Fast Company has a fascinating profile of the indoctrination that all retail Apple Stores go through.
You can only learn so much about frontline employees as a customer, or even as a reporter. I knew that to find out how the best companies train and indoctrinate employees, I’d have to become one myself. […] In the process, I learned that Apple Stores, with their aura of cool, were in fact living up to their mission to “reinvent retail” and setting a high bar for other companies in the retail world.
The interesting thing is the strategy that each employee is trained to use in the store.
I shadowed other workers as they executed the company’s three-step sales process. They explained to customers that they had some questions to understand their needs, got permission to fire away, and then kept digging to ascertain which products would be best. Position, permission, probe.
It sounds almost insidious. The employees gain our trust by letting us come to them, then try to sell something based on what we’ve told them. Wait. Maybe that’s not so bad. It seems to me (call me a fanboi if you must) that Apple instructs their employees to sell customers what they need instead of upselling. Don’t sell someone that needs just an iMac a Mac Pro complete with Cinema Display. This could catch on.
Whenever I walk into a electronics store, I'm usually greeted by an employee that is going to try an upsell me on something, or try and push an extended warranty on me, or an overpriced cell phone plan. I can't stand it. Whenever I'm in the Apple store, (I'm usually at the mall at lest 1 day a week. I always make it a habit to pop in just incase there's a fire sale.) I'm never hastled by the employees. Yes, I do sometimes have to wait for help. But what do you expect when there are 50 people in a store that is only 40' x 60'. The Apple store is always packed and the employees are always calm, cool, and collected.
When I worked at Best Buy a few years ago they told their employees to do the same thing. But once you send that grandma out with a $400 pc so she can get email and that is it, that is when you find out they aren't so happy just providing what the customer needs.
The Apple Store employees seem very good, but the design of their "mini" stores, like at Southcenter near Seattle, really leaves a lot to be desired.
The lack of registers makes it very difficult to figure out where to buy anything. I've set down several hundred dollars worth of stuff and left the store in frustration a couple times. A line may not be cool, but does place a finite limit on the amount of time you expect to wait.
The back of the store is usually filled with unhappy customers trying to figure out how to meet with a genius, confused customers trying to find the cash registers, and other customers trying to browse the walls of software which are shoehorned in back there.
Since we're being all anecdotal and such...
@Squaresnail: If that's the cased, then the need wasn't assessed correctly, nor were the customer's expectations set correctly. Pretty simple.
@fletcher: I have no experience of the mini stores, just the full retail jobs. Finding a register has never been an issue. There are always one or two big black desks. How can you miss them? Or you could just _ask_. Wacky, I know.
@Derik D.: I know you're just mirroring FastCompany's use, but I really question the religious overtones of the word "indoctrinate." That implies unquestioned acceptance of whatever is being pushed. I've never met an Apple Store employee who wasn't frank about each product, which kind of belies "indoctrination."
Maybe it's just my experience, but I genuinely enjoy shopping at the Apple Store (except on product launch days...ick).
I worked on the frontlines in an Apple Retail Store over the summer. The "3 P's" still make me chuckle like I was back in middle school. I've heard lots of stories about Apple Store employees, and you seem to either love 'em or hate 'em. There's a reason for that.
People love us because we don't work on commission. We really do want you to walk out of there with exactly what you need. Upselling on hardware is pretty much non-existent. Most of the complaints I hear are about 3 things: Applecare, One-To-One, and dotMac. These are the attachments. While all can be essential to getting the best mac experience possible, especially for a new user, not everyone is willing to spend the extra money (sometimes up to $500). Especially for experienced mac users who think they can fix anything; they'll buy a computer without even considering Applecare. (but don't come crying back to Apple when you realize you can't solder a new processor onto the logic board)
Even though they're not on commission, the rate of attachments to machine means a lot. It must be in the cool-aid they drink during training, but even though they're not on commission, they love making sales and it's much, much better to sell attachments along with it. My advice: when buying a new computer at an Apple Retail Store, listen to everything the Mac Specialist has to say. I even used to tell customers: "Let me just give you my spiel and then you can decide." Who knows, maybe you really do need dotMac, and maybe One-To-One can help you become that independent filmmaker you've always wanted to be. Anyway, long post. As Steve would say, Namaste.
@Brian, you misinterpreted Squaresnail. The customer's needs were correctly assessed and the customer's expectations were in line. It's Best Buy that was upset that he sold a no-margin bottom-line machine instead of a kick-ass gaming platform.
@brian- is it me, or you were a bit rude to fletcher? o_O
if you have no experience with the mini stores, don't make smart butt replies to people like the one made. there are no registers at a mini store, and therefore, no big black desks. sales people walk around with a little credit card swipe thing and then bring you the product u bought after the card has been accepted.
yes you can ask, but when you do ask a question it means you're confused, which is what he stated o_O