Dixons disrupted the Carphone Warehouse culture. Long-serving Carphone staff are leaving quickly due to company politics and lack of organisation.
- Ever since the 2014 merger, contract discounts and perks were lowered.
- Compared to other telecommunications companies, the basic wage was low. Yes, we did get bonus which was tiered, but it also depended on a couple of factors such as the World Class Service Score (WCSS) and the store's overall sales. They recently (as I was leaving) changed the bonus structure which had a mixed effect. It negatively affected stores who used to continually met targets and get 100% bonus, because this change made it much harder to get 100%. But for stores who struggled before to get 100% bonus, it had a positive impact as it made it viable to get maybe approx. 70% at least.
- They still expected you to sell a large variety of products which they gave no formal training on and paid you lower than industry average.
- No consistent focus i.e. heavily pushed and told to sell antivirus and cloud products for 2 weeks then it suddenly disappeared.
- Huge push on Broadband with zero training, you had to fluff your way into convincing the customer
- Lack of communication from top management downward.
- Regional Managers (RGM's) changed so often, and they seemed disconnected to reality and what was going on at the lower end.
- RGM's did not care for external factors, the store were pressured to constantly hit targets.
- IT was outsourced, so solutions took longer than necessary.
- IT and Customer Service had a bad habit of panning you off to one another because they claimed it was not their department but the other who would fix it.
- Incredibly difficult to get maintenance to get anything fixed in your store as tickets need to be escalated numerous times before getting any response.
- It was challenging to work in an environment where there was such a high rate of staff turnover.
- Often not given the correct tools to do our job properly – old/slow/buggy software or cheap equipment that broke easily and often.
- No formal training on how to operate the computer system – very much on-the-job-training every day as new problems emerged. Training at the academy was useless as none of it was used in store. When you went to your branch, the manager would say "forget everything you were taught at the academy". No formal training on even the basics of the job - returns, refund processes or running credit checks.
- Few opportunities to progress as it appeared Dixons Carphone favoured external recruitment processes. Bad selection of managers.
- No cohesion between departments and subsidiaries i.e. customer services don't know the processes which occur in store and incorrectly advise the customer, leading to in store getting the brunt of it and a bad customer experience; subsidiaries sending customers in store to fix their issues we can't physically fix on the system.
- Store customer issues were often on-going for weeks as no one was able to help due to lack of knowledge or lack of support from relevant parties.
