirely different situation. People being sensible and conversing with me is one thing, but when people admittedly don't understand something yet claim they do, but then tell me to 'put it in simple terms' or just cut me off is another. Not every customer is this way, but many were. Rude to me because I try to explain, then proceed to not listen and ignore everything I said.
@@williampotter2098 Conversely, saying "I don't understand this' and getting upset when those helping don't use technical terms or dig into the reasons why x is better than y without any prompting or reason to do so is silly. People want you to help them using your expertise, they want a product, not an explanation.
@@williampotter2098 Also, I hope you called the wait staff on that and got your food remade, because in food service especially, subs are no joke, that's bordering on irresponsible. Food sensitivity, allergies, cultural norms, etc., they don't know why you asked for it that way, and they have no right to deny a simple request, or at the very least they should say 'no substitutions' up front.
So one big thing we were trained on is not to confuse the customer, saying you weren’t tech savvy put limitations on what we should let you know without confusion. But overall Best Buy has such a good work culture that people like being friendly and enjoy going to work. That’s why Best Buy is one of the only major nationwide brick and mortar stores. It’s because they care about the employee just as much as the customer.
hey, im thinking of getting a job soon. would u recommend best buy as a good place to work?
@@meowemoeowmeowmeoeowmeoemeow if you are interested in it then why not. as long as you can show up to your shifts and follow instructions you should be fine.
first job will come eventually so don't sweat it if you don't hear back from some places. good luck!
You are very lucky to work in a good one, I have had nothing but trouble out of Best Buy to the point of me being done with them after giving them a few extra chances. You can never get somebody when you call them, I've had one tell me I literally didn't know what I was talking about when it came to the extended warranty despite the terms clearly stating one thing and he tried telling me something completely different and even called me a stupid piece of sh**. I recently had trouble with them telling me one thing and I went back in to clear things up and the manager wouldn't even give me a chance to explain as he kept talking over me getting louder and louder telling me he knew what his employee said when I was trying to clear up what I was told and the manager called me a liar. I've had one or two good experiences with Best Buy, but way too many bad ones with employees being rude, not knowing what they are doing to the point of causing me a lot of grief, and a manager calling me a liar and refusing to even listen to what I was even trying to ask.
I don’t know. I went into a store a couple weeks ago and said I had a budget of $1200. I told them I was pricing out parts to build it myself (this should identify me as somebody who is tech savvy). So the sales rep is helping me price out parts.
PSU: Corsair 650 ($80)
GPU: RTX 3060 ($295)
CPU: R5 5600X ($160)
Mobo: MSI B550 Tomahawk ($170)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2x16GB at 3600Mhz ($90)
Storage: Crucial P3 nvme 2TB ($90)
Case: Corsair 4000 RGB ($140)
OS $100
So that puts me at 1125, right under budget. She then tells me “But with that case you need about nine fans to keep everything cool. And we only sell them in 3 packs. So at “$70 per pack, that’s another $210. You’re almost at $1400 already, it might be smarter to just go for the prebuilt Corsair at $1700.”
So she first suggested I needed NINE FUCKING FANS for a mid tower atx case. Then she suggested I blow past my budget by $500 for the same cpu, less storage space, less ram, and a 3060ti instead of the 3060, stating “the prebuilt will run circles around your intended build all day.” Like, yes, the ti will put out more frames, but not for a difference of $500. I was so upset by the dishonesty that I left and ordered on Amazon. Actually got a 750w psu for the same price, and shaved off enough cost from the other parts that I added a Thermaltake Peerless Assassin cpu cooler, and still came in at a couple dollars less. Nine fucking fans my ass.
If you're self proclaimed "not very tech savvy" why would she explain things you wouldn't understand.
There's nothing wrong with teaching a customer. It makes you a more reliable, trustworthy salesperson, as he explains in the video. Part of customer support training is learning how to explain things in a way that doesn't talk down to customers you meet them at their level and build them up.
I hate these kind of opinions because you're right but imo you missed the point too lol if you know what your talking about and an unexperienced person asks for help you give it and lack of information vs to much information is a fine line. that person needing help implies you need to teach them a few things without going overboard and overwhelm them with to much explanation. what it comes down to is, best buy is a tech store, they should know tech or they shouldn't have been hired. that falls to the hiring management of the company. imo, only experienced people should be responsible in hiring or the staff will be giving bad business and giving some grandma a prebuilt with 5950x and 3090 when their grandkid plays fortnite or minecraft.
It's a Best Buy line. He's playing the part of someone who doesn't even know what CPU/GPU he needs, and he thinks they should explain blower style fans to him and talk about thermal performance. He's bringing up ridiculous crap just for the hell of it.
@@xkingluke5688 The problem is Kyle knows what he is looking for. From the perspective of a clueless buyer, explaining DLSS and other more "tech savvy" things, will just intimidate the customer. They know their budget and they know what they want to play and explaining everything isn't really necessary for someone who obviously doesn't care and just wants a PC. The worst thing that can happen is when someone tries too hard to look like they know what they are talking about and end up giving you poor information. I have had that happen as every time I walk into Best Buy I ask questions I know the answers too and catch them out all the time.
@@duckpwnd Literally, this is exactly what I was thinking
As a former BestBuy employee I would like to point out, depending on your area, these people are teens in college or just people looking for a job with retail experience. They are pushed to attach things to sales and offer credit cards (at least while I was there back in 2015ish). They are not trained on tech like you would expect from a micro center.
I think the lady on the phone did pretty well.
@@BrawndoQC She sounded like she knew a bit about pc's.
i’m 17 and i work at best buy but this is true. i love working at best buy but there’s so much to learn and even do at the beginning of working that it’s better to learn more as you go.
I work at Best Buy and this is semi true so many of my fucking coworkers are dumb it hurts my brain but people need jobs and the experience so it’s just something people gotta accept is people aren’t perfect and know every little detail about technology. That’s what google is made for if someone asks me something I don’t know I just google it.
Usually Geek Squad employees know what they’re talking about. However, I do know a lot of tech enthusiasts that work at the BBY sales team in my college town
To be fair, the second in-store guy you talked to was about as good as you get from someone being paid pretty much minimum wage. I think you can't expect much when most managers don't hire based on technical knowledge but rather personality and customer service. I worked at BestBuy and I was by far the most knowledgeable about PCs and other technology and I was stuck as a cashier because I wasn't as great at actually selling the products as my coworkers.
I worked in the store for years, now I do home theater installs. I would say 90% of the other employees didn't know as much as me and 60% didn't know anything but were decent at BSing.
