Best Buy continues to get chic with Geek Squad

Best Buy Co., Inc.'s (NYSE: BBY) "Geek Squad" army of personal computer and home theater installation experts are turning into one heavy asset for the nation's top electronics retailer. In fact, the division has become so large that a new 165,000-square-foot Geek Squad City warehouse was recently built on the Kentucky countryside. Why does Best Buy need a center like this? Well, it wants to ensure it can complete repairs on PCs it sells (especially laptops) and return them to its customers faster.

Sounds like a Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) or Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) strategy here, right? But this is the retailer (not the manufacturer) that built this large, manned repair center. In what I continue to see from Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson these days, Best Buy's recent unwavering focus on the customer continues to rise to new heights. The proof is in the pudding: Best Buy is smashing all other computer retailers these days. Ask Circuit City Stores Inc. (NYSE: CC) about this.

Michael Rogers, a Geek Squad spokesman, said, "This is all about giving the customer a better experience." This is something I am inclined to agree with. The area of Kentucky where Best Buy located the center was near a major flight hub and near a tech-savvy workforce as well. Hundreds of technicians "fix" hundreds of computer and more than 2,000 laptops a day. That sounds like commitment to customer service -- and Best Buy is the middleman here, not the hardware maker. All in all, this sounds impressive to the layman.