"Unskilled work" idea - Sales Clerks...

Here's one alternative idea for people who want to earn money in SL without building or scripting skills, and for merchants who want to increase dwell and at the same time actually enhance the value of your mall or store, rather than detract from it.

Hire Sales Clerks.

A Sales Clerk would be an unskilled employee with one of two options for how they 'earn their keep'. Either they are actively present in your store, and are being paid to answer questions from customers and show people where to find things; Or they agree to be on-line fairly often and respond promptly to IM's to answer customer questions. Either way, you provide them with store and product information, so they can help your customers.

Here's some ways this could work, if a skilled scripter would like to take on the task of creating the needed 'Information desk' and Vendor scripts to track their 'work'.

Option 1:
The Sales Clerk is added to a group for the staff of that store or mall. Being part of that group enables them to 'log in' at the Info desk, to start work. The info desk then tracks them to ensure that they are still within a preset (configurable) distance, and that their client is active. They answer questions for customers, and in return they get a small 'sales commission' based on any sales that are made. The more they help to sell stuff, the more they could earn. A vendor script that communicates with the info desk could list the 'on-duty' clerks, and the customer could indicate which person helped them (or that no one did), to grant that person a larger commission at the time of sale. Obviously a 'zombie' sales clerk won't earn as much as an attentive and helpful one. The info desk would list the employees who were in-store to help customers, and might have a way to IM those sales clerks, to let them know a customer was requesting help.

Option 2:
The Sales Clerk is added to a group for the staff of that store or mall. Being part of that group enables them to 'log in' at the Info desk, to start work. But this group can be anywhere in-world, like the live-help staff, and could log in and be on-duty at multiple stores at once. (Even for multiple merchants!) In this case, the desk just tracks to see if they are on-line, and offers to customers a list of available 'sales clerks' for answering questions. A customer can select a clerk's name from a list, and can IM them to ask questions. The desk then waits a reasonable period of time (configurable), or until that customer completes a sale, and then asks if that sales clerk was helpful. Helpful clerks get a bigger commission.

Clerks who log in under Option 1, but move out of range, switch to option 2 if they remain on-line. Clerks in 'Away' or 'Busy' status or who are off-line don't get displayed as available, even if their zombie body is standing there.

Would this be worth developing? I might tackle the scripting task, if there is enough interest.

Yes, this is a good idea.

One proposal I have heard would be to have a commision rate in objects, so on their sale, x% goes to the creator and 1-x% goes to the owner.

It's a good idea, but SL isn't there yet, legally, socially or technologically. Until we have legally binding contracts, it is a no man's land.

A variation would be for these clerks to also serve as models for the clothes (assuming you are selling clothes, as most do). I'm often frustrated to see that items I buy for myself or a friend do not fit like they do in the nice poster, or hang funny. If clerks had the ability to try on anything in the store, they could "model" it for the customer.

The downside to this is that my experience with 99% of the stores in SL is that there is no one in them (except me) when I visit. This makes a clerks job lonely, boring, and probably not worth what the proprietor pays them.

The job of sales clerk also requires some training by the owner (what products, where located, features, etc.) and some attention by the clerk and commitment to come at regular hours. I suspect that for many folks, both of those sound a lot like "work," something that people come to SL to avoid.

We've seen that effect in several efforts to organize "fashion shows," in which the show was poorly organized and the models less than professional.

I know (after decades of working myself) that a "job" requires "work." I suspect (perhaps cynically) that many folks "looking for a job" are looking for one that does not require "work" but produces a paycheck (like a camping chair!).

Well Frank, you're probably right, that on option 1, a sales clerk standing around in a given store will often be standing there alone for long periods of time. If they are not in a high-traffic area, like a busy mall, far too many merchant locations do tend to resemble ghost towns.

That is why I proposed Option 2. A single sales clerk could maintain contact with multiple sales locations, and could be doing anything else that they wish to in-world while waiting for a customer. They could be building, exploring, or yiffing their partner like a crazed mink. It wouldn't matter where they were or what they were doing, so long as they were actively in-world and willing to take time out to respond promptly to questions.