I worked for bby and they make 15hr now at my store I helped train the computer department bc I had it experience some stores are definitely better then this interaction I love Bby I work on the Corp side now
Yeah, I didn't like lying to customers either.
I applied to Best Buy’s Geek Squad like 4 times when trying to start my IT career and they rejected me due to not having sales experience........
They definitely don’t hire based on expertise.
@@geeked_up you do know that every store is different right its up to the GM or asm they might not have liked you experience does not mean shit if you don’t have people skills
Hello,
I worked for Best Buy from Nov 2019 - Sep 2021. It was primarily in the computer department, being a seasonal hire. There was so little training in the actual products themselves. I was not a straight PC guy at the beginning, so I struggled some with recommending certain gaming PCs and components intially. Overtime, with growing personal intrest in the products, I became much more capable at it. Actually, quite very good, to the point where I would get those customers.
Unfortuatly, the company is much more focused on selling "memberships" (Credit Cards, Total Tech), than training tech experts with the customer's best intrest in mind.
Sounds like someone skipped through their e-learnings on the Learning Network to just answer the questions at the end. ;P
@@wdkj2013 If only the e-learnings actually covered the genuine depth we could possibly provide. Haha
@@anthonywhite2642 They’re not too bad. I’ve taken a handful of them but I’m also not a retail employee so I really can’t speak to the entire course for product-related e learnings.
I totally feel you. It's just like the "tech" stores here in Greece. Trying to sell you their own brands, which are significantly worse than the others, whereas the others are hugely overpriced.
"You get what you paid for" does not apply here , if you try to buy from big stores. Local stores, e-stores etc may be a better solution, but then , the option to pay with your credit card is limited. Oh well..
Facts I worked there for a little over 6 months before I finally called it quits. We were the top store in our market and they kept trying to push us to get out those memberships instead of taking care of our customers.
I sent my old man to my local best buy once and told him to ask them for a low profile GPU to fit in his case. They sent him back with a full-sized card. I opened the box thinking there must be a different bracket inside that's low profile, there wasn't. So we boxed it back up and I went over with him. They refused to take it back because it was opened. I had to contact their corporate office and spend 3 days before their tech manager got back to me and agreed to accept the return. He told me my old mans mistake was asking his employees, because only the "geek squad" people would know what a low profile GPU is. My response was if those are the only employees who would know what it is, why are other employees working that department?
they will all so sell a pc that cant play games to some one asking for a pc to play game on
If this happens here in Hawaii, they wouldve fully refunded that no question ask. Open or not.
They have a weird system where everyone should know about everything
@@ianlyne4417 this was probably 7 or 8 years ago now, but their policy at the time was absolutely no returns of opened PC parts, even if they weren't ever installed. I haven't shopped with them since.
I mean are you surprised ? It's main focus to hire is retail employees. They almost NEVER hire people who know what they are talking about BECAUSE the ones hiring don't know what to look for and don't know what a low profile GPU is lol.
About two years ago I walked into a Best Buy with the intention of getting my first gaming pc. I was completely ignorant, as is arguably observable in my decision to walk into Best Buy looking for a gaming pc (I've learned A LOT in the past two years, thanks techtubers! lol). I feel like I received excellent advice, maybe even the best advice concerning a gaming pc anyone has ever gotten from a Best Buy employee - the young gentleman recommended about a one hour road trip to the nearest Micro Center. I followed his advice and that's the story about how I learned about Micro Center, a place in which I now willingly spend entirely too much money.
I worked for geeksquad/BestBuy for a long time and I can tell you there are people on the sales floor who definitely don’t know anything about technology. I will say that there are guys/gals at least in my store who did know about Computers and such. Unfortunately a lot of the time management will put someone in a roll they’re not intellectually qualified for only because we need the manpower or because they’re good customer service people instead of experts.
Was like that for me at a major electronics retailer here in Australia. When I started, the business model was just about selling the right item to a customer, commissions were more product based, add-ons were a bonus. I had the product knowledge and it worked well for me.
It slowly morphed into an add-ons focus type model, where selling services like extended warranties, product insurance, Apple Care, anti-virus and accessories like laptop bags, peripherals and dongles. I had mixed results, I did poorly using the suggested selling techniques where you technically don't lie to the customer, still had core product sales, but my commission suffered, and KPIs were no longer just about $$ value.
I did good when straight out lying to customers, suggesting cheaper products so that they could afford that anti-virus and accessories in order to still get a reasonable commission, but that didnt sit right with me. I eventually moved to back of house customer service role, before changing companies, but the people management put in that role were more about sales numbers of the services and accessories than customer saisfaction with the core product. I noticed customers coming back complaining that what they bought was slow, unsuitable etc, some were because they were tight or had a small budget, but a lot were because they wasted their budget on the add-ons.
Back in the 90's i was hired as a manager of the computer department at Best Buy...I only knew how to turn my pc on at that point.
dude was undershooting the price on the system in hopes to score on the warranty... lol.
Over qualified and under qualified are words that hiring managers don't understand
I currently work for geeksquad/bestbuy and can totally verify this. A good chunk of the time, the sales team is learning while teaching others. There's no training on product knowledge so a lot of employees (first guy in-store) fumble around to learn on the job from the more experienced or knowledgeable staff (the second guy in-store) and that can usually leave the experienced workers very overworked. Probably why the first guy didn't jump to grab another employee.
As a lot of the other comments are saying if you say you're not familiar with electronics we are not going to go past the surface level of details with you. Going into fine details would just confuse them. You underestimate just how technically stunted the vast majority of people who shop at best buy are.
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well said
Every time I go into Best Buy I can't help but feel like Ron Swanson walking into Home Depot
READ MY NAME!!
!!!!!!!!
Omg yeah this is relatable - "I know more than you" - LOL
I've done this at Microcenter... my wife quoted ron swanson and laughed.
Especially when it's young sales staff that clearly don't know PC tech world as much as us enthusiasts. But that's the other aisles like monitors/peripherals/etc.
The DIY staff is usually on point about tech knowledge and 80% of their diy section staffers are PC enthusiasts also with their own custom liquid cooled rigs with current products so they could speak from experience about cpus/gpus/list goes on for parts LOL.
Last thing you want to do is be at a Lamborghini store buying a Lamborghini, and the sales staff don't even own one.
I’m an engineer at a large tech company that sells hardware at best buy. It’s really weird feeling to see products that I helped build be sold in real life and even weirder to watch the store staff explain to me what the product does.
