Clients and Employees, I Can Assert That

¶ … clients and employees, I can assert that Blockbuster has encountered a serious decrease in domestic and worldwide rental revenues because of customer dissatisfaction, caused by Blockbuster's attitude towards consumers, high tariff rates, a poor scheme for late fees, lack of employee training and a selection of movies based almost entirely on new movies.

I will be analyzing all of these, as well as some of the possible solutions, but first I will note that the financial results released on the 30th of June, 2004, showed a 6.7% decrease in worldwide rental revenues decrease and a 7.5% decrease in domestic revenues. The main reason for this is costumer dissatisfaction.

Indeed, comments posted over the Internet showed that there are more and more consumers who are displeased with the services provided by Blockbuster and who have reported that they preferred to switch rental companies than have to rent from Blockbuster again. There are several reasons for this. First of all, most of them have reported that the company's store employees are poorly trained.

Many of the people who had previously worked with Blockbuster have confirmed this and have asserted that practically there is almost no training course for employees in stores.

This means a poor working relationship with the customers, both in terms of services offered (a training course may teach you how to interact with the customer) and in terms of the information offered (many customers have reported that the employees barely new what movies were in store and if they had certain movies, not to mention information related to the actual movies, like who directed, etc.). Second of all, the movie selection made in Blockbuster rental stores seems quite poor.

Indeed, the company seems to be addressing a single category of consumers, almost exclusively. These are customers who are interested in the newest releases and newest movies. Yes, but what about those who still enjoy a classical movie from time to time or a documentary? These persons don't seem to fit the ideal Blockbuster customer scheme and their preferences are ignored. Many of the customers have also complained about high tariffs, both for renting and for late fees, especially the latter.

In their opinion, the system that Blockbuster used for late fees meant that a high percentage of the company's revenues were realized from late fees, which seems unnatural. The problem here is that the customer is feeling cheated, because the company charges an extra renting period if you are even one hour late with the materials. This is not necessarily a problem, but many customers have complained about the fact that they have been charged on no reasonable basis, having turned the materials on time.

This and some reports that customers have been charged with losing materials, even if these were later discovered entitles me to believe that many of the Blockbuster rental stores suffer from poor organization and that they tend to blame all the possible issues on the customers. Reasonable to a point, we may admit that it can't be true that the customers are guilty for all misdoings.

Finally, it is clear that many store managers and employees simply don't know how to treat customers and are quite far away from the dictum that the customer is always right. This is an obvious consequence of the fact that they receive no previous training for the job and some are even not qualified to do it. Patience and consideration for the customer is the key to successful sales, however, this does not seems to be the case at Blockbuster, where many customers have been frequently bullied by the employees.

As such,.