Best Buy has created a decided advantage with its Geek Squad trouble-shooting and repair service and now the chain is looking to build on that point of difference by turning around computer repairs even more quickly.
The company recently opened a 165,000-square-foot Geek Squad City warehouse outside of Louisville, Kentucky. The facility was built to put it close to UPS's air hub in the city.
"This is all about giving the customer a better experience," Michael Rodgers, a spokesperson for Geek Squad City, told The Associated Press.
According to the news service report, the Geek Squad expects to repair more than 2,000 laptops daily at the facility. In total, the geeks are looking to make various fixes to more than 700,000 computers over the course of a year. The average time to repair a computer at the warehouse is three days.
Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group research company, told the AP that the Geek Squad repair service can provide a real competitive advantage for Best Buy.
"From a store perspective, I'm not aware of anyone else doing this," he said.
Samir Bhavnani, a research director with Current Analysis, said look for others to follow suit. "Oftentimes what an industry leader like a Best Buy does is force others people to kind of follow."
Discussion Questions: Does the combination of the Geek Squad visiting offices and homes and the Geek Squad City repair facility give Best Buy a clear competitive advantage in the personal computer market? Are consumers factoring services such as the Geek Squad, Apple's Genius Bar and Circuit City's Firedog in their initial purchasing decisions?