@@matthewgarber5517 I used to be on the sales floor at best buy near a Corning office. We regularly get engineers coming into our store during their lunch break or after their shift. They often poked around whatever products had the latest Gorilla Glass, or Gorilla Glass in a product that doesn't often have it. We also are close to some Commscope (they own ruckus) locations and they poke around routers a bunch too. Now I work GS, but I always keep an eye out for Corning/CS employee badges. they have a wealth of relevant knowledge and if you get an engineer they love to talk shop.
Worked at Best Buy/Geek Squad, that first guy in the store probably worked in another department and was hoping to stumble into a easy sale that would count for a few hours of his normal goal. Also, almost anything the employees know is from personal research or what they have learned by reading the boxes at work over time lol.
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Huh? Idk when you worked at best buy but that's not a thing nowadays. Nobody is looking to make sales at best buy, we're paid only by the hour. And reaching any sort of "sales goal" takes 0 effort, if you literally just show up to work, people will buy. I work at best buy in Florida so idk how it is in other places.
@@masift1494 about 5 years ago. Our goals were set so only 1 or 2 people in the department could ever hit them at once. If you didn't hit them your hours were lowered too. Basically it created a commission sales environment without the pay lol.
To be fair, the first associate that you interacted with In-person did say he was new to he store. That may mean he's new to working at Best Buy or that specific location. He may not be as knowledgeable yet.
@@boxandshades412 hes talking about the "the first associate that you interacted with In-person" ( which was a guy) Not the person on the phone
As an ex-best buy employee I feel like people expect too much, in terms of knowledge, from a Best Buy employee. The management focuses on customer service more than product knowledge. Anytime you get a really knowledgeable employee it’s really just because they have genuine interest in the technology and go the extra mile to know about it. When you work there you find more employees like the first guy in the store. I remember trying to train people that didn’t care and they all sounded like that first in-store employee. Point is you literally gotta hope you get someone that is the “expert” which is a term every employee there hates
Totally, this video is kind of condescending in a petty way. The main concerns were thermals and noise like give me a break.
6:55 Since you said you're not tech savy, she probably assumed you dont even know what your monitor resolution is.
Exactly!
My thought exactly. I have asked customers simpler questions before, like whether they want a laptop or desktop computer, and they didn't even know the difference.
definitely. I'd helped some non tech-savvy computer user before. Some of em complaining why their computer won't turn on, when they're not even switched on the power on wall-plug....SMH. And we expect em to know stuff like their monitor size? let alone refresh rate, resolution etc
Their recommendations are consistent, cos the only high-end system for maxing out your budget, is this ROG system.
And if you say upfront that you're not tech friendly person, why would she explain RTX to you?
On the other hand, I would be suspicious, if somebody told me "I got a 1440p monitor" and then asking me what to buy.
In 99.9% of the cases, the non tech friendly persons, don't know what monitor they have (if they have one) or in most cases ,they have old 720p up to 1080p (at best) monitors.
Having a 1440p monitor and not knowing what parts to get, almost never happens.
The video is informative and represents more than half of the tech stores' employees out there.
There are a few times that employees surprised me. I've done what you've done today, just not filmed it :p
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you are right... it's easy to be uniform when there is 1 option that stands out above the others.... try next time to research ahead of time so you can set a limit of 1900 or 1800 instead so they can't chose the easy path..
I disagree with your point about monitor resolution. Many people bought pre-built machines in the past with monitors and have no idea what that monitor is or what components should be paired with it.
I worked with a friend a couple months back who was having performance issues. Come to find out he's been using an alienware with a 2080 ti. His actual issue is irrelevant but while troubleshooting I found he didn't even have his display plugged into the GPU. It was plugged into the motherboard.
He knew he had at least a 1440p 155 hz monitor but his machine was set to 1080p 60 hz.
Unless proven otherwise it's better to assume users are ignorant of the tech and explain how things work.
Your exception is worse than any other exceptions (that's why I don't say 100% of the people) someone could expect :p
Owning a beast, but don't know how to use it. It's bad.
Lol, same. Had to replace my aio, and added some more fans and did a repaste at the same time. Had to talk to 4 employees to learn that the fan splitters on the site were not in store, despite the website saying they were, because nobody knew what they were. They also had no clue what a Wi-Fi card was when I went to get one of those. I gave them the item number, and showed the website saying they had it, and they were clueless. I eventually asked the geek squad, who immediately looked it up and said no.
The graphics cards on these systems, unless otherwise noted, will include whatever 3080 then can source at the time of manufacture and not necessarily the exact one pictured when they first started selling this model probably a year ago. I bought a pc with a 3080 in it fro, Ibuypower at the end of last year and they specifically said that it would be whatever 3080 they could get their hands on at the time of assembling it.
Bitwit definitely missed this…
@@Samsestuff caught him lackin multiple times. I think he mentioned the name of the phone rep too, and muted it out later
Yeah I was gonna say, if I were the sales rep, I would definitely not commit 100% to what is seen in the pictures unless there were exact details in the description. And even then I would hesitate to be 100% on specifics like that. Because it absolutely could vary. So to call that out twice just based on the picture, I think he's definitely off on that and perhaps a bit out of touch with what you might actually get in a system like this.
Worked at best buy, this is 100% the case, but especially in a part shortage.
That is on the SI 100%. They source different comparable GPUs and even memory all of the time. There are times when they may have a bit more inventory of one brand and will guarantee a particular model but a lot of times it's just a random or in house GPU.
I have so many issues with this video. For one a "noob" shopper wouldn't have any idea about resolution. Having worked in electronics retail youl be surprised people are about tech. People have bad time plugging cables in. As a gamer and tech enthusiast i still won't know which camp all the games out there are optimised for without looking that up. You can't expect to go in as a noob and answer technical questions.
Bruh Cyberpunk, RDR2, and Control are all very well known intense games tho.
I do think he might have been a little picky about them, but BitWit is like that. If something isn’t absolutely PERFECT, he’s gonna point that out. He’s not complaining, just saying how it could be better
I used to work in store for geek squad and there were times that people would walk in wanting something as simple as ram or a SSD installed. I would take them to the side and explain to them how easy it is and how quick it can get done before charging them damn near $100 just to do it. People are extremely intimidated by computers so i get it, but ive shown several customers how to install their own parts just to help them out in the future. It varies depending on the state and the store but everyone at best buy that ive worked with so far have been great and care about the customers they interact with.
That’s not quite true.Anyone that uses YT understands resolution and knows that 1080p isn’t as good as 1440p and that 2160p/4K beats all of those.They may not get the technical aspect of all that but most people do have a basic understanding.
