GW new customer experience program?

[Wildeybeast]

Yep, same here. Plus my holidays and job security are pretty rad. You'd get plenty of expenses, but I can't imagine the base salary being amazing for a role where no qualifications or experience are required.

[Mr Mystery]

Yep, same here. Plus my holidays and job security are pretty rad. You'd get plenty of expenses, but I can't imagine the base salary being amazing for a role where no qualifications or experience are required.

Ditto. My wage isn't exactly earthshaking, but when I can pay 3% into my pension, and they put 13%? Yeah I'm not exactly going to ever walk away from that! Plus health insurance, income protection and that. Safe as houses (unless banks stop being naughty), and good progression.

Really hard to move, even if I wanted to!

[Deadlift]

No no no.

Apply for job. Not whine on interwebs.

Dont be silly, not everyone wants to work for GW but it does not mean they can't express their views. Me, GW couldn't afford me. I've employed a few ex staffers and I know the pay is ****e.

[Wildeybeast]

Yeah, I looked at the manager training course when I left uni and the starting salary was around £16k and that was pre-recession. Plus you had to be willing to be posted anywhere in the country.

[GravesDisease]

But what if I don't want an overkeen PR department telling me how to eat and what to think (see Microsoft:Xbox for more information).

[Brass Scorpion]

I can certainly say that the excitement level with the GW hobby appears to be down worldwide given their slipping sales numbers last year. I can also definitely see it in my own little corner of the GW universe, excitement level overall and the rate of gaining new hobby recruits is way down from just a few years ago.

Of course, GW could learn a lot about what's wrong free of charge from paying attention to the more cogent remarks they get from their customers through letters and online. Here's my own recent take on the situation at this link: [url]http://blog.spikeybits.com/2014/01/utter-chaos-gw-past-present-future.html[/url]

[crandall87]

Good to see GW acknowledging their stores need improvement and are doing something about it. Whilst this is a good idea I think in addition to this they should also be looking at successful independent stores and seeing what they do that works as well as looking at what isn't working in existing GW stores.

For example my FLGS is always full of people due to the amount of events and games they run. Granted it's not all Fantasy and 40k but they have managed to attract a lot of local people (such as magic players for example) to these games simply by hosting a lot of small tournaments and letting people game when they like on their tables, which of course attract interest. This is of course easier for independents who already have this customer base in store but it would be good if GW had more activities going on in their store as these will attract more interest from passers by than the boxes on their shelves.

Staff wise I think there should always be at least two staff members (I know it's not cost effective) and they should ditch the whole 'black book' sales mantra. I've been in the hobby on and off since 1998 but at every GW store I visit I'm treated like a n00b and always being offered glues and paints whenever I purchase miniatures and I feel like the staff believe I'm not aware that I need them.

I hope whoever gets the job comes up with some great ideas.

[Keef]

Fingers crossed, this could be goof news for both GW and us customers if it all goes well!

[Profadam]

If they are going to change the release schedule (as suggested by Eldar_Atog, above) then, perhaps, they should keep an eye on the sort of conversions people actually do, and either create full kits that make such conversions easier, or increase the amount of available sprues and odd bits available on the online store. More conversion kits, I say!

[phoenix01]

1. Advertize. TV, Radio, Magazines. Tell people about GW stores, what GW sells, that sort of thing. No one outside the gamer community really knows anything about GW. Get rid of White Dwarf and Warhammer Vision magazines. Use other third party magazines and blogs to tell people.
2. Get rid of the starter kits with the two armies like Dark Vengeance. Instead, take a plastic HQ/hero and two minimum size plastic troop choices/core units from each army, bundle with the starter kit templates, a small pile of dice (10 or so), and downloads for the mini rule book and a stripped down version of the codex/army book for the army in question. And by stripped-down version, I mean just the special rules for the army and the army list: no photos, no fluff, and no descriptions on what a particular unit is. For example, the Space Marine "starter" kit would have the Space Marine Commander, a Combat Squad with the old sergeant sprue, and a Scout Squad, along with the templates, dice, and downloads for $50 (you would essentially get the commander and the extras for free). Realistically, most new people would just buy one, and they wouldn't be saddled with models for an army they might never build. I know GW would take a loss, but so does Sony when they sell the Playstation consoles.
3. Start having coupons, sales, and BOGO offers. What isn't selling, offer at a 20% savings for a week. Allow your local store managers to determine a sale of the week item. Offer courses on how to paint or how to play (like they used to) with a single model kit of the student's choice upon completion up to a certain value ($35 for example). Or buy a tactical squad get a Rhino free. Another idea is to have a birthday program: on your birthday, you get a 10% off coupon on anything in the store and they also get to spam your email with advertisments.
4. Do away with free shipping at $50 for online sales unless shipped to a GW store. Most people buy enough online to get free shipping. So lets say shipping on a single box of Sternguard is $7, that means GW sold the Sternguard for $43 revenue.
5. Reduce prices by 10-20% on current prices, depending on what the box is. I'd be more likely to buy two tactical squads at $35 each and two rhinos at $30 (total of $100) than two tactical squads at $40 and two Rhinos at $37.25 (total of $154.50). I would then put down $50 on a another unit.
6. Get rid of the one man store paradigm. A one man store can't be open seven days a week (which is what most malls want to see). A one man store is ripe for theft.
7. Find better locations. Putting a store in a strip mall with nothing around to draw people to the store isn't going to help make sales.
8. Put a store in every geographic location. There are some US cities with three or four GW stores, but some US states with no GW stores.