This is a call to arms for the retail employees. Setup and go is a huge push because of the pure profit it is. About 20 cents per employee, so at most about $2 is paid out to the team in commission. Where it’s profitable for the company is that there are so many failed activations with these Edina and so many people getting help over the phone, it’s true intent is to reduce call center volume and either allow them to reduce call center staff or not hire when needed. With individual kickers as sales reps, no one should want to be slowed down transferring stuff when you can be missing out on the next sale. Collectively we need to drive this number down so it is no longer a metric because it is counterintuitive to individuals making more money. The SUAG charge should be used as a deterrent so customers do it themselves. And don’t let this fool you, this is going to be the beginning of more service charges in the store in the future.
25 replies (most recent on top)
For the one who said charging the 30 for SOS phones. That is amazing. We get enough of them where i wouldn’t have to charge my customers buying phones and wouldn’t get stuck transferring their cr-p on top of it. It’s a win win. You’re a genius and should be rewarded.
This is awesome. This is a great list of best practices. My store is simple. Any phone that comes in with SOS that takes a physical SIM it’s $30 to get them a new SIM. People are so flustered their phone stopped working, they’re happy to pay the $30.
My store sucked at this. Here’s the best practice I got from a successful store. If they’re doing multiple upgrades and doing have it aren’t getting insurance and aren’t paying to setup. Flag the account for fraud. Tell the customer you don’t know why. Give them the fraud number and tell them they have to order over the phone when fixed. Our store is up 20% over last month since without changing anything else. Usually only have to flag 1 maybe 2 a day as a store. Sucks for the customer but better than me getting put in an action plan and eventually getting written up
Since pull through isn’t part of bio anymore I get in trouble for asking for watches and tablets because it hurts setup. So are traffic sucks and I’m trying to hit my kicker. Instead of asking for a tablet that pays me 10x a setup I just can’t offer at all. It’s crazy how stupid senior leadership is thinking this is a good metric.
So I know we’re only 10 days into the month. But I’m over 70% and I’m in pace to be 80% to my individual kicker. My coworkers are in the 20-40 % range and pacing 120-160% kicker. Why am I being punished for hitting a metric that keeps me stuck with customers for an extra 30-60 minutes. At least give me a $5 spiff for each one. I feel like a cuckold.
So my store is basically tearing it as paid tech support. If you have insurance we’ll troubleshoot in store for free. If you don’t we charge the setup fee before we even touch the phone. Even if it’s a simple fix. I fear this is a long term detriment and we’re going to see traffic diminish. I also fear that this may become the norm going forward. We’re going to be technicians that sell. Not sales people that try to troubleshoot. I think we should be offering it but it shouldn’t be a metric. And honestly if they have TMP we should do it for free, only charge when they don’t have it.
My stores scam is telling them they’ll get $100 visa credit for charging their setup fees to their Verizon visa. But won’t tell them they will get the credit for any other purchase. I’m sure our agreement with visa would be in jeopardy if they knew this.
My store just plays games with in store pickup. Try to get everyone to order online. Tell them better deals. Then we charge the setup and go. And get freebies without the box counting against us. It’s a real pain. Takes even longer waiting for the orders being ready to be picked. So now they eat up even more time. It’s stupid. Just make it go away.
Today I had an appointment for 4 new lines. Any 45 minutes before that I got an upgrade, manager insisted we could transfer everything on check in to the queue. Customer had old Motorola phones getting new Motorola phone. So no good transfer apps (content transfer is awful) so it was just log into gmail. But since my manager never checked the customer never had a gmail account. 2000+ pictures later and expected phone to look exactly like the old one when I was done. My appointment walked after waiting over an hour for me. Same manager wouldn’t take over the transfer because he had no clue what to do. So I got $25 in rollup for almost 2 hours of work, cause they didn't want insurance on their $300 phone, we had no accessories in stock for and we’re on a 2gb plan. Meanwhile my sale that was going to be around $600 in rollup walked. This is beyond frustrating. Either make us straight hourly and we can do all the stupid service stuff you want, but if we staY on commission especially individually you need to clear the path so we can do volume. I need to do 8-10 boxes a day to get a kicker and that won’t happen with these transfers.
So my DM told me that when they review what stores will be close this is going to be the first metric they look at. They want the stores to at least be covering their tent with SUAG. My stores rent is $12k. Which means we need a minimum of 400 of these. My store had about 350 qualifying boxes last month. So I need to get to about 700 qualifying boxes at 65%. But it will crush my other KPIs. And that’s if I can get my store to 65%. You’re forcing me to be shady because maybe 20-25% are willing to pay. Another 10-20% can be convinced. So basically this forum has become best practices to be shady and get my percentage up. But I probably need 1 more employee to get to 65% without blowing out my wait times. 2 mor employees to handle getting to the boxes I need to do. It’s amazing this a company who should want to be doing volume and they just handcuff us.
Here’s what I don’t get. We’re giving these $800 loyalty trades trading in an iPhone 7 or 8. They’re usually on start or go and don’t require premium unlimited. Why? It takes 27 SUAG to make up for these promos. How about we eliminate these loyalty offers to be profitable. We’re not being very smart as a business. I’m getting stuck here an hour plus after my shift because we’re waiting on these SUAG that my manager won’t tell to come back another day because we’re afraid they won’t come back and pay it. My manager won’t let me leave and take it over when my shift is over. Or we’re just staying way past close waiting on the info to transfer. Guess what, that hour of overtime just made that SUAG not profitable anymore. For years you told us to set them up with tech coach to help with the transfer. What’s the point of tech coach anymore? It’s not for tech support, cause they’re helping 10 people in online chat at the same time. Maybe we should stop selling TMP since it’s not necessary anymore. We’re eliminating the need for asurion. Let’s just keep everything in house since we like making stupid decisions. I don’t like the idea of a Union but maybe that’s the threat Verizon needs to see.
