Shop Concepts / Ideas - Community

Some of you may know that I'm planning to open a custom computer / gaming center shop here in Fairbanks.  If you didn't know that... well, there it is.  In keeping with my weird brain ideas about such things, it's helpful to gauge public opinion.  I realize that my "audience" here (or on FB, twitter, etc.) isn't huge, and may not reach the majority of folks I'd like it to reach.  So sharing this post with friends or other interested parties would be greatly appreciated, especially if one lives in the Fairbanks area, and even if you don't, opinions are always appreciated.  That being said, I'd like to have some of these ideas down on (non-existent) paper, if for nothing else than to see how they look outside my head.

Community

 No, not the troubled-yet-awesome television show.  I'm speaking of the sense one gets of being in a close-knit of similarly passionate people.  (Which is, I guess, also the show.)  I've worked in one form of tech retail or another for almost 10 years, both in corporate and local settings.  Each method has it's upsides and faults, with very little experimentation or even attempts to find a middle ground.  Ever been to a highly polished multinational chain of stores?  Sure, they're pretty to look at, and the people who work there are helpful to a fault (and even then only occasionally), but there's a couple secrets going on behind the scenes that gives of a sense of "eeeyugh."  (At least, that's how it can be for me sometimes.)  My problems with corporate places are thus:

1. The people working there are helpful because they have to be.  Deep down, most of these folks working the sales floor want to figure out what you need, track it down, put it in your hands, get your money and send you out the door as fast as humanly possible.  I've worked at places that chastise their employees for spending more than 5 minutes with a customer, even to the extent of docking pay or hours.  Granted, this kind of policy is in place as a prep for the super-busy times (Black Friday, mainly), but I don't see that as an excuse.  Granted, there is the rare drop that is the genuinely interested (not to mention knowledgeable) employee, but those are few and far between.
2. Clean is okay.  Sterile is not.  A store's looks can be important, especially if there's a lot of physical product to show off.  But nothing irks me more than going into a store, seeing something cool, buying it, taking it home, and discovering that it doesn't look as cool as it did at the store.  This is usually on purpose, of course; tons of money is spent on just the right kind of lighting and materials that make products stand out to potential customers.  I'm of a firm belief that stores that sell such things as computers, televisions, and other such devices should display these items in such a fashion that is more realistic to a consumer's eye.
3. Needling money = not cool.  It's astounding how many corporate policies are in place to either A) keep from giving money back to customers, or B) get as much extra money out of them as possible.  This comes back up to my first point as well: one of the big reasons there are policies for getting people checked out quickly is so the customer has very little chance to second-guess their purchase.  If something does turn out wrong, there are many ways to override or diminish the chance of a return: restock fees, "exchange-only" programs, gift cards, etc.  I don't wholly disagree with a lot if these ideas; however, I don't think that giant corporate entities need to implement them.  These are more intended for smaller businesses to mitigate or control their losses as much as possible, since they don't have a few hundred million dollars to fall back on should things go way south.
4. Customers deserve a modicum of respect.   I'm not a fan of the idiom "The customer is always right."  It is flat out not true.  That said, they do require some measure of respect and attention.  Condescending to them isn't going to make them want to come back to your store anytime soon.  Granted, it's tougher in a retail job that's more tech-oriented, where customers often wander in without any real knowledge about what you're selling.  That's part of the job, really.  Get over it.  Yet I've been to many a place that treats it's customers as walking wallets that occasionally say things.  When a salesperson only asks a few questions (not really listening to what the customer is saying, just listening for key phrases to direct them to a particular product) and over half of them are things like "Have you heard about our new Visa card?" or "Would you like to hear about our extended warranties on this item?" or "Did I mention our super secret club card?" there's a problem afoot.