Kyle: Says "Alexa" like 8 times
Editor: I will bleep 3 and no more
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Having worked there for 7 years in the Geek Squad, I can 1000% tell you that the people they hire are NOT computer people at all regardless of what they say. The "consultation agents" are literally just glorified service writers told to take down the issue and push the expensive "all inclusive" tech plans that are about as useful as the cold call "extended car warranties". Yes, they are calling to ask you about your cars extended warranty. The Advanced Repair Agents are the people most likely to know anything computer related, however it's based on store by store basis. Contacting other stores for parts/tools I quickly found that maybe there was less than 1% of best buy employees who had any real knowledge of computers outside being "just google it" techs. Embarrassing. So trust me when I say your experience would have DEFINITELY been the same regardless what store you went to. PC department people are just car sales people - sans any cut of the sale. They're only pushed to sell high ticket items, computers they have high in stock and especially End of Life units that are about to hit the stores budget due to old age/decay. Management used to get pissed off at me when I would re-cable manage desktops, maintain cooling systems (repaste, upgrade to liquid or better than OEM air cooling).. Not a good place to work at or shop at.
Just my 2c.
I was a CA and i can say for my old store that we were all into building PCs and being on top of the latest tech more than our ARAs. Honestly it seemed switched around for us, there were ARAs who didnt know how to install certain components or how to even distinguish them.
I still work at Best Buy at the moment, and our precint is extremely careful at which ARAs they choose to send to the back of precint. Though I do agree, alot of the front of precint agents dont really know much of anything, and use geeksquad as a way to learn computer and the technology. I used to work geeksquad but went back to salesfloor because there were too many people bringing in crappy computer from the salespeople in PC. I do build PCs and am pretty knowledgeable able computer parts and specs, but there are people that come from other departments that try to "help" but just look for a way to get a credit card app or total tech. I honestly dont care about those, yes I do sell them to people who actually will benefit off of it, mostly large spending returning customers who spend alot on warranties or dont want to spend on installations. Other than that I try to put people with good computers, and if they can get a good deal, even better.
@cabeese why would they be angry at you upgrading to AIO? wouldn't that make the store more money since AIO are more expensive than air coolers?
@@Josiuh it was about making money doing the least amount of work possible. They rather check in a simple PC setup than a full PC build because the store benifits off of those more. A PC setup can count up to 3 or 4 different services, which means more labor, which means more hours for employees. An AIO takes more time and we get less labor off of it.
@@Josiuh The store actually doesnt make much off of PC parts, but more off of accessories and services. The store will probably make 20-30 dollars off an AIO but services and Best Buy Accessories are 100% profit.
You’re being way too critical on these people. Having them explain why nvidia over AMD because of the game titles. The guy at the store isn’t wrong. You can get more than enough based on what he recommended and he’s just being honest and trying to save half a grand
I agree. All Kyles critiques about Alexa over the phone were ones from a tech savvy perspective. Most of my family is not tech savvy and all the things Kyle pointed would have went over their head if she had explained that to them. Mentioning that the card was a blower would have elicited a "what does that mean?". That's why nine times out of ten I get asked what would I get or can you come with me? Having worked for Best Buy I know (at least when I worked for them) that the big ticket departments are treated as a promotion and quite often they aren't knowledgeable about that department. I can speak for experience...they had me in appliances 🤷🏾♂️.
It’s fair criticism because hypothetically the pc could have a 3050 or a 3060, but the other pc could have a 6800 xt. It’d be stupid to say the 3050 pc is the better choice just because “it’s Nvidia lol” unless you have a hateboner against AMD. Dude got lucky that the pc had a had a 3070 in it. I’m pretty sure he would’ve still recommended a Nvidia GPU even if it’s a low tier card, which isn’t a good choice if you want performance.
Yeah. People that aren't too tech savvy are going to care less whether it's AMD, Intel, or Nvidia.
@@Yeeterzz Exactly. Kyle said he was a noob and he got recommendations on that level so he could understand it. If he had revealed himself as a tech savvy he would have had a completely different conversation.
indeed. a non-tech savvy person like the "character" that he played won't give a damn about which card, what brand, what type of monitor, as long as u can played the said games with decent fps/quality and the PC are in his budget range
I think the reason his advice on the sweet spot changed was becasue the first recommendation $1400 - $1800 was regarding just wanting to game but not being bare minimum and also not being over the top. When he said a $2000 sweet spot I think his wording also indicated that if you're looking for something with a little more to offer (before mentioning 2.5K for streaming) and a PC that's gonna for sure be good. His opinion could have also been changed based off the fact that you sounded more inclined to spend most of your budget as opposed to saving money
lol, To me it seems that she asked you 2 questions, was on the website and checked the same boxes you did. So of course you both ended up with the same recommendation.
I was just about to comment the same thing
@@Stallzyx the fact that there is a scam comment right about your comment makes it hilarious
@@zmimgo yes LMFAO 😂
@@zmimgo well I wasn't saying it to that haha
Sallzy wins one internet for unintentional hilarity.
If you lead a call with "I'm not tech savvy", don't expect to be asked "techy" questions. A non-savvy person would've just answered "What is resolution? Where can I find that information?" and the call would've just been prolonged by 10-20 minutes for no reason.
The lady on the phone did a really good job to be honest. The only "mistake" was that she didn't confirm whether you were looking for a laptop or desktop. But other than that she did exactly what one would do; only mention things that a non-savvy would understand.
If you do another video similar to this, go with an angle like "ELI5", meaning after a sales-pitch, look at it from a 5-year olds perspective.
If a 5 year old would've gotten the gist of the sale, then the seller did good. If a 5 year old would've been confused from all the different technical terms such as resolution, DLSS or other specifications, then the pitch was too technical. Majority of customers don't know what DLSS is, and would never even bother turning such feature on. They just want to open the game, press Play and start gaming. Majority won't fiddle with Graphics Settings. Majority won't be comparing whether they get 144fps or 110fps. Majority will only care about that the game actually runs on the computer, and that the gameplay is smooth (meaning not going below 60fps).
@Transistor Jump Often times you don't get a static 30 fps like on consoles, but it fluxuates a lot more, therefor it isn't smooth. However, from 60 and above, even if it fluctuates, you barely notice it.
On consoles I agree, 30 fps can be smooth (smooth enough to still enjoy the games at least).
@Transistor Jump so non-savvy people vsync lock their computers? I doubt that.
You can literally do anything if you know how, but that's not the point with what I wrote, now is it? The point was to go from a viewpoint of someone that is not tech-savvy, that would include locking your computer to a certain FPS just to get a stable fps.
Literally; go from a consumers standpoint where the consumer would power on the computer, log in to their user, then start up a game. That's it. Not fiddle around in settings or optimizing anything, because that's when you start doing tech-savvy things.
