No layoffs, just position change and pay rate adjustment. Will be announced soon, within a few months. Looking to do it quietly similar to Plumbing Specialist change from a few years back.
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Given how much the virtual service team F's up quotes I know good and dam well axing my departments specialist will go over about as well as the Hindenburg. I am just a csa and given how often I see them arguing with VST i don't want to imagine....
Our Flooring Department has taken a severe dive. Sales have tanked. We lost two great Specialists and replaced them with someone who shouldn’t have made it in the building because they “had potential” This new system couldn’t come any sooner. To the poster who said Specialists will now be doing more tasking, that’s exactly what has happened. Sales are so low that they have no excuse to stand at the desk anymore. Meanwhile they can’t even clean up the department and complain when the part timer is not given a work list but they are. Why not? You guys are lazy entitled d-mbasses who wouldn’t survive in a real selling atmosphere. The Specialist are not happy and I couldn’t give any less fu--s. The most useless group and I will be glad to watch it dissolve. People say what will customers do when they want real help? Let’s be honest are they getting that now? At least their expectations will lower in time and we can get out of this constant push for sales that aren’t there like previous years.
Good riddance...Most of the specialists in a large majority of the stores seem like they come straight from the sheltered workshop. Truly putting the "Special" in specialist. Also, the whole mentality of "Too busy selling to load up a customer" or even recover the department needs to disappear with this position.
So probably time to cut some ASM's since Marvin is cutting all the specialist out of the picture. I mean who are the ASM's going to manage if there is no one to mange as far as specialists goes?
ASM’s and Store Managers won’t have anyone to point to for lagging sales and credit apps. The first time a customer is complaining about nobody knowing how to give a “ballpark” estimate, as they like to say, or even what materials they need to complete a project, the”upper management “ will panic because they have nobody to page to the department to put out the fire, while they run to the parking lot “for carts”.
That's why they started the all store meetings. The want you to drink the Koolaid and feel valued
In Region 27, South Florida market, all we do is redo the damn "ferrari showroom" with 24x24, 32x32, and 2ftx4ft tiles... comes in palletized vertically, we stack it to different pallets into the showroom, they want us to "stack it high and watch it fly" so they expect us to keep handstacking pallets over and over on top of one another. Now some id--t got an idea in R27 to build a gray platform that's narrower than a pallet and stack all this heavy tile on op of those platforms that are made to not allow a pallet jack or reach truck under neath it. So if a customer buys off the showroom floor most of the stack, it needs to be handstacked into their carts. This should be a safety violation with their ridicules expectations!!!!! So if they do away with specialists (which the writing is clearly on the wall due to CQ collecting payments from customers anyway now) than I'm out of this place..... no incentives will be left.
Correct. The business model in the stores is changing. Sales people everywhere(except pro) are going to be phased out and stores will mainly operate as product fulfillment centers, where part-time workers can handle a larger part of the workload. More and more people are shopping online not just for products but also projects. This streamlines the process and cuts costs for the company.
The flooring departments have now become nothing but tasking...heavy lifting, irp's, down stocking, constant resets, messy aisles and all with short staff. The specialists can't possibly focus their attention on selling and cultivating relationships, not to mention the very poor third party installation providers.
So yes, it's certainly possible that the position goes away and is handled remotely, this way the grunt work will get done and no bonuses will have to be paid out!
Lowe's: Never Stop Disappointing...
If the proposed process works like that, it smells like another opportunity to exploit the common person and quietly siphon the value from their lives and their assets, much like Uber or AirBNB does to the unsophisticated. The big company collects the money, the little guy is stuck with the depreciation. Disgraceful, if this is what is happening.
So if I understood @1rjv+1osQIDkk correctly, the process sounds like this:
- Customer gets onto the Lowe's website
- - Selects flooring product sold at Lowes
- - Selects installation options
- - Selects additional options
- The system calculates a price based on product, options, and square footage
- Customer pays.
- -The system then uses the zip code to route transaction to nearest Lowes store
- Nearest Lowes store sets project up for bid from local contractors.
- Lowes subcontracts with local contractor for installation
- Local installer purchases product from Lowes and completes the installation.
Is this how they are doing it?
Customers should just start going to a real flooring store instead of Lowe's. They will be better off.
Remote production office at my store gets all details and then sells projects .Several customers never even talked to a Specialist ,did everything online .Asked 'when is are flooring going to be installed " we purchased it online detail ,product & install .
Marv here. I know what I be doing. Deal wiff it.