Robert Stephens

In the following interview, Geek Squad mastermind Robert Stephens discusses the logic behind his first book, The Geek Squad Guide to Solving Any Computer Glitch, as well as time-tested methods for attracting and retaining top-notch employees, building a powerful brand, and pleasing the customer every time.

Explain the Geek Squad mystique: the police cars, the suits and ties, the agent language.

In the absence of a career in rock stardom, I was left with my knowledge of how to fix computers and solve problems. This is my attempt at glamorizing the unglamorous.

The Geek Squad is comprised of the top minds in computers. We solve problems that other people can't. Most corporations have their own internal support, but they get bogged down in projects or Y2K preparation. Sometimes there are problems they can't solve, and they need an outside source. That's what we are.

Our business is based on rapid response and adaptability. None of the people who work for me are certified by Microsoft or Apple, but they're kind of like Marines -- you use them when you need them, and they get the job done. Part of the idea for the pseudo-military/government look came from Men in Black and Ghostbusters. One thing that has made us successful is that we serve ordinary users -- from free agents to individuals within large billion-dollar corporations -- and they've said time after time that they like the people at the Geek Squad. So, when I hire someone, I'm not hiring just their technical ability; I'm hiring their personality. I want them to be polite, well dressed, and upstanding citizens. In our employee manual it says, "Polite driving of the Geekmobile is great advertising."

Do you find that computer engineers are attracted to the sexy side of technology?

Employees are growing more savvy about what companies they work for. They can get a job anywhere, especially in a workforce with such a low unemployment rate. You have to market to your employees, so one thing I have been telling people is that a lot of the image is not just for the business -- it's also to market to the employees, to attract the best people.

The success of that is evidenced by our really low turnover rate. My people get job offers from other companies and they stay because they get the badge and the Geekmobile. They like knowing that the company they work for is different.

How has the Geek Squad grown -- number of agents and service requests -- since you founded the company?

It started with me when I was in college. Four or five months after I was in business, I hired my first employee -- an administrative assistant -- and then I hired my first special agent. Over time, we just kept adding people as we needed them. And to this day, that's how it is. We're now hiring about one or two people a month. We're up to 30 special agents, and we get about 100 résumés a week. We hire about one person out of every thousand candidates.

The first couple of years, we were seeing double- and triple-digit growth, and now it's pretty much a steady 40% growth per year on average. But I can always use the people I have. If I doubled my staff tomorrow, within a few weeks, I could probably handle that growth.

It really comes down to, Can you fix my computer now? When can I have it back? How much will it cost? Your ability to satisfactorily answer all three of those questions determines the volume of your business. We control our growth because we won't hire people unless we feel that they're qualified. We don't risk our reputation. Every time our competitors drop the ball, we're there when those disappointed customers are shopping around, looking elsewhere.

And once they use us, they never go anywhere else. So it's a slow-growth thing, but it works really well.

Since the introduction of the iMac, which is designed to bring computing to the people, have you found that users are having fewer problems with their machines? Or just different problems?

Computers are getting easier to use, so you'd naturally think that people would not need support. But that's like saying that now that you can publish on the Web, books are obsolete. We're not sure of all the reasons why, but most of the stuff we do is not fixing broken stuff, but helping people do things. A lot of times it's for people who could do it themselves but don't want to figure it out. Computers have become easier, so more people are using them, and we have more potential customers out there.

Computers will get easier. They will crash less. But people will still figure out how to screw things up. They'll still delete files, and they'll still want to reengineer IT systems. Companies like ours will be happy to take their money.