You told the first person that you were basically computer illiterate (and acted like it during the call). Why would she expect you to know your monitor resolution?
And what difference would it make anyways? You said gaming monitor, so she probably inferred a a high hz 1440p or a very high hz 1080p.
When you buy a monitor is says that, I'm sure a non tech guy can see numbers on a screen
I work at Best Buy, as a salesperson if a customer asks me for advice and set a $2000 budget I also offer the highest cost item without crossing their budget.
Having worked in retail selling computers many years ago, it can be very difficult. If someone comes in saying they aren't tech savvy, asking them about what resolution they play at would often results in blank stares. And while it can't hurt to ask, staff are often under pressure to be as efficient as possible with customers. Especially if they aren't buying anything that day. It sucks, but that's the reality of the business. Provide good service as efficiently as possible and move onto someone with their wallet ready. At least these were the pressures I was under. Mind you, this was a good 15 years ago.
I know this is not the topic of this video. Great video btw. But your chassis from you white desktop pc in the background would you share which one that is?
The 3080 blower in the prebuilt is just a render. If you check the reviews, people have posted photos where it’s shown to be a Tuf card.
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Hey there Bitwit, you said at the beginning of the phone call that you're not too tech savy so why would she talk about the card beeing blower style or otherwise, or that it does get hotter? If you're not into that kind of stuff I think most ppl can't do much with that information! Same with Nvidia supporting the games you told her, the information about dlss and raytracing is in my opinion a nice little touch, but as a complete PC newbie I guess you won't do much with that information! Also as customer support, if the customer doesn't explict asking for it, I would focus on the main topic you asked for and that is a gaming pc which can possibly do the task best as possible, but I agree she could have asked about visuals. Otherwise great video! Great content and keep it up 🙂
PS: Please don't hate me
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its videos like this that make me sad at the perception that youtubers give bestbuy. I work at bestbuy and we aren't just trained in one department, but to sell everything that is in the store. I know enough about pc's to give competent answers but knowing things like blower style cards and non-blower is something so niche that the average consumer won't care all too much. The tech youtubers like Linus and bitwit make us seem like we only recommend crap and to no matter what build your own. Again general consumers won't have the time or sometimes the knowledge to do that. While yes bestbuy has some bad practices like to push the sale no matter what, I always tell my management that I would rather the customer walk away happy and having a good experience with me and get nothing or something suitable for them, rather them thinking I forced them to buy the most expensive thing there.
Ya well it's not really you or your coworkers across the world it's the name sadly
That's awesome for your locals that come to your store but sadly not all BB employee's are like you. Been given way too many empty promises at my local store to even go back. And I've never even thought about asking about computers.
I don't know if I should hate or like this video, because there are some points on both sides. Kyle's expecting a little too much from employees - especially about the resolution part. I know myself, I would not really ask about the resolution, because I know there are people out there, who just want to game at the most absolute max performance.
SECOND, when people are buying a pc, the focus is usually on the tower itself first, and the monitor/kbm/mouse all of that later.
Yeah, first time I bought a PC, I just grab a crappy monitor, mouse & keyboard from the store
The resolution is important to know if youre trying to recommend a pre-build tho. Thats the whole reason why Kyle even mentioned that he already have a monitor. Yet the seller never even touched on that. An RTX 3080 is a HUGE waste if Kyle was using 1080p 60fps monitor. a GTX 1070 is already enough for that and anything beyond a 1080 is wasted performance.
What are you talking about?
asking about resolution is so easy and REALY important.
plus, youre basic assumption is dangerous, max performance for everyone?
that's just wrong.
some people aim for casual 1080p 60fps.
some for competetive 1080p 144hz, some for 240hz and even more.
and some people realy don't care about that, and just want the Full-On single player experience 4k/2k 60fps all ultra settings.
that matters ALOT.
Hardware wise, and monitor wise.
if that's your job and you're answering clients questions while trying to aim them to a product which will serve them the best according to their usage..
You should know that.
it's like a salesman braggin on every spec about a premium car for customer then selling him a manual transmission car when he can only drive automatic and just assumes he can drive manual without even asking.
I couldn’t hold myself back from laughing when ur asking for “help” over the phone for a new pc with a massive RGB monster sitting right behind you 😂
The 2nd Employee’s in store Recommendation on the budget was not inconsistent. He clearly specifies that for ONLY gaming $1500-1800 is good however, if you wanted to do video editing or streaming than a $2000 budget is good. As you mentioned, he overlooked FPS and resolution with his recommendation. When you pose as someone that doesn’t know much about computers and only list’s gaming they are looking to play it’s natural for people to assume you are looking for a entry-mid level gaming PC on a typical 1080p-1440p resolution not 4K. Realistically speaking, someone who is not tech savvy is not going to game on a 4K (TV maybe) monitor to begin with. I would give the 2nd employee’s advice the benefit of doubt because he was trying not to get you spend more on a gaming PC ONLY for gaming than you needed too even though he overlooked the resolution of your monitor that could affect FPS.
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I was waiting for this comment. 100% true
You're picking this apart with no good reason. He didn't look at every pc in the company before he showed you the cheaper system. Once he looked in the $2000 realm he found one and stuck with that as his recommendation. Not every employee is going to be as knowledgeable as a tech tuber.
Its his job to know what they sell, or at least check before giving a recommendation.
I think he's picking it apart because there's no glaring issues. It just seems overly negative because of the video length and not trying to look like a Best Buy shill.
I haven't kept up with the market but a prebuilt from a decent company that has a 3080 in it that costs under $2000 seems like a solid deal, especially when this video was posted.
The first woman did a great job imo. If you're not tech savvy it doesn't make sense to go into specifics about all the stuff. The non tech savvy customer isn't gonna want to know specifics, they just want a computer that plays games and does it well, which this computer should do in spades.
I know for a fact that in a lot of Best Buys they have made everyone become somewhat knowledgeable in every area of the store. Not to mention that if it was busy usually you just have to get who they have available.
Alotta people probably on hold? Correct me if I'm wrong
It would be interesting to see a follow up video where you actually the system to see how good it is and then compare it to a custom pc.
As far as retail workers go, they did a pretty decent job at recommendations compared to other locations. As someone who has worked retail in the past (not best buy) they don't really train you to know much of anything for the department they assign you to. They kinda let you learn it on the fly which can be pretty irritating. Great video overall! Maybe working undercover at a best buy in the future would be a great video idea!
I know you wish these customer service reps asked about resolution or other stuff like that but if you are coming across not knowing some of the basics I think it will just confuse a real non techie about the specific technologies. There has been times where I try to get into this with my buddies and it becomes memory overload that they want to hold off buying it in fear of not understanding it. They want to keep you interested without scaring you off or overwhelming you with information. Imagine talking about Raytracing, refresh rates and Resolutions with your parents. That’s how the average customer is.
