Upper Management out of touch with customer base
Logistical supply chain is nothing short of a nightmare, leading to upset customers, loss of business, major wholesale losses, accounts move to competitors due to logistical problems, storefronts become dead, workers become jaded.
Vast majority of parts/consumables that customers actually want must be ordered, 7 times out of 10 it's completely unavailable or won't get there for 1-14 days. Customers want parts now, MANY sales lost due to this.
Cookie cutter corporate floor plan gutted our stores during remodel. Zero regard for our building's floor plan was given.
Stores extremely understaffed for the actual workload, leading to disorganization and dissent, furthering the logistical problem as workers stop caring. Critical positions are unfilled, no dispatcher, no warehouse person, not enough delivery drivers or counter people. Workers often fulfill multiple roles out of necessity. Everyone is way overworked.
Counter requires specialized knowledge in order to thrive, but McDonalds pays more to flip burgers.
Training is non-existent, it's simple to skip through the training videos and do the quizzes if you already know what you're doing, but that's all you get, online training videos. Never hands on unless your coworkers step in to help.
Online catalog is woefully incomplete, leading to awkward interactions with customers(what is the lb-ft range of this torque wrench? I have no idea, let me Google it...EMBARASSING) CRITICAL details missing from THOUSANDS of parts descriptions. Many details are also flat out wrong, or photos incorrect. PPSE is a DISASTER. Search terms often return nothing, or something not even close to what was searched. Filter options almost never filter correctly, often excluding options that should be within the filter range.
Logging in to your company online profile is a pain, requiring triple authentication through several stages, one of which will often fail due to password errors.
Lost resources are never replaced. Our starter bench tester has been broken for years.
Online purchase option often misleading, customers call almost every day asking if the " buy online, pickup in 30 minutes" advertisement is true. IT IS ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE. This can sometimes lead to conflict when customers DO NOT call first. Unnecessary.
Overall price points are out of control. Many customers will not even buy items on sale. NAPA is paying too much for its inventory and the markup for resale is just pure greed. I've done the math, some items are over 1000% markup, a $10 tool for $110. I'm not joking.
And on top of all of this they are laying people off and never replacing those positions, making the problem significantly worse over time.
