Employee Perspective on PCWorld (PC World)

Member Name: Hooo

Product:	PC World
Date:	27/12/08 (186 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Customer Advisors. There for your benefit

Disadvantages: Some Customer Advisors do let the company down

Hi. This is my first review and it comes as a response to reading other reviews about PC World. I am like a number of others an employee at this company and can't believe the generalization us customer advisors are stuck with. I see we are being labelled as having no knowledge on computers or anything to do with them. This is untrue 75% of the time, this number is not quite 100% but as always there are people who do blag their way through a sale, not something I condone.

However most of us do try our best to help you and sell you what you need. As stated previously we do have KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) on Norton 360, Microsoft Office and PC Performance as well as services. But in fairness if a customer was to come in to the store and then asked me if they could have X computer I would check on the system whether it was in stock and if so would then ask them about the purchase. For example "Would you be going online?" if yes, I would let them know about Norton 360, half price with a laptop/base unit so not "that" bad. I would also let them know about alternatives including being able to download free anti virus programs like AVG if they wished.

As most know now with Vista you sometimes get Micorosft Works and you sometimes don't. This is rarely compatible with Word and if the laptop was for their teenage son and he was going to do homework, put it on a memory stick and take it to school the likelihood is that the document he creates on Works will not work with the Microsoft Office which his school/college has. Again you get money of the Student package of Word (Excel and Powerpoint) so again I would recommend this over nothing and having to use notepad to transfer work back and forth.

Some customers, unbelievably, do like our help. They often ask about whether we can set their computer up for them so they can just turn it on and go. I would therefore explain our services, our in-store set up for £29.99 includes setting the machine up, installing any software they have purchased or want installing. It also includes installing printer drivers, camera drivers and the like and finally we are able to create recovery disks for you. You can imagine this does take a good 2 or 3 hours, sometimes more with certain brands.

Lastly something I have read too much bad things about, PC Performance. I like the other employee's feel this is a good service, I even took it out on my laptop on the chance that I drop it, kick it, spill something on it or even shut it too hard and the screen cracks. Don't get me wrong, accidental damage is not the only reason this support and protection package is available, if a customer asks you alot of questions you feel are obvious and get the picture they would need further assistance I often offer them the first month for nothing just so they can get the full benefits of our support helpline.

I feel giving PC Performance in the way of begging is a bit pushy, like "I'll give you 20 quid off if you take PC Performance and you can cancel it tomorrow" is a dirty practice really but so is the pressure on the sales advisors that, that can be what it takes to avoid the managers wrath. I can assure you if we had no pressure on you from the people above us you would be 99% sure that you would never be sold something you didn't need. I will again use the 75% figure, this time that is the percentage of how many sales advisors do their job well. On £6 an hour that is a pretty decent percentage.

I know I may have missed my point on a couple of occasions but just trying to express how I feel. I do enjoy helping customers, that is the reason i'm still doing what I am doing.

Hope you can understand from this review that we are not all bad, there are quite a few positive reviews about PC World and i'm happy to hear that, I hope more of you can have the positive experiances those have had.

Summary: Try it yourself. Chances are you'll like it