Best Buy dabbles in self-help technical support

Best Buy Co., Inc.'s (NYSE: BBY) Geek Squad technical support services have been very successful for the largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. in recent years. It's a profit-making machine that's put the emphasis on service margins over ever-shrinking product margins. Anything and everything PC-related that you need done -- personal or business -- the Geek Squad can be there.

Technical support is the best way to describe much of what Best Buy's Geek Squad does -- so would you believe the retailer wants to get involved with technical support in a social networking sense? FixYa.com, a website that allows customers to help each other with technical issues and owner's manuals from almost any piece of technology, is generated by users -- not retailers. However, as many of us have seen, user-generated destinations can be some of the most successful. Why pay to support your customers when they can support themselves in a sense?

I don't believe this is any kind of cost-saving move by Best Buy -- the retailer simply wants to provide its customers with an additional way to receive support as fast and efficient as possible before handling in-depth issues directly to a Geek Squad representative. Best Buy's co-branded version of the site located here will allow customers an easy entry path into support and troubleshooting. Again, it looks like Best Buy is outpacing competitors in terms of getting help to its customers as fast as it can, and in this case, at no charge.