 Homegrown shops aren't perfect either.  I've walked into places where the very first thing I see upon opening the door is a giant wall of junk.  Not "crappy merchandise," I mean an entire large section of the store (which was set aside for tech work, I suppose) was entirely covered in old gutted machines, pieces and parts strewn about with no real order to anything, papers, trash, etc.  I felt like I needed a tetanus shot.  Homegrown shops aren't known for customer service, either.  I've been to plenty of places where the employees will completely ignore you until you track down an someone and ask a question, during which said employee rolls their eyes and acts like you interrupted something super important.

So, there's faults on both sides.  I'm not going to claim that I know of a perfect way to combine the positive aspects of both lines of thought, but I'm experienced enough to where I think I've got a pretty good idea of how people should be treated when they enter a business.

How does this come back to "community?"  I'll be honest: not all of it does.  But to me, that term covers many aspects of how it feels to be in a store: treatment by employees, fairness of policy, etc.  The sense that we're all here together in a common interest and passion is why places like this future store would exist in the first place.

Another aspect of the whole "community" thing is involvement.  I want the customers to be involved with how the store grows and operates as much as possible.  This could be just as simple as a "suggestion box," (which there will probably be), but also semi regular surveys, not to mention just flat out talking and hanging out with the people populating the seats.  A presence on the major social sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, etc.) will be a major part of how we present ourselves to customers, as well as a gathering place for people to share what they like or dislike about the store itself.  But in the interests of being unique and such, I also propose this: a weekly podcast.

I'm a fan of a great many podcasts, particularly gaming ones.  Podtoid, Laser Time, Comedy Button, Rebel FM, Judge John Hodgman, and the Thrilling Adventure Hour are among the ones I listen to every week.  Inspired by some of these, along with the now-dead TalkRadar and Penny Arcade's Downloadable Content podcast, I'm planning to do a weekly podcast where members of the community (read: customers) may vie to join in a discussion about games, tech, movies, TV, comics; nerdy things in general.  Granted, we don't want each week's episode to be 5 or 6 hours long, so there will be a bit of an agenda for each episode, but what I love about many of the above podcasts is when they go off the rails with rants, sidebars, random thoughts, and heated (but friendly) debates, all covered in a fine layer of nerd and swearing.  We'd take a couple hours or so after the store is closed (or even before it opens) to record an episode, I'd edit it all together and upload it to iTunes and a few other services, as well as posting links to the episode to the previously mentioned social media.

There's a bit of extra cost and work associated with this, though.  Equipment, first of all.  One can't do something like this half-assed, especially if anywhere between 3 and 5 people are all going to be recorded on any given episode.  So, decent equipment is key, and it's not always cheap.  I've gotten some advice from the Laser Time guys (particularly the wonderful Chris Antista) about it, mainly because their podcasts regularly have numerous people on it while keeping a great level of sound quality.  Another cost is hosting.  There are plenty of places designed for podcast hosting, but it's still another monthly fee on top of all the other operating costs of the store itself.  I think it'll be worth it in the long run; maybe not monetarily, but in terms of getting our name out there for doing something no one else is really doing.

Another aspect of the "community" sense is how the store itself looks.  This includes the machines themselves, the point-of-sale, shelving, wiring, workspace, etc.  Some of that can be solved with a backroom for storage, tech work, system building; typical things that aren't really a part of the daily customer experience.  We'll also be spending lots of time and effort on cable management, both power and network, both for safety and connectivity's sake.  The machines themselves I'll talk about more in another post, but suffice to say that they'll be pretty without being overdone, with a few exceptions.  I'm also going to plaster the walls (and possibly ceilings) with posters: games, movies, comics; anything that's nerdy, popular, and just plain cool.  This may also extend into statues or action figures set up on display; because if good nerds love anything, it's to show off what they love.

Well, that's that for this post.  More ideas may crop up that fitin this category, and I'll try to work them into the relevant posts.  So, once again, I beg you to comment.  Bring suggestions or ideas of your own.  Criticize.  Brainstorm.  Call me an idiot.  Whatever.  I'm looking for feedback here, and the more the merrier.