I actually love it. I can do 1 or 2 of these a day and just milk it. I know I’m getting a $900-$1100 team commission check no matter what we do. So why try hard. My teammates are going to ki-l theatre’ themselves trying to get their kicker and may get their $200 kicker. But probably not. Everything else is a pipe dream unless you close a huge business deal. So why try? My KPIs are good, I don’t do a lot of boxes, but they leave me alone cause they focus on the wrong stuff.
I get why we’re charging. But it shouldn’t be a metric. I’m not looking to clerk. But man, the store gets so backed up and so many customers walk cause queue is too long. I’ve been looking forward to this individual kicker to make some extra money and I’m just watching money walk away while I’m figuring on grandma figure out her Facebook password. They have to figure something out. Or at least better compensation when it eats up so much of our time. You’d think we were going to straight hourly based on offering services like this. But they’re just tricking us into thinking we can make extra money with this individual kicker.
Here’s the cautionary tale. Verizon is going to look to do more service that we Weill charge for in the store. And it will get harder and harder to achieve sales goals cause they’re not going to hire technicians. SUAG is step 1. Verizon taking out all the other brands off screen protectors to do the Belkin (now Verizon) ones in store is step 2. Cause now customers will just come in for free replacements. For those of you who worked back in the day when we had FRUs in store, customers would come in regularly and demand replacements for minor problems. If they can come in with any minor damage on a screen protector and get it replaced will be doing 20-30 of these a day. And then there will be some other metric of what we are supposed to sell to these people when they come in for replacements. Eventually our partnership with Asurion will have us replacing screens and doing repairs in store (why do you think those deductibles are dropping later this month). We’ll end up being more geek squad than sales with horribly inadequate training. Everybody needs to be leaning on senior management when they visit (not you’re store management, they're afraid to speak up) on how bad this is as an individual and demand a major increase in staffing. Hint towards Unionization if they give you BS rebuttals. No one wants a Union but that seems to be the only thing that scares them. And for the person so said call the compliance line, there is a no retaliation policy in Verizon, but believe me, the first thing they do when you call the compliance line isn’t researching the problem, it’s figuring out who called it in.
I get it started and move on to the next customer.
To: @xea+1lVndSc8
If people are charging customers fees that Verizon does not really charge, then report it to the ethics line anonymously. 844-894-8433, verizonethics.com, or ethics@verizon.com. You can make anonymous reports to Verizon Ethics, and you can contact Verizon Ethics either to report misconduct or just to ask a question about the Code of Conduct
or company policy.
Nickel and diming? VZW offers online step by step content transfer tutorials.
Let’s be honest people want everything done for them. GUESS WHAT? You want the VIP treatment? It costs money.
Verizon is a business, not a charity. Seriously, if you own a Smartphone and you do not know how to use it, Google information, or go to vzw.com and search content transfer then you have issues and should go back to a flip phone.
I hate it. Had 2 online orders come in. And sold 1 phone that I had to do. 4 hours of setup that my managers wouldn’t take over. I look like a superstar cause my SUAG was 150% (cause I sold a watch with a phone and that hurts my percentage which is stupid). But I made a whopping $90 in rollup today. While the rest of my coworkers were 10% SUAG and did about $1500 in rollup between the 3 of them. Don’t offer me a way to make more money when you’re forcing us to do something that takes too much time. I need to do $600 in rollup a day and I can’t do that babysitting phones. Gonna force me to go to the competition
So we charge our business customers whenever we can to boost our percentage. Or we try to sell an accessory bundle that saves them $30. And then bundle it with accessories which also feels dirty. I think stores would be at like 10% if all the stores were doing it honestly
This has already cost me big time sitting through these transfers. My DM says my manager can finish them and I can move to the next customer. But the managers can’t sit with these people and they don’t know how to do half the stuff and sc--w it up and it just takes longer. Hire experience staff again or this needs to go away
My manager is walking new lines over this. It’s getting ridiculous. Too much pressure over a stupid metric
OMG. Me managers make us ask customers up front if they’re willing to pay and if not we have to do our best to try to take them out of buying a phone. And we can’t pull up their accounts cause they don’t want a survey or banner. This is the d-mbest metric we ever had. I thought we were gonna charge it to scare people away from doing it. Those boggles my mind. Luke give me a $10 spiff every time instead. Then it may be worth my time
there goes verizo. nickel and diming the customers again
@xea+1lVndSc8 yeah we are doing all of that. It's kind of nice though. It filters out the BS customers and also makes the people that you get stuck with worth it. Worth it as in fluffing company numbers and metrics. I agree though, as a rep, I won't be wasting any time on transfers. If they want a transfer I will give them the directions or make them an appointment to come back and do all my transfers in one day that's usually slow. It's so funny how the company can never figure this stuff out. They will do anything but fairly compensate us. The average verizon pay is $122,000/mo we are wayyyyyyyyyy under paid in this economy and for what we do.
Don’t get me started on this. I’ve been butting heads with my DM and my managers on this. And all the “successful” stores with this are telling how much they’re selling it and customers love that we’re offering it. My DM says call the successful for best practices. I haven’t had one successful store find me a best practice that isn’t shady. Some are charging warranty and insurance replacement setup that they’re not supposed to. Some are telling it’s mandatory like the upgrade fee and its $65 today. Others are making them order online so they get a setup fee charge with no box up count against them. Others are waiving activation fees and upgrade fees to charge setup fee instead. Some are charging for most general tech support, if you need password help they’re charging $30 to help reset a password. And why do watches, tablet and BYOD count against you? We should only be charging for phones for those that don’t have or get insurance.