He said “2,000 is a sweet spot if you’re doing more than gaming” technically the best buy employee is right!! He didnt mess up, you heard wrong! 😂 2,000 or more if you’re streaming x gaming!
Lol right
I use to work for Best Buy as one of my first major jobs after finishing up HS. Myself with like one other person were heavily knowledgeable in gaming and I was one of the only ones beginning the custom built route. Back than BB at least carried all parts back than akin to what Micro Center does now. I still use BB but mainly for laptop purchases, the occasional physical movie, console game purchases, Audio/Video purchases and only some computer accessories.
Good piece though Kyle and seems phone support is better these days than in store..
You are just expecting way too much out of these guys
I work at Best Buy and found this incredibly educational. Even though I know a lot of this stuff already from being a gamer, big techy and from watching tech channels regularly, I still found it helpful to consider what questions to ask and information to share with others when giving a recommendation. Sometimes shopping for yourself is different than shopping for someone else. I know what I'm looking for when building a system for my needs but I don't always think about how to "sell" that knowledge (so to speak). So thanks for this video. I personally found this to be more educational than best buys own "training" and this video could be a great tool and training exercise.
That said, the lack of training in these departments is also why I think a lot of these comments and questions are a lot to ask from minimum wage workers that are thrown on the floor to sell.
Price to performance is true for services as well. Just food for thought. 👍
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I like that he makes a voice when he goes into noob mode
I currently work at Best Buy, and have for quite some time. I think that overall she did relatively well. That being said, I totally agree with Bitwit. As a sales agent with them, whether OtP or In-store we are trained to ask probing questions to make an assertive pick. Great video!
I'm actually surprised they have a prebuilt that good at that price. Be cool to see someone do a review of this PC.
Thank you Kyle. I ve been a long time viewer of your channel, through the ups and downs it's been a wild ride! Thanks you for pushing these videos out even though its been rough. Keep it up
The listing picture doesn’t tell the whole story. The pc actually comes with different variants of the 3080, usually the tuf 3080 not the blower card. You can see this if you look at the reviews of the pc there are customer photos
Bitwit definitely missed this…
This gpu also has a nvlink connector which would indicate 3090 blower or Turing gpu
as a former best buy employee, I can tell you that while yes they are trained to find the wants, needs, and desires of the customer to match a product that best fits them... they are also pressured to leverage items in a certain order. In stock in your location>in stock in another location>in stock online. He knew what he had on hand and was trying to leverage you into buying it. It would get the job done at the expense of some benefits, just to make the sale. as the interaction continued, his understanding of your needs evolved and he had to adjust his tactics accordingly.
This is flawed. You're asking people who make $15/hr to know about things that are very very very niche when they are taught the very basics about computer parts. I really think this is unfair to the people in this video. Best Buy does not invest resources into making sure someone knows every detail about every computer, especially a gaming computer. You've made some good videos Kyle, but this is not one of them.
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Pay doesn’t necessarily matter. If your working in the computer section of Best Buy there should be the desire to become an expert in what you do, no matter your job/pay.
I worked at Best Buy for 5 years. Had you ended up at my store and got me or a few my other coworkers for this, we woulda killed it. My store had some of the best techy people. Most of us went on to work in higher tier professional IT. Good actual techy people aren't really a thing at most stores in the last 8-9 years though.
I remember helping my friend back in 2016 or so to find a laptop for gaming and while I knew the games he would mostly play weren't demanding (Factorio mostly with maybe a hint of Warframe) I did know that at that time most of the laptops they had weren't going to work at all since most of them had 4-8 GB of RAM and since I also knew that laptops aren't good at cooling that he'd see performance drops either because of RAM limitations or overheating. After getting recommended about 5 laptops with only 4GB of RAM I looked at some of the displays they had and found one with 16 and told my friend that with the way games are going he would probably want this since both of the games he liked were going to be getting updated and that could change how the game works. To my knowledge he's still got it even though less than a year later he built a desktop that was better than mine and everyone else he knew. But because of that I would just rather suffer and not know where anything is and struggle to find things than get help at Best Buy because at least when I'm looking I don't have an NPC following me around asking me if I get to the Cloud District often. Because let's face it...of course I don't.
So I worked in retail for a few years in the fishing department. When someone says “I’m brand new and I don’t know much but want to get something to get started” you never want to overload them with detail you want to start with general questions and go from there. Now this was for fishing but my first question was price. Price point dictates what you can buy and narrow it down from there. Usually my next question is what do you want to do with it. I would say for me it takes a good 10-20 minutes to get something that really fits what the person wants. Also I didn’t make commission so I had no problem telling people “you don’t need this $400 setup when you could spend $150 and do everything you want”. It’s really hard to help someone with 0 knowledge but they both did well. I’m sure if you talked tech with them they would of talked tech back.
Having been in a retail tech sales position before, he handled it exactly as we're trained. You were forthright about not being tech-savvy; it's not that blower vs non-blower is not important but it's not a convo you have with someone who doesn't know tech. It can be very overwhelming and confusing to be told i7 this, 12th gen that, rtx, amd, nvidia, 16gb of memory, 512GB storage...we have to simplify it all for the customer in front of us. "Quick processor", "best graphics", "fast storage", "long lasting parts", etc. Whereas if you have a tech savvy customer, you go straight to specs and performance because that's what they typically care about: price to performance. It's interesting to see this interaction from a 3rd party perspective but they did well given the circumstances!
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Well put! 👏
I feel as though the only salesperson that treated BitWit well was the third salesperson.
That girl hit it out of the park. Way better than I expected for a phone call. Wins a "Better than Dell" award.
Gonna be honest, complaining about the kind of cooler you get on the GPU seems really weird to me. I'd say 99% of people don't give a fuck what of cooler is on their GPU.
He's also not inconsistent, he didn't speak properly though. You asked for the £2k computer and him saying it's a sweet spot is different if you consider the amount someone is willing to pay. Wanting high end stuff? £2k might be a sweet spot for great graphics and price. But £1.5k is also a sweet spot if you want good graphics and price. You feel me?
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You're right, it is weird especially since not everyone even knows how different coolers on a gpu works. strange he would even bring that up since most people are just looking for a gpu to help play their games better and not know about the physical details of the hardware involved in them.
