Home Depot Case Study

Home Depot's Customer Service Case Study

Home Depot is an American based retailer of home improvement and construction products. Home Depot also offers services to its consumers. With its headquarters in Cobb County, Georgia, the company employs more than three-hundred fifty five-thousand people and operates two-thousand one-hundred sixty-four big-box stores across the world including, all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, Canada, Mexico and China (wikipedia.org). The Home Depot is the largest home improvement retailer in the United States and is the second largest retailer in the United States, behind Wal-Mart (wikipedia.org). The company employs more than three hundred thousand people in the United States alone. (retailindustry.about.com)

The values in which Home Depot guides their actions are in: taking care of our people, giving back to our communities, doing the right thing, excellent customer service, creating shareholder value, building strong relationships, entrepreneurial sprit, and respect for all people (corporate.homedepot.com). Many people in recent time do not believe in these values that are set forth by Home Depot. Under their customer service statement, it reads, "Along with our quality products, service, price and selection, we must go the extra mile to give customers knowledgeable advice about merchandise and to help them use those products to their maximum benefit" (corporate.homedepot.com). For a company to be based on excellent customer service, it just doesn't meet the consumers' standards. The standards of service should be there when shopping for home improvement. It is one thing to not have service for a clothing store, but for a home improvement and construction store it is unacceptable. There have been many complaints made by their consumers complaining about this crucial part in shopping.

Home Depot is known to have the cheapest prices when it came down to goods. But, now consumers are now doing their shopping at other home improvement centers, like Lowe's and Ace Hardware where the prices are slightly higher because they know that the service will be better than Home Depots'. The reason behind it, is that a customer could buy thousands of dollars at the store, and not have anyone help them, and also have a customer be frustrated and not spend a dime. The company had let the consumers believe that they don't care, either way, if you spent money or not.

There has been a huge uproar on this issue, my3cents.com, a blog, states "Top executives at Home Depot don't seem to understand the concept of customer service. Home Depot seems to have the worst customer service of any major company. From what I read, this problem goes all the way to the CEO, Bob Nardelli." Also on my3cents.com, a sales associate states that they have "poor management, rude bosses, and general disrespect among fellow employee."

In June, BusinessWeek reported that Home Depot's share price had dropped some 24 percent during the biggest home improvement boom in history. One big reason for the company's deteriorating foundation: unhappy customers, and lots of them. In fact, Americans ranked Home Depot's customer service as dead last against the nation's other major retailers (stevessilvers.com).

With all this said, it is time that Home Depot takes action against the complaints and work toward achieving what they were built on, excellent customer service. As a Strategy Specialist at FIDM Inc., I advise that Home Depot hire more employees on the sales floor to cater to every customer, install kiosks in the aisle ways for customer and also more employees at the service desks employee use to look up more details on items, and build a customer service program to improve their bottom line.

The reason in which customers are unhappy is because of customer service, and the easiest way to solve that is to hire more employees. I never understood why companies such as Home Depot has so many officers, 21 to be exact (my3sense.com), this list is only their vice presidents to CEOs, not to include their marketing team, advertising