Vantaggi
A store full of new technology and the ability to show it all off to customers. You get about 6 weeks off a year which is decent. It's easy to get along with the other sales colleagues and you find yourself making new friends quickly, if there weren't so many bad aspects it would be a great place to work. In theory there's a lot of training to increase your product knowledge and in turn increase your pay, although I was never sent on any even though it was promised and I kept asking. In-store training is good and covers a lot of things you need to know, and the online training system is very extensive.
Svantaggi
The tagline for Currys/PCWorld is "We start with you". It's just plain wrong, your job as a Sales Colleague is to upsell customers as much as possible. Simply selling the product that the customer wants with no extras is called a "dead sale". I can understand why the company wants to upsell, it's obvious, and I'm happy to sell the extras as long as that's what the customer wants, but that's not always the case. Let's say a customer comes in and they want a 40" TV and a HDMI cable. I'd get a better bonus offering specific TVs, I'd hit targets by selling certain cables (the insanely overpriced & unnecessary £80 HDMI cables), and I'd also hit targets by selling things like soundbars/stands/bluray players/installs. Why would I bother to show the customer the best TV for their money when I can hit my targets and get a better bonus by showing them something else? The targets are constantly hammered into you every morning briefing, you'll never get away from them and you will always be trying to hit them. If a customer has a budget, let's say £500, you are told to reserve some of that budget for addons (regardless of if they need or want them), choose a lower end product and try to push the customer to buy the addons. Maybe the customer is buying an iPad, sell them a cheaper iPad so you can addon Mcafee security. Not that you need that for an iPad, but don't tell the customer, just sell them as much as you can to hit target. The "We start with you" tagline couldn't be more wrong. The target system doesn't allow colleagues to care about what the customer wants, they've got no choice but to sell certain things or face disciplinary action. The amount of blatant lies I've heard colleagues tell customers just to get a sale is incredible. They are nice people, but they either mislead customers or face disciplinary. Offering the care plan with the first month free and telling the customer they can just cancel it straight away is the most common way colleagues hit their care plan target. Often this is coupled with a slight discount (maybe £10) off the item the customer is buying as long as it's something over £250 most of the time. Regardless of if the total sale is £250 or £1000 i rarely see a manager discount going above £20. And a customer simply will not get a discount if they don't take out the care plan. This is basically the company trying to get as many people as they can to sign up for the direct debit care plan and hope they forget to cancel it. Does this sound like a company that starts with you? I've heard colleagues on their breaks talking about "**** that customer, almost had care plan but they wouldn't go for it, I hope their product breaks the day after the manufacturer warranty runs out". Targets are driving this kind of mentality among colleagues and it's impossible to run a customer focused business when your staffs interests and your customers interests directly compete. Convincing a customer that they want to buy extras and pay more is a nice skill, but it's not good for the customer nor is a good customer service. Don't forget that Carphone Warehouse is now part of Dixons, if you work in a store with Carphone built in, you will be expected to refer customers over to Carphone. Maybe your customer is coming in-store to buy a fridge, don't forget to refer them to carphone warehouse after the sale. You need to get your name on that referral sheet or management wont be happy with you. I wasn't comfortable working like this and ended up quitting after a few months.