I rather like the idea of having a sales employee be able to model any item that you sell. That could, perhaps, be one of the initial perks of the job - you get a personal copy of the entire product line, at zero cost to the employee. If you're away from the store and someone would like to see an item modeled, you can put it on and then TP to the store, to show it to them. Then you can go back to doing whatever you please when you are done.

I think I would also extend the model of this to include the store owner as someone who could be contacted. If the info desk could tell the customer that the store owner was available, that could be quite useful.

I think I may go ahead and develop this for myself - at least to the extent of having a low-prim kiosk that can be integrated with my vendors, so potential customers can at least talk to ME readily if they want information.

If the store owner had a highly visible kiosk(s) in the store that says "CLICK ME to call a sales clerk/model" and works like a beeper for the clerk, it might allow one person to cover multiple venues. It could show "Clerk X" is online/offline and can help or model clothing.

You might even develop something based on the Dom/sub tools to phsyically drag the clerk to the venue from where-ever ... something I"ve often wanted in stores where the clerks hide or can't interrupt their cell phone chat with their S.O. to help. Subject to abuse, though ... so probably hard to get a clerk to put up with it. But hey, you gotta expect to pay some dues as you climb the retail ladder to become Ralph Lauren or Vera Wang.

This sounds like a very good idea.

However, as items get more scripted it would be great if the sales staff could be demonstrators as well as just doing sales. The analog of a clothing model for a technical product.

This could really develop into something more like a buying consultant. If a person worked at several (non-competing) places, they could refer people, and in fact go there with them to help with the sale. There's a huge and growing amount of stuff for sale in SL, and people who knew what was out there and could help with purchases would really earn their salaries and/or commissions.

From the standpoint of the person doing the job, it has a nice side effect of meeting a lot of people, and for the shopaholics, they'd get paid for looking around.

(The thought of the 'drag the sales clerk here' function is amusing. I'll admit I've been in RL stores where I wanted a button to to that so bad! I don't think it would be part of this solution, however. Tempting though it is! )

My thought to start with is to have two forms for the kiosk. One would be a simple 'frame' to go around an existing low-prim vendor - for people like me who have a single vending machine at a given location, and a very tight prim budget for some of those locations. The other would be a free-standing sign/kiosk/desk that could be placed near the entrance of a larger store.

In either case, the texture of the info desk object would explain what it was, and a smaller textured area would probably be the 'tally lights' to indicate if the owner and/or a sales clerk was on duty at that moment. Sort of an on-line indicator, for a collection of people.

If they click on the frame or desk, a dialog explains the help function, and offers buttons for the owner and other staff that are available at that moment. The buttons allow you to IM them with your questions.

The trick will be to keep the prim count and texture usage of the info desk object as low as possible, and to keep the scripting as low-lag as possible. Should be an interesting programming challenge!

umm.. there are people who work at sale associates already in SL. People just don't wanna deal with a payroll to keep these mobile store fronts working for them or to spend the money on commision capable catalog system.

Yes, Ron, there certainly are some people out there who work as sales associates already. But there seem to be very few of them, from what I have experienced. I can think of maybe three shops out of all that I have been in where I have encountered someone, other than the owner of the store, who 'worked' there and could help customers. And store owners who are in their stores are rare as well.

I believe that few people want to stand around in a store front, waiting for customers who might never come by that day. And merchants don't want to, and can't afford to, pay people do do nothing at all, either. (With the apparent exception of camping chairs, which are just a way of gaming the system for more dwell...).

But if my scripted method allows a merchant and/or their staff to provide better service, at more than one location at a time, without chaining them to the store front? It just might work.

As for them not wanting to spend money on such a system... well you may be right, if it cost a lot. But if the cost was reasonable? Or better yet, if it was an open-source solution, available for free? It might well be sufficiently worth my time to develop this for my own use. I don't necessarily need to sell it for a high price to benefit from taking the time to make it.

I just think that hiring sales clerks is a much greater benefit all around, no matter how you implement it, than installing those silly camping chairs.