Home Depot 2013 Annual Report Download - page 8

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Customer Service
Our Customers. The Home Depot stores serve three primary customer groups, and we have different customer service
approaches to meet their particular needs:
• Do-It-Yourself ("DIY") Customers. These customers are typically home owners who purchase products and complete
their own projects and installations. Our associates assist these customers with specific product and installation
questions both in our stores and through online resources and other media designed to provide product and project
knowledge. We also offer a variety of clinics and workshops both to impart this knowledge and to build an
emotional connection with our DIY customers.
• Do-It-For-Me ("DIFM") Customers. These customers are typically home owners who purchase materials and hire
third parties to complete the project or installation. Our stores offer a variety of installation services targeted at
DIFM customers who purchase products and installation of those products from us in our stores, online or in their
homes through in-home consultations. Our installation programs include many categories, such as flooring, cabinets,
countertops, water heaters, and sheds. In addition, we provide professional installation in a number of categories
sold through our in-home sales programs, such as roofing, siding, windows, kitchen and bath refacing, furnaces, and
central air systems.
• Professional Customers. These customers are primarily professional remodelers, general contractors, repairmen,
small business owners and tradesmen. We recognize the unique service needs of the professional customer and use
our expertise to facilitate their buying experience. We offer a variety of special programs to these customers,
including delivery and will-call services, dedicated staff, expanded credit programs, designated parking spaces close
to store entrances and bulk pricing programs for both online and in-store purchases. In fiscal 2013, we launched a
mobile app for our professional customers, which enables them to see multiple stores' inventory at one time,
provides them with direct access to our pro desks, and gives them other functionality to help them better manage
their businesses. We also introduced Pro Xtra, a new loyalty program that provides our professional customers with
discounts on useful business services, exclusive product offers and a purchase tracking tool to enable receipt lookup
online and job tracking of purchases across all forms of payment.
In fiscal 2013, we undertook a number of projects and new developments to enhance our customers' shopping experiences.
Our goal is to remove complexity from the stores to allow our associates to focus on our customers. As noted above, as of the
end of fiscal 2013, approximately 60% of our store labor hours were dedicated to customer-facing activity. We also rolled out
a new initiative in fiscal 2013 called Project Simple to reduce unnecessary store reports, store-based emails and meetings that
kept store management from selling activities. To assist our BOPIS and BOSS customers, we rolled out a new customer
service training for our associates called Customer FIRST for the Interconnected Customer, which stresses the importance of
quick customer pickup of merchandise. To support this initiative, we enabled our First Phone mobile handheld devices to
complete BOPIS and BOSS transactions from anywhere in the store. Now our online customers can come into the store,
retrieve their merchandise and complete the transaction without having to stand in line at the cash register. During fiscal
2013, we also revamped our freight flow process to improve our in-stock rate and accuracy of our on-hand inventory count
while also shifting more of the stocking activity to take place when stores are closed so as not to interfere with our customers'
shopping experience.
In fiscal 2013, we continued to automate our special order and installation process to improve transparency and
communication and to simplify the customer experience. In addition, we are rolling out Install to Go so that our third-party
installers can accept payment on their mobile devices from our DIFM customers, an added convenience for both our
installers and customers. We also completed the integration of two companies acquired in fiscal 2012 that provide services to
our customers – a flooring measurement company and a kitchen and bath refacing company. These acquisitions enable us to
increase our control over the installation process and serve as a single point of contact for our customers, which in turn
strengthens and unifies our customers' home services experience under The Home Depot brand.
We help our professional, DIY and DIFM customers finance their projects by offering private label credit products in our
stores through third-party credit providers. In fiscal 2013, our customers opened approximately 2.8 million new The Home
Depot private label credit accounts, and at fiscal year end the total number of The Home Depot active account holders was
approximately 11 million. Private label credit card sales accounted for approximately 23% of sales in fiscal 2013.
Our Associates. Our associates are key to our customer service initiative. We empower our associates to deliver excellent
customer service through our Customer FIRST training program, and we have a number of programs to recognize stores and
individual associates for exceptional customer and community service. At the end of fiscal 2013, we employed approximately
365,000 associates, of whom approximately 22,000 were salaried, with the remainder compensated on an hourly or