The Best Advice

July 19, 2010
For an informed view on connected entertainment in the UK & Ireland, visit Cue Entertainment 

The success of Best Buy’s plan to take on the likes of DSGi, Kesa and Argos was tested during a recent visit to the flagship Best Buy store in Thurrock. With £2,000 burning a hole in his pocket and ready to be spent on the latest generation of home entertainment hardware, the Cue Entertainment mystery shopper was prepared to be impressed.

The reality was some way from the expectation and raised doubts about implementing the brand promise to bring “a new level of advice and support” to the UK buying public. It also underlined the difficulty faced by any major CE retailer: How do you differentiate between good and bad quality hardware and still make the bottom line?

The days when “digital” was inevitably accompanied by the tag “CD quality” are long gone, as listeners to DAB radio know well. Today, the word digital is more of a euphemism for “small, portable and multi-purpose” and quality has no place in that environment.

Bucking the trend towards the merely acceptable, Blu-ray Disc is at the pinnacle of audio-visual achievement. Companies such as Sony DADC, Deluxe Digital and Technicolor spend many thousands on quality control, building specialised sound and vision monitoring rooms and training staff in order to ensure that Blu-ray masters are as good as they can be.

In combination with the very best 1080p flat screen and a high-end 7.1 sound system, the experience is almost like being there, which is what gives the format the right to call itself a premium product and helps to sustain a premium price for Blu-ray content. This matters, if we are to have a high-quality carrier for future 3D entertainment.

The trouble is, few people actually go to a genuinely live event any more. Without the exposure to the dynamic range and subtlety of an acoustic performance, consumers have no point of reference from which to understand why one system may be better than another. Audiences listen to amplified speakers and watch large digital screens of varying quality in the cinema, theatre, the concert hall and even at sporting events. Live music and drama is more often than not experienced through the intermediary of an electronic, aka digital, fog.

Achieving universal agreement on what is “hifi” and what is not can be difficult. There’s an egalitarian approach to the quality of sound based on the philosophy that if you like what you hear, the system must be good. It can be reminiscent of the radiogram enthusiasts in the 1960s that judged the quality of the sound by the gloss on the plywood veneer.

One company’s slogan has encapsulated a benchmark for audio quality for over 70 years. Quad, founded by Peter Walker in 1936, has always sought to offer “...the closest approach to the original sound.” Those few words are probably as near as we can get to a definition of good audio; the sound system in the home should first and foremost reproduce the intentions of the audio engineer. After that, the owner can mangle it for his or her own delight.

Then we come to the pictures. The image on many flat screens is just that: flat. Low contrast images, blacks that are grey, brightness that can’t compete with daylight and which turns to gloom when off-centre. It is a world of distorted aspect ratios where you can never be sure whether your favourite performer has put on a few pounds or been on a crash diet.

As our mystery shopper approached the wall of flat screens at the far end of the Best Buy store, the blue-shirted assistants were happy to remain in the background until needed. Having made themselves known, they leave the customer to browse until the benefit of their product knowledge is required. It’s a refreshing change from the pushy commission-based types to be found in some stores.

Some of the screens appeared so poor that it is hard to imagine they will find ever find a customer while other, often lower-priced, examples could be seen to sparkle. The promise of a “truly impartial and expert service” was tested by this disparity, since the average shopper is probably replacing a screen that is at least five years old and has little understanding of the changes that have taken place since the previous purchase. While it might seem reasonable to assume that things can only get better, unfortunately this is not the case.

While the blue shirts dealt easily with factual matters such as the number of HDMI connectors or the relative price of plasma, LCD and LED screens, matching the appropriate technology to the shopper was a more challenging task. Few questions were asked about viewing angles and room sizes and almost no answers were provided on why one screen might be better than another. Our shopper’s decision to go for a high-end 37” LED screen with internet connection was based more on previous research than the information provided in store.

With around £500 to spend on a surround sound system, the choice was inevitably limited but there was one essential: wireless rear speakers. Our shopper was directed towards “The only system that does that”, which seemed to be acceptable., A request for a demonstration, however, was met by the insertion of an inappropriate chart CD in stereo playing on the shelf in the open store. This was hardly the perfect audio monitoring environment in which our mature shopper would commit to expenditure of several hundred pounds for a home cinema sound system, never mind the fact that the right front speaker could not be made to work.

Only at the end of the visit was a pile of Sony home cinema sound systems spotted next to the help desk, clearly marked as available with “Wireless surround sound rear speaker kit”.

Having added a £550 Blu-ray & HDD disc receiver/recorder to the list, our shopper asked for detailed product information to take away. No brochures were available but the ever-helpful blue shirt offered a local printout of the products selected. It took over 15 minutes to find a printer that worked, which was then used to print out details from an online price-comparison site that showed lower competitors’ prices for the same item. Our shopper made an excuse and left, and was last seen talking to a specialist retailer on the Kent coast.

A recent Which! survey of 14,000 consumers in 100 high street stores, quoted on the Radio 4 programme “You and Yours” this week, revealed that customer satisfaction at Currys and PC World stores hovers around 50%, with Comet and Tesco not doing much better. John Lewis and the specialist retailer Richer Sounds are reportedly “streets ahead”, with a 78% approval rating.

Which! editor Martin Hocking told the BBC: “The gap between the best and worst is nowhere greater than between electrical stores. The determining factor between a great retail experience and a not-so-great one in electricals is all round that customer service,” he said. “You want that reassurance that you are not just being passed off with a product that suits the store’s interests.”

On the basis of a single visit, Best Buy has some way to go to catch up with the leaders in terms of customer service, though it has clearly got some things right. Missing is the feeling that the staff really understand the products they are selling, not just the technical stuff but from the quality standpoint.

If you are buying from the leaders in the Which! survey you can believe that all salespersons have the best system they can afford installed in their home. With the electrical superstores, you have the impression that an iPod and a pair of earphones would make the seller’s life complete.

We might be caught in a downward digital spiral that ends with an almost infinite number of handheld screens, each with its tiny, tinny, pseudo-stereo speakers.