The Apple Store
Today I found myself in the Apple store in Memphis. As much as I enjoy Apple products, the store frustrates me. In keeping with the astronomical theme of this blog, the people working in that store are less than stellar. There’s a night and day difference between the service in the Memphis store and the service in the only other Apple store I’ve been in—the one in Minneapolis. There, several employees offered their help. And they all seemed like MIT grads talking to me about the products and answering all my technical questions. In Memphis, help isn’t as forthcoming, and the employees seem like they came from a coffeehouse in Seattle—spacey and presenting themselves like they are the offspring of a hippie and a grunge punk.
I’ve had other unpleasant experiences in Memphis. Today’s wasn’t unique. Typically, once I leave the sanctuary that is trying out an iPod or playing with a G5, my love for Apple is diminished when I see the spiked hair girl behind the checkout counter babbling endlessly with her co-worker.
The marketers at Apple know that they don’t just sell products. They sell a lifestyle. Apple products—perhaps more than any other company’s—are connected with the owner far beyond his raw computing needs. They are to many owners a symbol of well-informed style and sophistication. Not the pretentious kind of sophistication but the kind that results in this geeky zeal to change the minds of all the blind followers of PC-dom.
My point is that Apple, a company whose market share and future success depends in large part on preserving its unique appeal, should pay more heed to the faces that are professionally associated with selling itself to the general public. In other words, Apple better not become so wrapped up in its marketing machine and current success that it looses sight of one of the basics of any solid business: sound customer service. It’s rather funny…in the Apple store, the person who handles the repairs that customers bring in is called the “genius”—as if everyone else working there is far below the bar in comparison. I know this is reading between the lines a bit sarcastically, but the grain of truth behind it is running rampant in Memphis. Apple should take better care of its faithful customers by taking care to hire people who aren’t professionally dysfunctional.
I’ve had other unpleasant experiences in Memphis. Today’s wasn’t unique. Typically, once I leave the sanctuary that is trying out an iPod or playing with a G5, my love for Apple is diminished when I see the spiked hair girl behind the checkout counter babbling endlessly with her co-worker.
The marketers at Apple know that they don’t just sell products. They sell a lifestyle. Apple products—perhaps more than any other company’s—are connected with the owner far beyond his raw computing needs. They are to many owners a symbol of well-informed style and sophistication. Not the pretentious kind of sophistication but the kind that results in this geeky zeal to change the minds of all the blind followers of PC-dom.
My point is that Apple, a company whose market share and future success depends in large part on preserving its unique appeal, should pay more heed to the faces that are professionally associated with selling itself to the general public. In other words, Apple better not become so wrapped up in its marketing machine and current success that it looses sight of one of the basics of any solid business: sound customer service. It’s rather funny…in the Apple store, the person who handles the repairs that customers bring in is called the “genius”—as if everyone else working there is far below the bar in comparison. I know this is reading between the lines a bit sarcastically, but the grain of truth behind it is running rampant in Memphis. Apple should take better care of its faithful customers by taking care to hire people who aren’t professionally dysfunctional.
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