Komplett.ie Launches Free BYOPC Classes For Customers

Key Facts

·       Komplett.ie is today launching free Build Your Own PC (BYOPC) classes for customers, existing and new

·       The classes will be conducted by Komplett engineers over several hours and will involve theory and practical work

·       Small classes and one-on-one interaction will ensure that students get personalized advice to match their own needs

·       Enrolment for the first class to be held on Saturday 14^th March is now open

·       Enrolment is open to all, including people who do not already have an account with Komplett

·       Those interested should send an email to business.ie@komplett.com

·       Komplett will also begin publishing a series of BYOPC and overclocking related guides in the coming weeks

In Detail

Dublin, 27th February 2009, Komplett.ie is today opening enrolment for Build Your Own PC classes. The classes aim to give students the knowledge and confidence to successfully build, maintain and upgrade their own machines from the ground up; thus furthering Komplett’s overall aim to bring more value to the Irish market as more people become able to reap the savings brought about by building a PC from individual components.

The small classes will commence on Saturday 14^th March and will be conducted by Komplett engineers who have years of experience working on the component-level.

Students will learn both the theory behind building their own PC’s as well as getting practical hands-on experience, and they are also more than welcome to bring along their own components if they want to walk out with a built/upgraded PC as well.

“Building a PC from scratch is far cheaper than purchasing a pre-built machine from even the most streamlined of operations like Dell or HP, and the savings on offer increase exponentially with higher-performance machines,” said Shelton Romhanyi, Komplett Ireland’s RMA labs manager. “Building a PC is also far easier than many people might imagine, and it’s really 60 percent a confidence issue and only 40 percent a knowledge issue. We want to give people both the knowledge and the hands on experience required to go out and build or upgrade their own PC’s, and hopefully impart that knowledge to their friends as well.”

Anyone interested in enrolling should contact business.ie@komplett.com, and enrolment is open to all, including people without an existing Komplett account.

As a part of its ongoing Buyer’s Guide series of articles Komplett will also be putting up Build Your Own PC and Overclocking guides in the coming weeks.

Our Buyers Guide’s… A Good Idea?

Our country manager for Ireland started out in life as a technology journalist before moving his way up into the world of management, and this influence can be clearly seen in our recently launched series of Buyers Guides.

The idea was conceived one day after a trip to an electronics retailer where the sales staff did an impressive job pushing this product and that. This human-element is something we obviously have a little trouble replicating from a web shop point of view.

So we came to the idea of putting up buyers guides – they are a popular editorial feature on any website and genuinely of use to consumers.

Of course, on the flip side, one might say that we’re not the most unbiased of sources for this information… A perception we hope will be dispelled after you read one of the guides. Buyers guides don’t work if they’re fluff – and some of the guides you’ll find in magazines and other print media are just that, with the products being chosen – and sometimes even the copy written – by the advertisers. Some of it is just bad writing and space filler.

To get people to make purchasing decisions from buyers guides they have to be unbiased, and we go for the straight-shooting approach: Clearly point out the advantages and disadvantages to owning a product. In our monitor buying guide we make no qualms about telling you that a 98 euro monitor is a good deal if you’re looking for something cheap and cheerful, and spend the 259 euro only if you want a monitor for high-end gaming and media usage.

We’re going to be expanding the buyers guide concept into How-To’s in the coming weeks. We’ll begin with fairly simple how-to-build-your-own-PC articles, then move into overclocking. The basics that’ll enable people to make use of the components we sell. We’ll also continue the buyers guide concept, of course.

Of course the wider internet is a great source of up-to-the-minute information on products. There are so many review sites and comparison databases out there that it’s not hard to find out everything about a product before you buy. And on the internet you have far more time and more unbiased information sources to learn from than when you’re in a store and the sales guy is pushing you towards the till.

What do you think of our buyers guides? Are they unbiased, in your eyes? Useful?

LG, Good For Monitors…

…Not so much for the postal business:

Komplett Offers Discounts To Customers Who Recycle

Key Facts

·         On top of its statutory requirement to recycle under WEEE, Komplett is offering a special discount to customers who recycle their old computer equipment

·         A flat 5% discount is being offered on orders where customers return

o    Functional old PC’s, laptops, monitors, peripherals or other gadgets such as GPS sets

·         The company is also highlighting that customers who purchase an item, such as a new TV, can return their old item under WEEE for recycling by Komplett

·         The discount is being offered to both businesses and consumers

In Detail

Dublin, 16th February 2009, Komplett.ie is offering a special 5% discount on orders to customers who return old functional computer equipment as a special incentive to promote recycling above and beyond the statutory WEEE requirements.

