Microsoft "gurus" will help you choose Vista in retail stores

Somehow I missed this one a few days ago, but colleague Gina Hughes gave me the heads up last night: As part of its $300 million marketing campaign to promote Windows Vista, the company is planning to deploy customer service reps into major retailers like Best Buy and Circuit City, where they can "help people with their PC purchases." (Hey, they can't spend all that money on Jerry Seinfeld alone!)

The company says it will have 155 so-called "gurus" in stores by the end of the year. What will gurus do? "Answering questions" and "giving demos" is all that this MSNBC story mentions... but one has to imagine the truth is going to involve a little bit of the old hard sell.

In explaining the move, Microsoft says that it's "borrowing a page from Nordstrom with that retail customer experience," and at least one observer is comparing the program to Apple's retail "geniuses." The analogy isn't quite perfect, though: Both Nordstrom and Apple customer service reps work for the stores in which they are stationed, while Microsoft will be positioning its own reps in stores owned by someone else. That's significant, because those stores sell products from companies other than Microsoft, including (at least in the case of Best Buy) Macintosh computers. If I was Apple, I'd be less than thrilled at having a competitor stationed in a retail outlet to guide buyers away from my products and toward Vista... but I guess all's fair in love and business.

Other challenges are likely ahead, like how the "gurus" handle recommendations for products from different manufacturers. HP and Gateway computers will be side by side on the shelf, so what criteria does a "guru" working for Microsoft use to recommend one brand over another? Will they have hands on experience with every computer they promote? Just curious, that's all.

Microsoft says gurus won't be paid on commission but rather on the crunchier metrics of customer satisfaction and the "ability to translate the technology to a language consumers feel comfortable with." Why, I feel more comfortable already!