Going under cover feels like that guy walking into gamestop and throwing his hands up like "hey fam it's me. I'm here"
Recommendation: Change Your Name To Awesome Sauce Again
Edit: Like So He Can Notice This
Very unfair to think a women working in a call centre to have detailed breakdowns of a GPU cooling configuration. It’s Best Buy, not Silicon Valley
Ok, so, look. This is just my take on the second in-store guy's recommendations.
At first it sounded like he was being considerate about your wallet, thinking you might not have the most money to spend on a gaming PC, and that you probably weren't a very avid gamer and streamer, so he found what would be good enough for the most part.
But then, after you gave more and more information that would indicate you might just be an actual avid gamer, and that you might be streaming as well, that's when he started offering suggestions for higher priced PC's, because it became clear that the original PC wouldn't do it anymore.
Then you gave even more indication that you might want something more powerful, and that's when he decides to tell you a little about what you could expect over the $2000 mark, and saying anything under $2000 probably isn't something to go for, also bringing up upgrading RAM and stuff.
In other words, not being inconsistent, but rather adjusting his recommendations according to where the conversation went, and what type of PC he figured based off of the new information given to him that you would probably want.
I'd take this guy over some douche bag that either automatically tries to sell me an expensive ass PC, or the guy that recommends a shitty cheap PC that my mom wouldn't even want to use, all the while claiming that it would be more than enough for me. This guy sounds professional and honest, which is rare to find in sales people, as most sales people I have experienced tries desperately to make a sale, or treats you like an ass with no knowledge of anything, or get pissed when you tell them you know that their recommendation is shitty and you would like something better.
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2:45 "computer sure, did you already buy it!" "no" meanwhile he has a $2000 computer behind him.
I feel like they both did good, you said you were a starter and not tech savvy just wanted to play games. There would be no reason for him to ask you the questions you wanted him to ask cause you wouldn't know what he was talking about anyways he did good you're picky for no reason.
You forgot to block out her name everywhere, it set mine off! 🤣
You lost me 19 minutes in. 2000 dollars is *a lot* of money. It's rare to see sales representative in a store being reasonable instead of trying to max out what a person can spend. We need *more* representatives in stores with this character than the online rep that's trying to max out your budget.
This is why so many people say PC gaming is expensive. There's *no way* I'm spending 2000 dollars on a PC build unless it's to make money. (Why this rep asked about streaming)
I agree. I have a great deal of respect for the guy that said you don’t NEED to spend $2000 to have a good gaming experience. There are too many people on UA-cam that think if you aren’t 1440p 144hz with ray tracing then you might as well get a playstation you silly noob
Yeah I get what he is trying to do in this video, but at this point anyone spending 2K on a computer is probably not going to Best Buy. And since the only computer they carry near that price point in the ASUS then no matter the knowledge level of the salesperson they can only recommend what they carry.
Best buy employees don’t get paid enough to know about specifics most are college students who do light gaming on the side
None of the employees asked you to apply for the Best Buy credit card. That's a FAIL. doesn't matter how well they did
I used to work at Apple as a Technician (let the hate commence lol) but one of my favorite things, as a PC gamer, was when a customer would come in asking for a laptop that could game. Cause I’d just say “your best route is probably back out through these doors and go to Micro Center” I said it in jest obviously, but it’s true. I would always try and help people find the right stuff for them.
Who goes into a Apple store looking for a gaming pc 💀
@@EpicParrot54115 you’d be surprised how often it happened haha
I hope more people do more of these secret shopper style videos. Could improve customer service overall. Then again Dell didn't improve after Linus put them on blast even though they were aware...
Companies aren't looking for people with knowledge about technology. They are looking for people with customer service experience at best. Most people. Then again, these are minimum wage call centers or floor sales job (i worked retail)
Okay, I'm sorry. I know this vid is alreay a year old, but I love it! - I always wondered if the recommendations in the store are like legit or not. Would love to see more content like this!
Undercover for what? You’re nobody!
ive done this before but without the online part and it was interesting... i know they aren't there to actaully help people but they wanna make money but its a fun experience... i even helped someone who was waiting for someone to help them with their first build and gave them some choices but recommended ur channel before any major purchases.
I went to a best buy one time to get a mousepad and kid and dad where looking for pc parts there too. I usually mind my own business but for some reason I felt compelled to ask what they were looking for. The kid wanted to get into pc gaming and just play fortnite. I just ended up telling them to go to the nearest microcenter which was around 40 miles (tustin) because they would have better luck than best buy. I really hope that kid got to build his own pc instead of getting a pre built from best buy.
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The second dude turned from a Best Buy employee to an asus salesman
Early
same
READ MY NAME!!
!!!!!!!!
@@posd same
Just stop….. just watch the fucking video
Sooo early!!
i bought my IBuyPower in the summer of 21 and it was pretty decent, for 700 dollars you kinda know what you're getting, just swap the graphics card for a RTX 1660 Super and its a solid setup
8:22 so the cards text is right side up and looks properly seated, but the pcie slots are sticking twords the side panel? 😂
I like how he bleeps out Alexas name in one clip and then forgets in the next clip 😂.
I honestly think they did fine man. Not every employee is created equal, but at the same time they are trying their best and not everyone is not going to know as much as a tech UA-camr
i worked at bestbuy in college. their screening process for which department they put you in is "what kind of products do you want to work with? ok done"
It took an hour yesterday for me to be helped in the computer section of BB. Funny thing is there was only one employee working that part and was totally overwhelmed but kept his cool and extremely professional to those unruly customers. I didn’t mind waiting because it gave me time to look around.
As someone who works in tech at a store similar to Best Buy (in Australia), we are definitely encouraged to direct customers towards staff who may be more knowledgeable about a product. However I do understand why the first guy you saw was trying to scramble some half-assed info (commission perhaps).
Why is kyle reacting to the audio like its his first time hearing this covnersation like he wasnt there? lol
I've built multiple computer systems from scratch over the last few years without any issues. Some reviews of pre-built systems by other youtube channels has shown that some arrive with broken components such as the PCIE slot and loosely mounted hardware.
I feel that when he said that the sweet spot was from 1,400-1,800 that was for you personally. He mentioned again that 2000 was the sweet spot, but I think he means that from 0 to 3k+ it is the sweet spot with computer components.
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22:56 I think he just gave up since you seemed so eager to spend 2k. I'd surrender too if I was him 🤣
its funny to point out when he says "I'm not tech savvy", and in the background you can just see his custom built PC, and his workstation behind him HAHAHAHA.
Fun fact, if you just keep pressing 0 on those automated phone calls, you can eventually talk with a real person. That's pretty much universal.
I honestly hate the question "what games do you want to play."
It's a loaded question which should be followed up with "what kind of monitor do you have?" What resolution/refresh rate is the monitor? Do you intend on getting a new monitor with a higher resolution/higher refresh rate?