The company will offer the 5% discount to any customer who returns or endeavors to return functional equipment such as old PC’s, laptops or monitors; and the discount applies to both business and consumer customers.

“What we’re trying to do is promote the recycling of computer equipment that still has a functional life ahead of it that is nevertheless sitting in attics or unused under desks,” said Aaron McKenna, country manager for Komplett Ireland. “There’s a huge amount of usable kit that’s sitting idle whose owners aren’t recycling it because they figure if it still works why throw it away, even if they’re not using it.”

Komplett is also attempting to highlight the WEEE mandated recycling laws that obligates sellers to take back an item, functional or not, for recycling after a consumer has bought a similar item from them.

“If you purchase a new TV from us you are perfectly entitled to return your old one, dead or alive, when you pick it up. We’d much rather recycle it for you than see it go into a landfill or elsewhere,” said McKenna.

Customers wishing to learn more and/or avail of the discount scheme can contact Komplett Customer Care at service@komplett.ie

Broadband In Ireland, It Just Sucks

Broadband in Ireland sucks! Speaking as an e-commerce operation, this is naturally of some concern from a commercial point of view. It’s also affecting us right now in an operational sense, given that our National Ethernet Network broadband connection (synchronous up/down line) has gone ssslllloooowwww, the third time in as many weeks as we’ve had an interruption to service… And we pay the salary of a civil service clerical officer for this line.

From an e-commerce point of view it obviously helps people buy online if they have an internet connection. Moreso than this, the faster and more reliable and affordable the internet connection is, the more consumers will use the net and become more comfortable doing things like shopping online. It’s a mindset thing.

It’s difficult to be a confident internet user when you can hardly get good dial up in your area, or the net connection is sporadic and frustrating to use.

The government’s latest thing is rolling out over the air broadband solutions across the parts of the country where the actual infrastructure isn’t in the ground. All fine and dandy, but in reality we’ll have to wait for WiMax to really hit and roll out before over the air broadband is a viable solution – WiFi and 3G networks used by the likes of 3 Mobile and Clearwire/Irish Broadband gets very cluttered and lagged very easily. And WiMax will take time to roll out.

As is usually the case Ireland is several years behind the UK, Europe and the US (and, of course, about two decades behind Scandinavia and parts of Asia like S. Korea and Japan) in our IT infrastructure. Naturally that makes our job as an e-commerce player that bit more difficult. One more reason why we’ve been rolling out our Pick Up Point and Pay-At-The-Counter solution – if you’re not comfortable on the net, you sure aren’t comfortable paying online. So, order online and pay when you get to us.

What we’d really rather see is an infrastructure rolled out in a cost effective and speedy manner. Google managed to blanket San Francisco in WiMax several years ago and the Scandinavians have fiber running up beyond the arctic circle. The Irish former state telco, with Irish government backing, is still falling around the place trying to dig cables in Dublin with enough bandwidth to give us internet connections our near neighbors have had for years for over inflated prices and with poor reliability. It does seem a bit of a joke.

End rant.

Collective Bargaining

There is naturally a lot more focus on bargains these days, and one of the bargain hunting efforts is with Newstalk’s breakfast show. They’re asking people to email in bargains they have or see around the place, and are sending out a daily email (into which we’ll throw a bargain or two when we get new ones on hand).

It’s really worth a look, and if you do see something good going it’s a case of what-goes-around-comes-around in terms of telling other folks about it.

Connecting With Communities

I’m sure it has been done to death, but Ireland is a very multicultural society these days with people of many nationalities now calling the island home (not for the weather, at least.)

As a retailer we’ve found it to be quite a good challenge to reach out to these people – for example Polish, Chinese, Latvians or Hungarians – who tend to have a very tight-knit community organized in the country, the same way that the Irish did when we were emigrating en-masse to a new land.

On the one hand you can say that one shouldn’t pigeon hole your customers – and we really don’t. On the other hand, you have several groups of people – contained within is as diverse a group of consumers with different expectations and buying habits as found anywhere else – who are generally reached through tighter-knit social communities owing to their relatively recent arrival here.

We’ve had really good fun making contact and dealing with the different communities around the country, and we’ve also learned a thing or two from the resourcefulness and real classic social-networking nature of dealing with migrant communities. It has also been an eye-opener to the world that sits unnoticed on our front porch – For example, if boards.ie is a big Irish community online that is very well known, there are several such communities for various different national groups here.

