The Apple Store: brand building became more important than serving shoppers
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman as well as Matthew Townsend receive got conducted interviews amongst several electrical current as well as one-time retail employees at Apple who claim that the iPhone maker’s vaunted brick-and-mortar stores receive got acquire less shopping-friendly inwards recent years.
From the report:
Web Smith’s recent experience at his local Apple store inwards the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, has been an exercise in frustration.
There was the time he visited the Easton Town Center location to purchase a laptop for his 11-year-old missy as well as spent almost twenty minutes getting an employee to select his credit card. In January, Smith was buying a monitor as well as kept asking store workers to cheque him out, but they couldn’t because they were “Geniuses” treatment tech support. non sales.
‘It took me forever to acquire individual to sell me the product,’ says Smith, who runs 2PM Inc., an e-commerce research and consulting firm. ‘It’s acquire harder to purchase something, fifty-fifty when the house isn’t busy. Buying a production at that topographic point used to live on a revered thing, right away you lot don’t desire to bother amongst the inconvenience.’
In a nutshell, employees claim the stores have acquire “mostly an exercise inwards branding as well as no longer do a practiced labor serving mission shoppers like Smith.
“The Genius Bar, in ane lawsuit renowned for its tech support, has been largely replaced amongst staff who roam the stores as well as are harder to rail down,” notes the report. Most of the complaints seem to oculus roughly the Genius Bar’s demise, a “significant drawback because people are hanging onto their phones longer these days as well as demand them repaired.”
It’s somewhat expected that the the character of staff would decrease—after all, Apple right away runs to a greater extent than than 500 brick-and-mortar locations as well as hires 70,000 retail employees.
So, who’s going to create the Apple Store?
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Apple’s newly appointed retail boss Deirdre O’Brien, that’s who! Having recently joined Instagram, she latterly embarked on a listening tour of the stores as well as filled her feed upwardly amongst happy snaps as well as shoutouts to employees she encountered inwards Austin, Paris as well as Hong Kong.
O’Brien’s immediate challenge is to make the stores to a greater extent than shopper-friendly—even if that agency moving away from the tony gathering places her predecessor favored and creating more clearly defined spaces for browsing, quick purchases as well as service.
Not all folks are cool amongst today’s concept of the Apple Store—big, opened upwardly spaces amongst lined amongst trees, massive video walls as well as employees roaming the floors. That concept was topographic point forth yesteryear one-time retail boss Angela Ahrendts, who joined Apple from Burberry roughly the fourth dimension the Cupertino tech giant was almost to launch the showtime Apple Watch.
Before her arrival, the Apple Store excelled at 3 primal tasks: selling products, helping customers troubleshoot their devices and didactics them how to acquire the most out of their gadgets. ‘Steve Jobs was actually groovy on stepping into the store as well as knowing what to do,’ recalls a one-time Apple retail executive, who requested anonymity to utter freely.
Steve Jobs definitely knew what people wanted.
Mission shoppers who wanted to selection upwardly a distich of headphones or an iPhone could build it as well as out quickly; those who wanted to acquire to a greater extent than almost their purchase could pass an hour getting trained yesteryear a Creative. If individual brought inwards a busted iPhone, a Genius would form it out.
During Angela’s time, Apple Retail overhauled the Genius Bar as well as that aspect of the company’s retail strategy has proved peculiarly controversial. Glassdoor state that a typical Apple Genius earns $22 per hr on average. In the pre-Ahrendts era, Geniuses were trained at Apple’s headquarters as well as present they’re by as well as large trained inwards stores
And this…
Customers looking for technical advice or repairs must right away cheque inwards amongst an employee, who types their asking into an iPad. Then when a Genius is free, he or she must find the client wherever they happen to live on inwards the store. Ahrendts was determined to acquire rid of lineups, but now the stores are oft crowded amongst people waiting for their iPhones to live on fixed or batteries swapped out.
And tin nosotros delight halt calling these stores “Town Squares”?
One of Angela Ahrendts’ showtime moves was to plough the stores into ‘Town Squares,’ where shoppers could hang out and, inwards industry parlance, ‘spend fourth dimension amongst the brand.’ Lines at the Genius Bar would receive got spoiled the termination then stores started replacing the dear customer-service counters with Genius Groves (comfortable seating nether trees), tables as well as roaming Geniuses.
The stores right away certain human face fantastic, but the shopping sense is non what it used to be.
I think this is due inwards role to Tim Cook, Jony Ive as well as Angela Ahrendts’ strategy that called for turning Apple itself as well as its retail stores into a luxury fashion brand, a failed experiment.
Checkout counters also disappeared inwards favor of salespeople armed amongst mobile devices. The destination was to build Apple stores to a greater extent than similar luxury showrooms, pushing offstage the unseemly line organisation of checking out as well as fielding complaints.
But does O’Brien receive got what it takes to amend the shopping experience?
As human-resources master copy (a topographic point she will hold concurrently), she is good situated to overhaul recruitment as well as training. That’s crucial because store associates volition likely live on deployed inwards the coming years to sell the array of services—music subscriptions, extended warranties as well as more—Apple is counting on to augment slowing iPhone sales.
All I desire to know is whether or not she’s going to bring back the original Genius Bar.
What do you lot think?
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