Normally when I help someone build a PC I ask them what hardware they currently have if any that will be re-used. (If they have nothing then the cost of a keyboard, mouse, monitor, headset/speakers etc can greatly inflate the price.)
What are they doing on the machine, gaming, productivity etc?
What games they are playing and what resolution/refresh rate will they be aiming for?
Do they prefer balanced performance/graphics or lean more towards graphical fidelity?
How soon do they want/need the PC?
What their target budget and max budget are?
Depending on their response to these questions I may have other questions but in general this gives me a good idea of what they want.
🤣🤣🤣
Definitely missed cutting the phone reps name a couple of times lol but you tried...
As an employee of an auto parts store, you are definitely expecting too much of these people. Despite what people think, I don't know everything about every car.
Kyle on the phone asking for suggestions on a pc while that balling ass pc is just GRB
Best Buy employee here.
I can definitely say that customer service can wildly vary between stores. Even ones within the same district can have vastly differing experiences. In my area, we tend to have a lot of staff that are already tech enthusiasts and are knowledgeable about tech. Keep in mind that we do try to sell each customer the best PC for their needs (at least my store does). For patient customers (i.e. they don't need the PC today and are okay with placing an order for pickup later), it's much easier to land a good recommendation. But if it's something that they need immediately, then your mileage may vary.
This was definitely a fun watch! 😄
No way mans has ever worked retail. “She should have asked me for my preference on looks” “she should have told me the fans blow down”
Back in the day I worked at Best Buy, Circuit City, and Comp USA. Although it was 20 years ago, I am pretty sure not much has changed as I know with my experience at Best Buy as a customer is from time to time. Basically, getting a sales person that knows their stuff is a crapshoot. You won't find one very often. I was one, and literally any other sales man would come grab me if they had trouble with answering questions because I wouldn't steal their sale. Even when things were no longer commission based, sales figures matter to those wanting to continue working at the store. However, I will say that the vast majority of the sales reps would basically read whatever was off the info card to the customers. Also, back when I worked, there were almost never actual pre-built gaming PCs on the shelf. Every so often we'd get one, but most of the time back then there wasn't one. When I got someone asking for one, I'd tried to question the customer what they wanted, how much they had to spend, and steer them to buying as best a pre-built as we had for their budget while getting them to buy at least a video card that would work in that system as well as an upgraded PSU if needed. Not every system allowed upgrades for video cards and PSUs so I steered away from those. Before any of the service offerings were available, I would make a lot of extra cash installing those things for people on the side.
I will say the vast majority of the other sales people had zero clues about computers. Most were less tech savvy than the average customer looking to buy a PC. Some of the crap I heard spewed from other sales rep mouths over the years would make anyone cringe. Worst part is if the customer was just as dumb they'd just eat up whatever tech sounding bits were being said by the equally un-informed sales rep.
Also, the managers were usually the worst when it came to tech knowledge. Outside the car audio guys. Those guys in every store I went to at least knew their stuff. The rest of the sales reps in almost every other department back then were pretty bad. I would like to think that as society we have embraced more technology as a whole and the younger people working there are collectively become a little more savvy as sales reps but most of the time they are still just as knowledgeable as their average customer. I say that because I can tell the girl on the phone was reading off a card for you. She steered you to a particular item that they are trying to push in their price range cards. From my perspective as a previous rep, she did an adequate job overall still I can nitpick. She gave you a gaming PC at the tippy top of your budget as pointed out in the video without delving into alternatives. She didn't ask to many probative questions I felt which demonstrated that to me. What did surprise me is that she went for the top end PC without leaving room for all the upsell extras which is what most reps are trained to do. The training is to get what the budget is, and then pick a computer +2 peripherals + warranty and meet the budget with that.
As for the first in person rep. It was about what I expected. They know what is on the cards and what is talked about in the sales meetings to push. The tend to focus on CPU over GPU when it comes to any computer. They are given a small bit of data on the products with which to push sales. Also, no sales reps like handing off their sales to other reps. They are rarely if ever going to steer you to someone else. It affects their numbers. The second guy was slightly better IMHO. Those questions are typically "canned" most of the time and reps are trained to ask them. Doesn't mean they know what the answers mean in relation to the sale usually. The second guy at least as pointed out in the video knew that the games Kyle responded with were more graphically demanding than other games. After which... he didn't even know what was in the product despite the card on the shelf he directed Kyle to. Again, typical. Lastly, the moment you mention you aren't buying today basically means most sales reps are done with you mentally. They are looking to offload you and move on to a customer willing to buy something right then.
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That genuinely went better than I would have expected. Weird that the lady on the phone would ask you to look up something on the web site, which requires the computer that you haven't bought yet.
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Last time I was at Best Buy an employee thought I was a manager from visiting from another store lol
My local Best Buy is awful. The store is practically empty, their computer area is mainly laptops and barely any desktops. You has much more competent sales folks than I ever did!
To be fair, I think the reason they didn’t ask what resolution you play on is the fact that you have a set budget already. But it definitely would’ve been great if they did ask that question.
So I think they all did pretty well for it being Best Buy. I used to work tech support for a cell phone carrier and before that I worked for Walmart in electronics and the training isn't very good. I'm not sure how Best Buy is for training, but Walmart's training was non-existent on this stuff. Even tech support wasn't very good because they make you follow a guide and 90% of the people working there had no idea why certain troubleshooting steps worked or didn't work. It made it frustrating for me as an employee when I would hear people tell customers the wrong information or when customers had no clue if you were actually good at your job because reps would tell them what they wanted to hear to get them off the phone.
The part that really stood out to me here was around 21:30 when he recommended you stay at $2,000 again. I get that it was confusing, but I also understand why he changed his recommendation. Before when he had mentioned the $1400-1800 mark, he had no idea there was a computer available for $2000 with a 3080 so he probably recommended a lower priced computer because he was looking out for you and didn't want you to waste $2000 on a computer with a 3060ti or something. People who know nothing about hardware will think that something is better if you pay more for it and if you buy a computer with an i5 and 3060ti for $2,000 then it's going to be better than a computer with an i7 and 3060ti at $1600, I see this a lot. So once he knew there was a computer with a 3080, an i7, and 16gb of ram, he probably said it was the best price range to encourage you not to lose out on that deal. I've done this before when helping people because the more information you give someone and the more you explain the differences, the harder it is for them to understand what your talking about and why you think something is better. It becomes overwhelming trying to teach 20 years of experience and knowledge in 20 minutes to help someone and expect them to understand everything. More questions would have been nice but I understand his reasoning for the confusion.
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