which is funny because any rogers employee could've told you this wouldn't have worked. we had a 2 day training session on game center, half of it was explaining how to pitch the value for the cost only to find out the fuckin thing would be made free within a month anyways. after that we got a quiz from our manager because they found out an auditor was coming in to do one on ones to test our product knowledge. the auditor asked me how i felt about game center, and whether or not i was excited for it, and i was blunt. the conversation went as followed:
not to sound like a bitter ex-employee, but i was one of the people let go specifically because i was more customer service than sales (something i told my manager before i got hired). i would be the asshole who said things like "dude, you told me you watch stuff online. why are you paying $45 a month for a cable hookup when you can just upgrade your internet to unlimited for $15 a month? BOOM! i just saved you $360 a year."me: not really. i can watch games anytime i want. if it was a playoff game, i'd probably make a point to be at home and if i was stuck somewhere, it'd probably be somewhere i wouldn't have access to my cell or tablet like work. if i was out with my girlfriend or friends they'd understand a playoff game was on and we wouldn't be out. they know the drill.
auditor: (chuckles) well, you said you and your girlfriend don't have cable, so wouldn't you be able to see the value in edging (ie: making sure the customer leaves the store with something so) this over a traditional cable package?
me: i stream games illegally.
auditor: but the quality can't be that great.
me: compared to what, HD? i don't care. i want to see a game and at the end of the day you're competing with FREE. that's what you have to contend with, with my generation, you have to contend with FREE. with me thinking 'wow, my paycheque is pretty small this week. should i spend it on a service from rogers.. and to be honest most of the people i talk to all day think we're already ripping them off anyways.. or should i get it for FREE because i can google 'watch bruins hockey online' and have fifty links come up.. hmmmmm..
that's where rogers lost the plot. they stressed "value for quality" as their selling point a couple months into my year long stint there. that's business speak for "you're paying a lot, but look at all this other cool stuff you could get (if you pay for it)!". it's good to have in the back pocket, but known your limitations. i'm sure 95% of the population would rather have a cheaper cell phone/internet/cable package than 50 different services. i had to up sell EIGHT different things every time i spoke to someone, before i was let go. EIGHT. if you came in to get your broken cell looked at i had to drop the following questions:
- do you pay for your bills using your credit card? (rogers mastercard)
- does anyone in your house follow hockey? (rogers game center)
- are you planning on travelling anytime soon? (to the states: rogers stripes which is a pretty good service to be fair) (elsewhere: long distance value pack)
- do you have any other services with rogers? (rogers internet/cable/home phone/smart home monitoring/cell phones depending on which you didn't have)
- do you know when your contract ends? (rogers cell)
- have you heard about our smart home monitoring system? (rogers SHM)
- and whatever promotion we had going on at the time in the form of a question.
just because you came into the store to get your cell phone sent for repair. if we got a secret shopper, and we didn't ask each of these questions, we took shit from our managers because they would take shit from their district managers. fuck man.. they took out the bill payment machines at our store because the district manager felt we should be "engaging every customer" (ie: trying to pitch to people who were in the store solely to pay a bill). sorry, end rant.