This doesn’t sound good for Home Depot. According to Lawn & Garden Retailer Magazine’s March Issue New CEO Frank Blake in an effort to regain the “friendly local retailer†image has decided to hire 15,000 new employees. This is exactly what you expect a mega-chain to do when customer service is at issue, hire still more help. Since this is exactly what we would expect it most surly won’t work.
Home Depot’s customer service problems are not from a lack of orange apron wearing employees running around through the store. It’s the quality of those employees as well as the companies’ culture that needs to change. If I were a stockholder in Home Depot what I would want to see is Frank Blake saying he was going to fire 50% of the least productive employees at each store. Then turn around a give the remainder a raise and the authority to make sure the customer gets better service.
Company culture dictates how employees interact with the consumer. When you have employees telling you that it’s “not their departmentâ€, avoiding eye contact, or just not smiling, hiring more people is not the answer.