“One reason Best Buy has been around for 43 years is that we have been able to evolve,” said Barry Judge, Best Buy’s Chief Marketing Officer at Wednesday’s Forrester Consumer Forum (#FCF09) in Chicago. It’s a tough landscape, especially with competitive retail giants Amazon.com and Wal-Mart delivering consistently low prices on electronics. So how does Best Buy differentiate? Our people and our culture, Judge said. The “Blue Shirts,” as the company calls its employees, seek to deliver upon the following promises to customers:

• Make sure you know all we know.
• Deliver an experience that inspires you.
• Blow you away with the latest and greatest.
• Never leave you hanging.
• Make a difference.

Judge said that he admires Zappos and its company culture centered on happiness. Happiness is a customer loyalty strategy that Best Buy is striving toward, because at the end of the day, Judge said, “We sell the same products [as our competitors], What’s different is how we sell it.” Judged pointed out that often times, for customers, it comes down to price, but in many cases, customers need hand-holding after the sale, to figure out “How do I turn this thing on?” That’s where the Blue Shirts come in.

In his keynote presentation, Judge touched upon the following points:

Transparency

“Transparency is one of the biggest trends coming our way,” Judge said. The CMO, who is active on Twitter, also blogs quite frequently about successes and challenges at Best Buy and in the industry.

Dream Support

For Best Buy, Dream Support embodies the customer journey. Asking customers what are their dreams and what they hope to do with technology enables employees to engage in lasting relationships. Judge explains this on his blog: “Our mission is to make our customer’s technology dreams come true. To help them realize the promise of technology by inspiring them with the possibilities while also taking care of the problems that get in the way. For us, we call this “Dream Support,” and is the internal (inside our Company) articulation of what we aspire our Brand to be. The customer facing language for this is “Buyer Be Happy,” which will be our new tag line beginning this Summer.”

Customer Service 2.0

In today’s world, Judge said, “You have to find people and look for conversations. You become as accessible as you can be in helping people get what you need.” Best Buy has gotten credit for its participation on Twitter. It’s Twelpforce handle listens to conversations and also helps people with their consumer electronics and questions regarding Best Buy products and services. Best Buy’s service partner Geek Squad is also on Twitter, serving customers in a more immediate manner.

On December 25, Best Buy will launch Supportopedia, a forum site that encourages customer conversation and allows participants to rate and review various posts and responses. Expect to hear more about that soon, Judge said.

Social Shopping

“Facebook is a major platform for us now,” Judge said, referencing the company’s fan page and use of the Open API. The page allows customers to shop for products within the Facebook platform. Judge said he thinks it is the only brick and mortar company to put its catalog on the social networking platform. Best Buy has just shy of 900,000 fans, but Judge said that he expects that number to shoot up after the company launches several new Facebook projects this winter.

“This year Facebook and Twitter is where you had to be,” Judge said. “Next year mobile is where you will have to be.”

Mobile

Realizing that customers often use phones in stores to access product information, compare prices, and read reviews, Judge said Best Buy is working to include mobile into in-store shopping experience. Additionally, he said that he expects that Blue Shirt employees will soon be armed with mobile devices in stores, too.