Visit to Reliance Digital

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Reliance Digital ran a promotion for bloggers through IndiBlogger, wherein they invited Indiblogger members to Reliance Digital Stores across Mumbai. I chose the store closest to my place and was pretty excited about the whole thing because we were promised stuff like a goodie bag and ipod shuffle for visiting and then for sharing our experience through a blogpost.

Before I go further about the experience I want to say that IndiBlogger and Reliance have made a real nice attempt at incentivizing such reviews/posts. But to the bad luck of all parties involved including the organizers and us.. this being a first time initiative, somewhere there were gaps in fulfilling expectations, resulting in a little negative talk on the IndiBlogger forums, but that’s just the rants, and not the positives that people don’t really post to the forums. Overall even if negative, reliance should take these as feedback to improve on.

Now to the experience, To my bad luck there was seriously heavy rain and water logging everywhere, I had to walk through almost knee deep water to reach the main road and find an auto. As it was on the second day add to that the rains, the IndiBlogger guys couldn’t/didn’t weren’t there at this store. The manager took my details and informed me that goodie bag for visiting the store would be handled by their head office, further about the reliance digital experience, heck the manager didn’t give me any of it, I was told to just look around. BTW some women bloggers mentioned they got a nice guided tour by the same manager, one girl said on the forum that the tour was an hour long. Now I’m not into hanging out with dudes, but this manager should have at least acknowledged that we were his guests and could have easily shown us around the store, it would have taken like 15 mins at the most and we would have got an opportunity to understand the store from his (Reliance’s) perspective, Now isn’t that valuable to a brand.

I don’t really won’t to make this about the freebies and gifts, and want to pass on some genuine feedback to Reliance.

  1. Nice work with your Gaming Section, only a few things:
    a. Update the PS3 logo the one you have on racks was changed in 2009.
    b. IDUs are for demoing games, and not for playing Videos of some senior management guys visit to the store and giving a pep talk/soft skills training to store staff.. Seriously why would you want your customers to see this.
    c. Adjust the screen resolutions on your PS3 IDU so that it is clear or may be that TV is crap.
  2. I saw a nice range of third party accessories from some reliance company brands, now unlike other stores these were quite reasonably priced, which is good thing but it would be better to display them alongside manufacturers Accessories so that people get a better idea on the price differences and so on. Instead you guys have an entire row with the Manufacturers Accessories and then another two rows of third party Accessories.
  3. Building further on the above mentioned point, you don’t need to put so much product on your shelves, to the extend that you need have extra self standing shelves in the gaps between the display table to the left hand side, people just can’t walk across if someone stand and looks at product on these shelves, further it just blocks the items on the Wall Shelves.
  4. Store Staff: while I was there only was I offered help by your staff, and that too he gave me wrong info another senior guy in blue uniform had to step in and correct him. I was approached twice by women selling Credit Cards, may be they were selling Reliance Cards and being a sister concern you guys should help and all that but not at the cost of your customer experience. why does a store need more than one agent and why can’t they at the billing counter, ShoppersStop and Croma both do that.

Overall you guys match Croma and the other guys in the neighborhood, I even saw the camera I wanted with the same price and Freebies as offered on Flipkart add to that your 0% EMI. But just being as good especially when Croma, Hypercity and eZone are all on the ground floor and you are on the second floor without even a board point to you (the list of shops at the entrance, doesn’t list you guys) isn’t really enough, you guys will need more just good prices or product range to get people coming back.

Frankly Speaking I could spend a couple of hours roaming around a Croma or Hypercity but going through a reliance or a ezone you feel like you are in D-mart, you just wanna finish buying and leave. Your loosing out on a lot sales from customers like me who may just pick up gadgets and electronics when casually visiting a store to kill time. And because I like going into the malad croma so much, that’s what I think of when I actually wanna buy something though I still buy Electronics like TV, Fridge from Vijay Sales, but I bother checking on what croma has to offer.

Anyways, it was fun anticipating that Goodie Bag to find out whats in it and all that (No one in the forums would say). And Reliance should may be do this more often, no need of giving iPod shuffles, but just hire mystery shoppers like me to gain feedback.