It could be said to be a very personalized relationship that begins to exist between your customers that transcends the “Reach XX thousand ABC1 consumers” that comes from dropping an advertisement in the Sunday Independent. You have to be more on the ball as a seller to make contacts with the super-networkers, the guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who can get you this or needs that.

A classic example is a guy who buys parts from us twice a week, assembles PC’s for people around him and also passes them along to us for their other needs – we have a really good relationship, shift a lot of tin on his account, and he passes us back customers in return.

We’re all for dealing creatively with entrepreneurial people (from anywhere, Latvia or Louth); finding new and creative ways to connect to our customers; and generally learning and re-learning the lesson that if we go that extra mile for our customers to make life easier, we’ll ultimately win a lot more business from that customer and their friends. It’s all about making 1-to-1 relationships in which you, our customer, knows that you can contact us with any problem or request that we can work on for you.

“The Customer Is King”

Komplett in Ireland grew through word of mouth. A guy who bought from us told a gal who needed something we sold who told her mother who told her brother, and so on and so forth. Until recently we spent relatively tiny amounts on actual external advertising. Positive customer experiences passed on to potential customers is what has grown us a market in Ireland.

It is clichéd to say that “the customer is king”, and I don’t quite know how many companies understand or adhere strictly to that mantra, but in Komplett we’re constantly driving home the message that a happy customer is a customer who will not only buy from us again, but who will recommend us to a friend.

That’s not to say that we can satisfy everyone every time – and I’ll hold up my hands on behalf of us all and admit that, be it circumstance or human error, we’re not always the 100% we want to be. That being said, if you buy a TV from us and come to collect it from the pick up point the lads are not going to hesitate to help you fit it into your car, now that you’ve noticed how big a 42” TV actually is. (Yes, it comes as a shock to many.) We’re all about trying to be helpful, in customer service, pick up point or returns.

We also really, really, really want to keep touch with our base. That’s why we have such a strong presence on boards.ie, which acts as both a customer service channel and a very good way to keep in touch with the feeling of our customers. (Boards is a really cool place generally, and you should check it out if you don’t know it already.) That’s why we have this blog. That’s why we ask customers about their shopping experience in the pick up point. That’s why we’re thinking of calling customers after an order has been fulfilled to see what they think. What would you think if we did that? Maybe an email would be better?

Word of mouth will make or break Komplett in the future as well. Do you think we have the best customer service? Please please please tell a friend Do you think we suck? Tell us, tell us and we’ll respond! In the forums, on the phone, in emails, on this blog or in the pick up point. We want to hear it.

Build & Overclock Your Own PC Workshops, Coming Soon

Components are our bread and butter. We may be driving a big wedge into the mainstream consumer end of TV’s, GPS sets and MP3 players, but where Komplett began is in computer components. Graphics cards, CPU’s, cases, coolers and suchlike. This is an audience we both understand and love.

People like to build their own PC’s because it gives them greater control over what they’re getting, and it’s way, way cheaper than buying a boutique (or even a generic office) PC from the likes of Dell. With Dell and HP and so on, you’re really buying the lack of hassle and the warranty. A lot of folks like to build their own.

We also realize that a huge amount of people get their more technically minded friends to build PC’s for them, mainly because they don’t know how to build their own. To be honest, it’s not that difficult… It’s more of a confidence issue.

So we figure, we have a Dublin office now. It’s full of hardware. And technically minded returns engineers. So, why not put two and two together and get workshops for small groups to learn how to build their own? And for more advanced users, how to overclock safely?

We’re going to begin taking bookings shortly, and if you’d like to express your interest here feel free. We’ll see if it’s popular and if it works out it could become a bit of an institution…

The Cultural Differences Between The Dutch And Irish Customer…

An insightful little comparison of the shopping habits of the Irish and Dutch consumer came to our attention this morning when we looked at the Garmin Zumo 550, a GPS set designed for bikes. It displays alleyways and back roads and is generally better attuned to the specific driving challenges and navigation of being on a motor or regular bike.

Of course in Holland, where they have two bikes for every person or something like that, there’s a big and obvious market for this sort of thing; so much so that our Dutch colleagues were amazed that the 550 isn’t selling nearly as well in Ireland as in Holland.

I had to patiently explain that in Ireland many drivers consider cyclists to be more targets of opportunity than fellow equals on the road.

That jokey anecdote aside, we do have plenty of cyclists in Ireland and the Zumo 550 is probably worth a look if you’re an avid biker, or work as a courier.