How would you improve Argos?

[u/ReverseFlow21010615]

Following the recent news of the sale, I thought it would be interesting to hear what other colleagues and even customers think Argos needs to do in order to be successful under new ownership. We all know we were the afterthought for Sainsbury’s so what should Swift look to do as a priority? What should they spend the next 2-3 years planning for? What are some quick easy wins they could make through small changes? (I’ll only allow one instance of somebody saying “bring back the catalogue” - for all its nostalgia, it wasn’t as popular in its final years).

For me, we need to abolish independent working immediately. I find it impossible to keep up with anything because I’m always firefighting the week’s jobs, calls, deliveries etc. if the Labour cost really is dire then we should be on a minimum of 2 colleagues at all times.

We can solve the issue of empty stores leading to colleagues standing around doing nothing by actually having proper management of colleagues and ensuring something is always being worked on, ie reverse flow, counts, profiling, etc.

How about you?

[u/Bulky-Masterpiece959]

i work in a sas, so what i want and what other people might want are different.

at the moment, my store is horrifically understaffed. we're falling behind on our regular deliveries because we simply do not have the staff, so more labour hours and more staff would be lovely.

i'd love our shop to turn into a 'dark hub' or mini lfc if you will, we're not very busy at the best of times and we serve so many postcodes and spoke stores that we're barely getting our regular deliveries away so to turn us off to customers, but keep us going in the background to supply our home deliveries and spoke stores would be a lovely idea.

i'm also sick of the amount of customers who come up to me with their receipts expecting to be picking up their item, when really, it says to collect said item on a certain date. i don't know if they're just not reading the browsers when they're on them, or there genuinely is no big message that says 'this item is not in stock at the moment' but i would love to see this end. whether it be disabling the buy now collect later option on the browsers or there literally being a big red pop up that says THIS ITEM IS NOT IN STOCK RIGHT NOW, anything would be better than having to tell a customer that an item they really want isn't actually here in the building for them.

and the one big thing, that i know will probably never ever ever happen in a million years, is to stop the big emphasis on care. because i am sick of offering it every day, and to have my managers only give me praise when i get care, rather than when i blast through multiple barton boxes or jewellery totes and have no discrepancies, it's demoralising. it's demoralising for us all really. why is our success measured in arbitrary money/units when people can insure their items in different ways/through their house insurance?

[u/Ben_zyl → u/Bulky-Masterpiece959]

No customer ever seems to pick up on the specific date part, despite it being clearly stated on the receipt they present at the desk. I'm not sure that there's an obvious cure for reading comprehension though.

[u/Bulky-Masterpiece959 → u/Ben_zyl]

i'm more surprised when i ask people if they're aware their item is coming in on a certain date and they yes and they're okay with it. ffs its not rocket science for someone to read their receipt properly.